Postbiotics: Benefits of Butyrate for Obesity

Dawn (00:00):

Hello and welcome to the Gastric Health Show. My name is Dawn Boxell, Registered Dietitian, and this week’s topic is Postbiotics, the benefits of butyrate for Obesity. So we’re going to dig into this topic because I would say when I first started really researching probiotics and gut health and just really understanding and learning all about this gut microbiome, this, we didn’t understand this, we did not understand the benefits of postbiotics.

The Metabolic Complexity

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But in general, I think this is a great topic to kind of explore. So as you are diving into making informed choices about probiotics, this is something to consider. So let’s get started. We all know that obesity is more than just a calories in, calories out problem. It is a metabolic problem that is complex and it takes a combination of things and strategies and approaches to really align everything for an individual and what aligned for one may not align for another.

Personalized Approaches to Metabolic Health

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So what I’m saying is just because your friend did great on a certain diet and exercise routine and taking a specific probiotic or taking a supplement or a medication doesn’t guarantee you will get the same results. We have shown in studies that postbiotics, especially butyrate, and we’ll get into the details of the different types of postbiotics, which is a short chain fatty acid, can help in preventing obesity. We’re going to kind of explore postbiotics more specifically butyrate, the short chain fatty acid butyrate and how they can counter obesity. So what is postbiotics? We know that our digestive system is home to trillions of microorganisms, bacteria, viruses, fungi, yeast, and archaea. All of these have resident in our gut and throughout our body and have the ability to impact our health positively or negatively. They interact with our immune system, they consume and produce nutrients.

Short-Chain Fatty Acids: Key Players in Gut Health

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And when bacteria break down, some of those molecules are released, which others remain bound to the bacteria. And these molecules known as postbiotics can actually be helpful for us and they influence our body’s activities and functions in a good way. So a simple way to think of this is that postbiotics are the helpful leftovers from the activities of all these microorganisms. They include a range of substances like short chain fatty acids, peptides, enzymes, and vitamins, and butyrate in particularly, is a powerful short chain fatty acid post biotic that helps maintain your gut health and influences several physiological processes in your body that help in contributing to obesity.

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So let’s dig into short-chain fatty acids. And I know I have spoken on short-chain fatty acids frequently, but I’ll kind of recap if you’re new and make sure that you have a full understanding. But short-chain fatty acids are the byproducts of what your gut produces after they consume the non-digestible carbohydrates or so. When you consume fiber filled carbohydrates, the gut bacteria consume all that and they spit out this short chain fatty acid of butyrate, which is a post biotic. The most prominent short chain fatty acids are

Beyond Diets: Understanding the Science of Postbiotics

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Acetate, propionate and butyrate. These compounds are known for their abundance in both the plasma and the intestines. However, butyrate and propionate rather than acetate, are reported to have significant obesity fighting effects. And one way that this occurs is through appetite regulation. So butyrate and propionate have the ability to stimulate gut hormones and reduce your food intake. And several studies have shown that short chain fatty acids help curb overeating by influencing hormones such as leptin, which signals fullness.

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Additionally, butyrate and propionate also inhibit fat storage. They can reduce the absorption of dietary fat and downregulate fatty acid synthesis in the liver, which hinders fat creation and then acetate facilitates fat sense of this. So it’s all about having an appropriate balance between all three of these short-chain fatty acids. Now, the short-chain fatty acids also influence blood sugar regulation and your fat cells. So butyrate is associated with genes that control gluconeogenesis, which is what regulates blood glucose levels.

Butyrate: Unveiling Its Anti-Obesity Arsenal

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And these postbiotics may activate the intestinal gluconeogenesis through a of different mechanisms that can lead to a rejection in body weight and adiposity. One study looked at the role of postbiotics in diet induced metabolic disorders. And according to this study, butyrate improves insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism. However, it is unclear whether butyrate can reduce glucose levels in patients with metabolic syndrome therapeutically. So we don’t really know if just giving someone like a butyrate supplement or a post biotic supplement with butyrate using majority of butyrate and propionate if that would truly influence in humans.

