New research shows that intermittent fasting and calorie restriction change the microbiome composition in the gut, which could affect other functions in the body.
"Should I be taking a probiotic?" is a question that Maggie Stanislawski, PhD, assistant professor in the University of Colorado Department of Biomedical Informatics , gets asked often.
Stanislawski examined the effects of the intervention on the gut microbiota of the participants and found that both approaches have a positive impact on helping diversify the microbiome. "There are various measures of the microbiome that we tend to think about," Stanislawski explains."One of them is called alpha diversity, and these measures represent the diversity of the different types of microbes in an environment. While not always true, a more diverse and robust microbiome is often associated with better health and leanness.
"This means that you can choose a dietary weight loss strategy that works for you, and either way your microbiome will likely shift and increase diversity," Stanislawski says.Changes in the microbiome while undergoing dietary changes may play an important role in additional functions of the body as well.
"It's one of the multiple epigenetic mechanisms that regulate our genes without directly altering our DNA sequences," he says."DNA methylation is a dynamic process, and it impacts compaction of our DNA and accessibility by regulatory machinery. The idea is that, very broadly speaking, increased methylation at gene regulatory regions generally represses expression of those genes.
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