How do high protein diets affect your microbiome and body fat?
The microbial population living in the intestines affects the ability to lose weight, including be the best athlete or it may even become an early biomarker for Parkinson’s disease. But how does a high protein diet affect the microbiome?
Despite the increase in protein intake in Western diets, especially among athletes and obese people, the fate of undigested protein and its impact on human health remains largely unknown. A new study conducted during the American Society for Microbiology (ASM Microbe) meeting has shed light on the effects of a high-protein diet on the gut microbiome and overall health.
The study examines how excess undigested protein in the colon can be fermented to produce beneficial metabolites such as short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) or lead to the production of harmful metabolites such as ammonia and sulfides, which are associated with gastrointestinal disorders and other health problems. health.
The research team conducted a series of experiments on mice and found that Switching to a high protein diet resulted in significant weight loss, decreased body fat, and caused immediate changes in the gut microbiome.
The study also compared various protein diets study the effect of individual amino acids on the composition and activity of the intestinal microbiome.
Specifically, mice that consumed proteins rich in aromatic amino acids experienced the greatest loss of weight and fat mass compared to those on a standard diet rich in protein and branched-chain amino acids..
“These findings provide an important basis for understanding how a high-protein diet affects the gut microbiome and open the door for future research into the role of diet in promoting gut health and overall health,” said Samson Adejumo, PhD, of the University. University of Illinois at Chicago.
“According to the literature, foods rich in branched chain amino acids include meat, fish, dairy products, tripe, eggs, whey, milk and soy proteins. And some diets rich (60-80%) in aromatic amino acids include chicken and pork. , tilapia, mackerel and beef,” Adejumo explained of the addition.
“However, most food proteins of plant origin contain all the essential amino acids, and some food proteins of animal origin contain a certain proportion of both aromatic and branched chain amino acids,” he added.
To understand ourselves, “aromatic amino acids are characterized by the presence of an aromatic ring in their structure. In this group we find phenylalanine, tryptophan, tyrosine and histidine. In general, foods rich in aromatic amino acids include meat, eggs, legumes, and dairy products. and nuts. It should be noted that dark chocolate is an important source of tryptophan, legumes are rich in histidine, and dairy products contain large amounts of these amino acids.The branched chain amino acids are valine, leucine and isoleucine. These They are present in animal products such as meat and fish, as well as legumes, nuts and grains such as whole grain wheat or rice,” said Anxo Carreira, nutritionist and professor at the University of Carlemany in Andorra.
Returning to the study to further explore the effects of amino acids in a high protein diet on gut bacteria, Adejumo conducted a four-week experiment on 16 mice.
Mice were initially fed a standard diet for two weeks and then fed a diet rich in isotrogenic protein and enriched with branched-chain amino acids or aromatic amino acids for the next two weeks.
Daily fecal samples and weekly body composition measurements were collected to monitor changes in fat and lean mass. DNA was extracted from feces and sequenced to analyze microbial composition and dynamics during the study period.
Comparison of the microbial composition of the four protein groups revealed significantly different abundance and composition of microbial taxa after protein enrichment.
Using machine learning techniques, the researchers predicted dietary protein based on gut microbial taxa with 97% accuracy, confirming the relationship between diet and changes in the microbiome.
Overall, gut bacterial genera responded differently to changes in diet, from a regular carbohydrate diet to a protein diet and, most importantly, to different groups of amino acids.
The most significant changes occurred in the group of rodents given branched chain amino acids. Although it is too early to definitively say that high-protein diets caused all of the observed changes in body composition and gut bacteria, the consistent pattern of changes clearly points to a link between high-protein diets and changes in the gut microbiome, the study states.
“In our study, we specifically designed our diet with different percentages of aromatic and branched-chain amino acids so that we could study the role of amino acid content in mice, where we can control the type and content of the diet. Our protein diet formula also gives us the ability to design different levels of isotrogenic proteins depending on our specific goals. “Our goal is also to investigate the effects of individual aromatic and branched chain amino acids,” Adejumo added.