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Now we also have to think about thermogenesis with short-chain fatty acids. So to kind of explain this, we have a few different types of fat tissues in our bodies. The two main types are the white adipose tissue and the brown adipose tissue. The white tissue stores excess energy as fat, and then the brown helps burn the energy to keep us warm, and it’s kind of our body’s natural way of staying lean.

Short-Chain Fatty Acids and Weight: The Thermogenic Link

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There’s also a third type called the beige fat, which can develop in response to certain triggers and act like the brown adipose tissue, so more in benefit and burning fat. Some recent studies have shown that the potential of acetate to enhance the activity of the brown adipose tissue or promote browning of the white adipose tissue in animal models. So we don’t have the evidence yet in humans, but they are finding that acetate can enhance this brown adipose tissue in helping and burn burning of the fat cells.

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As a result, short-chain fatty acids may promote thermogenesis, which is essential to weight management. Additionally, there is another study where they use Clostridium, a microorganism that produces butyrate and it was found to be beneficial for treating obesity and other diseases. And according to the study, this certain form of Clostridium strain alleviated obesity by increasing energy expenditure and activating the thermogenic genes in the brown adipose tissue.

Microbiome Harmony: Butyrate’s Role in Metabolic Health

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So let’s talk about the gut microbiome connection, right? Because the balance of all of these bacteria and Fila in the gut are really the vital part in you producing short chain fatty acids. And we know that the more diverse of bacteria that you have in your gut, the healthier your gut is and the more normal weight you are. So we know that you have fewer species and strains with obesity. So our goal is to have a variety of microorganisms and a good number of each of them so that it is robust and you have strength in diversity.

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We know that bacteroidetes are known to produce acetate and propionate while the firmicutes are associated with the butyrate production. We know that butyrate as a postbiotic plays a crucial role in kind of shaping that whole gut microbiome and it fuels the colon cells and promotes the growth of beneficial gut bacteria.

Balance between the good and the bad gut bacteria

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And this balance between the good and the bad gut bacteria is essential for maintaining a healthy metabolism. So what are the anti-obesity effects of butyrate? 1. Appetite regulation. 2. Fat storage inhibition. 3. Gut barrier integrity. 4. Improved insulin sensitivity. 5. Inflammation reduction. 6. balanced immune response.

Butyrate’s Multi-Faceted Impact on Obesity: One Short Chain, Many Benefits

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And 7. Metabolic health enhancements. So with appetite regulation, we know that butyrate stimulates the release of those appetite regulating hormones like leptin and helps us feel full faster. So as long as you’re consuming those fiber field carbohydrates feeding your gut microbiome, they will produce this byproduct of butyrate that is a post biotic. And then when it comes to the fat storage, it will limit the fat accumulation in your adipose tissue, and butyrate can reduce the absorption of dietary fat. So it is a part, think of it this way, your gut bacteria can influence how many calories you absorb from food, which is why having adequate amounts of short chain fatty acids is important to your metabolic health and your overall weight.

Strengthening Your Barrier Against Autoimmunity

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Now, when it comes to your gut barrier integrity, so think of that gut lining and how we need that to be strong so you don’t get leaky gut. That is one thing that butyrate does. It strengthens and keeps that intestinal lining strong and robust and preventing things from slipping through that we don’t want to get into our bloodstream because then our body gets confused and thinks that it’s a foreign substance that maybe we should attack.

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So it’s important to make sure that if you want to prevent having autoimmune issues, then this is part of it. Fueling your body with fiber field carbohydrates is super important. It is one piece of this puzzle that maintains your overall health. Now, when it comes to insulin sensitivity, butyrate helps reduce insulin resistance and type two diabetes by improving and making you more insulin sensitive, which is good. And that is we want our bodies to quickly shuttle the sugar from your blood into the cells so it can energize your life and make you feel great and keep your blood glucose numbers in check.

How Butyrate Fights Type 2 Diabetes

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But when insulin is bombarded and it has too much sugar, it becomes resistant to unlocking those cells and shuttling the sugar into the cells. So now it remains in your bloodstream. Then your body thinks, oh, we have too much sugar, we need more insulin. And now it’s no longer capable of doing its job. It’s resistant to unlocking the cells, and it kind of shuts off that ability to tap into your fat stores.

