Low-protein diets boost total energy expenditure by about 600 calories a day, a shift driven by changes in gut bacteria that activate heat-producing fat cells. Researchers identified four microbial strains that produce this effect and turned them into a probiotic cocktail.
There's a 4-microbe cocktail that makes animals burn calories faster, like a furnace. It all started when researchers noticed in controlled human trials that a low protein diet increased total energy expenditure by 20%, or 600 calories per day. You heard me. And this finding was replicated across 3 separate controlled human trials. So what's going on? It turns out that these low protein diets change the gut microbiome, ultimately causing fat cells to burn more energy. It's as if the right gut microbes nudge your fat cells to just turn the thermostat up. So instead of hoarding and storing energy, they start leaking it off as heat. So the researchers identified the microbiome signature associated with highly active thermogenic fat cells in humans and created a microbiome cocktail of just 4 microbes. I put more information and nuances below, but the punchline is a calorie-burning probiotic might actually be coming.
