8. Excessive Alcohol Drinking alcoholic beverages excessively can reduce the number of healthy bacteria in your digestive tract. In fact binge drinking, meaning more than 5 drinks in 2 hours for men or 4 drinks for women, is one of the main culprits in the development of leaky gut.14 While it’s impossible to eliminate exposure to these factors completely, it’s best to avoid them as much as possible. Now that you know what disrupts your healthy biome, let’s learn how to restore a good one.
Restoring Good Bacteria and Your Happy Balance There are literally thousands of different types of good bacteria. Science has only recently discovered how critical they are to health and weight loss. It might be years before we have a complete understanding of the actions and interactions of these important microbes. Of all the probiotic bacteria studied to date, there are a few that show remarkable effects on weight loss. I can’t stress how important these bacteria are to weight loss. In fact, without them it may be next to impossible to lose weight and keep it off long term. Emerging research shows that these specific strains have anti-obesity effects. In a study published in 2013 in the British Journal of Nutrition, obese adults who took these specific bacteria via a probiotic supplement lost almost 10% of their body fat in a few short weeks, simply by adding these strains of probiotics to their diet. Remember – this is without changing their diet and without exercising at all! However, when the participants stopped taking the probiotic, they gained all the fat back within a month.
44