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So if your insulin levels are too high, then guess what? You are not going to be tapping into your fat cells to burn and allowing you to lose weight if needed because your insulin is blocking that, your insulin prevents that from occurring. Then we think of short chain fatty acids and reducing inflammation, which is totally correlated with obesity and just your overall body weight. So low grade chronic inflammation is directly associated with obesity, and this is something that kind of goes together.

Short-Chain Fatty Acids’ Role in Weight Management

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So as you transition to maintaining a healthy weight, it has to include those fiber filled carbohydrates. Because of this, your gut bacteria need this fuel source, these non-digestible fibers for it to fuel off of and to be strong and robust without them, they start breaking down your mucus layer, which is protective, and it then takes your proteins and fats that you consume in your diet and converts those to fuel off of. And the negative is when you do that, it creates the wrong environment and it produces an environment that is correlating with disease.

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So it is the wrong fuel source. It’s kind of like if you had a Ferrari, would you put 87 octane in it? No, you wouldn’t. So again, it’s understanding how your body works and understanding this concept of you know what? I have to be able to fuel my body appropriately and I have to feed these microorganisms and they all work together, and if I don’t give it the right fuel source and I’m eliminating a whole food group, then I’m missing out on this property long-term.

Butyrate’s Multi-Layered Benefits

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You have to think about the connection with your immune response. When it comes to short chain fatty acids, butyrate is known to play a role in regulating the immune system. And it’s important for obesity prevention because chronic inflammation and metabolic dysfunction can result from an imbalanced immune response. And then the last one is your metabolic health enhancement. So butyrate helps prevent harmful substances from entering the bloodstream through the gut barrier, just as I kind of described. And it can have a positive effect on your metabolic health, the stronger that gut integrity is.

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Researchers have demonstrated that postbiotics are beneficial for managing metabolic disorders through several effects. This is anti-inflammatory properties. They’re antibacterial immune modulatory, anticarcinogenic, they’re an antioxidant and hypocholesterolemia. All of these effects enhance both the immune system and improve your intestinal barrier by acting directly on the intestinal epithelium as well as various organs and tissues.

The Silent Hero in Obesity Prevention

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So you can see that the big picture of metabolic health, which translates to having a healthy weight or struggling with overweight or obesity, it’s the package deal. We can’t leave out this piece because let’s say even if you went on a strict calorie deficit diet and you were not consuming many calories, whether you just did this yourself or you did it with a medication, or you did it with surgery or whatever way you did this,

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That you suppressed your chloric intake, you lost the weight, you lost a significant amount of weight, but yet you weren’t fueling your body with these fiber filled carbohydrates. So what happens when you change what you’re doing with your caloric intake or as that increases? What changes? It’s highly likely that you can regain this weight because we missed this piece of fueling or taking care of these microorganisms and fueling them appropriately.

The Power of Postbiotics

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So while butyrate is a promising post biotic to help against obesity, it is essential to remember there’s no magic bullet. And when it comes to weight management, you can’t just pop a post biotic supplement or a specifically one that says butyrate and expect the pounds to just melt away. That does not exist. So again, you have to frame this in the right way. It’s the package deal. So are there ways that we can get your body back in alignment so that it can do the things you’re supposed to do? Absolutely. It’s a process and none of that happens in a month, and none of that happens in three months. It’ll likely take 12 months to rebuild recondition, repair, repopulate that whole environment. So it’s a long play. When you are utilizing these strategies that I provide most of them, it’s one puzzle piece, and you got to put all these puzzle pieces together so that it adds up to the big picture of maintaining a healthy weight.

The Synergy of Prebiotics, Probiotics, and Postbiotics

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And that’s where you have to, you just start going. You just start rolling through and adding and adding and adding until you get everything in alignment so that now your body is efficient, it is fueling, it is receiving everything that it needs. So now your metabolism is strong. Your metabolism is capable of having and caring for a robust immune system, a healthy weight, and just overall healthy life because everything’s in alignment, if that makes sense. So when it comes to postbiotics like butyrate, it works best when complimented by supporting your whole gut health.

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So this approach should incorporate a balanced diet that is full of prebiotic fibers. Think of the fiber field, carbohydrates, probiotic, rich foods, and postbiotics. So it’s a combination of all of these things. So prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics do not compete with each other in any way. Instead, they actually worked harmoniously and kind of provide you the whole picture for having a healthy metabolism.

