the bacteria in your gut are linked to so many aspects of your health including obesity and weight loss different types of probiotics can influence your metabolism but what are these specific probiotic strains and are there probiotic strains that can help or hurt your weight loss progress there absolutely is and i'm going to do my best to summarize the mountains of research of many different probiotic strains to list out which strains i think are the best for weight loss before we get into which strains are beneficial it's important you first understand how probiotics interact with your body so you know what kinds of benefits you can expect our intestines hold billions of bacteria the good bacteria do things to keep our body healthy like help to break down our food and generate nutrients for us to use the bad bacteria do things like create too much gas or generate inflammatory chemicals probiotics are a type of good bacteria and there's some evidence that certain probiotic strains are related to obesity and might help with weight loss but it's not going to be like suppressing your appetite so you eat less and start losing weight right away kind of help it's more like changing the way you metabolize nutrients so it reduces your risk of developing obesity kind of help to put it in more practical terms the types of benefits that probiotics typically impart are beneath the surface and not easy to see right away they often take effect much slower than most people will be able to notice so while a lot of research has associated certain bacteria in our intestines to all kinds of medical issues from cancer to dementia to obesity these associations are generally made with the understanding that if these bacteria are beneficial it would likely have to be years of these bacteria acting on the body to possibly provide some benefit for example we know that some probiotic bacteria help us to metabolize certain foods better and reduce inflammation both things that are related to obesity but we're taking additional healthy bacteria as a probiotic actually cause any noticeable weight loss or is it just going to support your weight loss but not really cause you to lose weight itself of course both would be helpful but just keep in mind that when some people say that probiotics are helpful they often mean the latter even though some people might expect the former so you might be wondering if there are any probiotics that cause noticeable effects on weight loss and there are but most of them are going to fall into this support weight loss category with that in mind let's take a look at a well-researched group of probiotics known as lactobacillus the strains found to most consistently cause weight loss was lactobacillus gasseri even though the effect was typically small and sometimes insignificant this effect has been shown in humans making it one of the few probiotics that has demonstratable evidence for weight loss the next few are lactobacillus plantarium lactobacillus rhamnosus and lactobacillus kci all of which mostly cause improvements in obesity related measures like reducing inflammation or improving fat composition but also found some weight loss when used with a proper diet however these strains were often combined with other strains so it can be hard to figure out how much effect the individual strain is having on health very likely these strains only support dietary weight loss efforts and may not have much effect when used by itself some other less common strains of note were lactobacillus amylovoris lactobacillus sacchiai and lactobacillus curvatus all of which were studied for their potential to help with obesity but not a lot of research is available on them and we unfortunately don't have very clear evidence that it will be useful for humans lactobacillus acidophilus one of the most common strains of lactobacillus does not seem to show any noticeable effects on weight by itself in fact some research suggests it might cause weight gain however a lot of the research mixes acidophilus with so many other probiotic strains that can be hard to suss out what effect if any it's heavy on the body if it is having beneficial effects on weight it likely only supports a healthy metabolism another highly researched group of probiotics is known as befidobacterium no strain really stands out amongst the bifidobacterium and many of them likely only support healthy weight loss rather than cause it the fidobacterium brev and befidobacterium animalis subspecies lactus or simply buffitobacterium lactis seem to show up quite a lot in research a lot of it is combined with other probiotics and much of the research is only on mice but some strains may be able to help improve fat composition and support weight loss other strains like bifidobacterium bifidum and bifidobacterium longum also seem to support weight loss by improving obesity related measures like high cholesterol or inflammation but likely don't show any actual weight loss by themselves they're also almost always used in combination with other probiotics making it difficult to determine if these particular strains are actually useful other than probiotics in the lactobacillus and bifidobacterium groups information about other probiotics are not quite as plentiful some other probiotics of note are acromancia mucinophilia pediococcus pentosacious saccharomyces boulardii and bacterioids uniformis all of which have interesting effects related to helping reduce obesity and potentially being useful for weight loss but have yet to show any weight loss effects especially on humans so the vast majority of probiotic strains are supportive of healthy weight loss meaning taking them without doing anything else is not likely going to have any effect on your weight however using them while on a proper weight loss diet can help your metabolism and improve your gut health will it increase the amount of weight you lose it's really hard to say and most evidence would suggest that it probably doesn't at least not significantly however it could make it easier to maintain your weight or help you to lose weight a little faster or maybe improve other problems related to obesity like improving cholesterol levels or reducing inflammation great things to have if you're already following a healthy weight loss protocol but don't expect it to have a significant impact on your actual weight even with lactobacillus gasseri strains the magnitude of weight loss is not very large and you may not even notice it research studies on this specific probiotic show that people typically lost around 1 kilogram or about 2 and a half pounds in 12 weeks that's not very impressive combining different strains might be more effective regardless make sure you have a good dose of any probiotic you plan to take for therapeutic purposes probiotics are measured in colony forming units or cfus one cfu basically means a single viable bacteria that is able to multiply itself and form a colony so having 1 billion cfus means it has 1 billion bacteria that are able to form colonies probiotics are typically measured in the billions of cfu per dose and anything less may not even reach your gut since oral probiotics need to bypass and survive your harsh stomach acid before getting into the intestines at the end of the day make sure you set the proper expectations before you start spending a lot of money on probiotics for weight loss understand that probiotics are a great supportive tool for healthy weight loss but are not likely going to be the magic pill that starts helping you to lose weight that is still up to you hi i'm dr brian young do you take any probiotics on your weight loss diet let me know in the comments down below subscribe and hit the notification bell to stay up to date and if you found this informative please leave me a like and share this video with someone you know can use the help [Music]