Probiotics and Weight Loss – What is the correlation?

So one of my favorite websites to get GREAT information about taking care of yourself is www.realage.com from Dr. Oz and the other YOU Dr.

It is great because you can take a very long questionaire and find out what your “REAL AGE” is. When I took it 1 year ago, my real age was “24.” I would have been 22, but I had more than 4 major stressors at the time – new baby, moving, and a couple more.

The cool thing is they send you emails with GREAT information on the latest findings, tips – many of them weight loss related – all in pursuit to make YOU the healthiest version of yourself. I really love it. Here was one I found today that I thought was great because I have TOTALLY seen a difference in health in my kids (especially my asthmatic son) with the addition of probiotics in his diet.

Who knew they could help you LOSE WEIGHT? Here is the rundown:

A Legitimate Pill That Makes You Skinny?
You don’t have to be a celebrity with three chefs, two nannies, and a big-name personal trainer to emerge from pregnancy even more svelte and glamorous than you started. A little pill that boosts your health may help prevent pregnancy weight gain from hanging around.

The little pill is a probiotic supplement. Technically, probiotics are bacteria, but they’re a good type of microbe that we recommend taking daily to keep your digestive system running smoothly, beef up your immune system, and reduce damaging inflammation. You have 10 trillion bacteria in and on you, so you might as well choose to have the good bacteria that help keep bad microbes in check.

A new study from Finland found that pregnant women who started taking probiotic supplements during the first trimester — and kept up the regimen throughout the term of their pregnancies — had a lower percentage of body fat after delivery than women who ate the same diet but didn’t take the supplements. Probiotic takers were also less likely to have dangerous fat around their waists than the pill-free women were. (And researchers saw no harm to the supplement takers’ babies; in fact, other studies show that women on these pills had infants with less diarrheal and other early-childhood diseases.)

What’s the magic? It’s possible that good bacteria control inflammation, which somehow also helps control obesity. Or it’s possible that there’s something about balancing the bacteria that keeps fat in control (though it’s not clear how).

Either way, the probiotics that kept new moms svelte were the easy-to-find ones called Lactobacillus GG, and Bifidobacterium. Of course, you can still hire the nanny and the trainer, but we’d try these little bacteria first — they can cost about $14- $20 a month and might slim your waist without liposuctioning your wallet.

Do you take probiotics? Have you noticed any health differences? You can actually get a CUSTOMIZED probitic based on the 4 strains of good bacteriea that should be on your body. OUr Chiropractor hooks us up. They have to be refrigerated all the way home – so we have to bring a cooler. Pretty cool.