How Butyrate Supplements Support Weight Management

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So when it comes to prebiotics, you can think of foods that contain fiber that are found in fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Probiotics, these are beneficial microorganisms. So these are live bacteria and they can come from food and from supplements. And then the postbiotics, they are a byproduct of your short-chain fatty acids, butyrate and propionate producing these postbiotics from consuming those fiber filled carbohydrates and those prebiotics. So essentially it’s a teamwork approach and each playing a different role in maintaining your overall health and preventing obesity.

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Prebiotics, fuel the good bacteria, probiotics, balance the gut microbiome and postbiotics are the silent mediators of your metabolic health. So let’s wrap this up. This relationship between the prebiotic butyrate and its anti-obesity effects is really being uncovered in research. And they are showing that having this property of postbiotics, whether it is created naturally from the short chain fatty acid production because you’re consuming fiber filled carbohydrates or you are consuming a butyrate supplement, they are finding benefit with this and they’re finding that it can help support a healthy metabolism and help in preventing metabolic diseases. But remember, just taking a pill is not going to solve all the problems.

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They work in synergy with your other probiotics and prebiotics to round it all out to make them work efficiently. So taking one without adding the others is not going to provide the same benefit as just taking a post biotic. So hopefully all of this makes sense and you have enjoyed learning about postbiotics, that powerful butyrate and propionate that really do have anti-obesity effects and can help benefit you long-term. And I’ll say

Conclusion

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I occasionally do use butyrate supplements with some of my clients, and I definitely use probiotics. And our gastric health line has some really great options with our ultimate Gut Restore probably being our most popular. And then the WLS formulated probiotic is also a second best because it is just a lower dose. But have had great results for a number of years using this product on thousands of people. So again, I think A, it’s a no-brainer. And the more that you can dial in your diet to include adequate amounts of prebiotic fibers. With taking a probiotic and then allowing your body to create those postbiotics naturally, or you take a probiotic and you take a butyrate supplement and you combine that with consuming prebiotic fibers and it’s kind of the magic combo to make sure you have it all available so that your body can optimize your metabolic health. So I hope you enjoyed this topic on Postbiotics and hope you guys have a great week, and we will see you next time. bye-bye.

Listen, Learn, Enjoy…

References & Links:

1. 1. Park, J., Sharma, A., & Lee, J. (2023). Postbiotics against Obesity: Perception and Overview Based on Pre-Clinical and Clinical Studies. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 24(7). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms24076414
  2. Park, M., Joung, M., Park, J. H., Ha, S. K., & Park, H. Y. (2022). Role of postbiotics in diet-induced metabolic disorders. Nutrients, 14(18), 3701.
  3. Vallianou, N., Stratigou, T., Christodoulatos, G. S., Tsigalou, C., & Dalamaga, M. (2020). Probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics, postbiotics, and obesity: current evidence, controversies, and perspectives. Current obesity reports, 9, 179-192.
  4. Liao, J., Liu, Y., Yao, Y., Zhang, J., Wang, H., Zhao, J., … & Lu, W. (2023). Clostridium butyricum Strain CCFM1299 Reduces Obesity via Increasing Energy Expenditure and Modulating Host Bile Acid Metabolism. Nutrients, 15(20), 4339.
  5. Youn, H. Y., Seo, K. H., Kim, H. J., Kim, Y. S., & Kim, H. (2022). Effect of postbiotics derived from kefir lactic acid bacteria-mediated bioconversion of citrus pomace extract and whey on high-fat diet-induced obesity and gut dysbiosis. Food Research International, 162, 111930.
  6. Haripriyaa, M., & Suthindhiran, K. (2023). Anti-obesity Activity of Postbiotics. In Postbiotics (pp. 255-260). New York, NY: Springer US.
  7. Oh, K. K., Gupta, H., Min, B. H., Ganesan, R., Sharma, S. P., Won, S. M., … & Suk, K. T. (2022). Elucidation of prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics, and target from gut microbiota to alleviate obesity via network pharmacology study. Cells, 11(18), 2903.