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If left untreated early, chronic inflammation can cause a host of long-term health problems, including cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Healthy choices like dark green leafy vegetables (think kale and spinach), oily fish (salmon and mackerel), and olive oil are some of the foods that help fight inflammation.
Now, research suggests that there is another type of food that may even have a bigger impact on preventing chronic inflammation. A new study published in the journal Cell finds that a diet rich in fermented foods (think miso and sauerkraut) improves the diversity of gut microbes and thus decreases molecular signs of inflammation.
The study involved a clinical trial comprised of 36 healthy adults who were randomly assigned to a 10-week diet that included either fermented or high-fiber foods. The researchers found that the two diets had different effects on the gut microbiome and the immune system.
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“Previous field work has reported the effects of diet on the microbiome in humans and some have reported measures of host health,” said study lead author Hannah Wastyk. , PhD student in bioengineering at Stanford University. Eto this, not that!. “However, our study is the first, to our knowledge, to report an extended immune profile over time to thoroughly investigate the diet-microbiome-immune system axis.”
As Wastyk notes, these two specific diets were chosen for the study because both have been shown to have a positive impact on the gut microbiome. However, the results of this study reveal that when we eat fermented foods, they introduce their own microbial community into our gut microbiome. This, in part, increases the diversity of healthy bacteria in the gut that our bodies need to ward off chronic inflammation that can make us more vulnerable to infections and chronic disease.
However, that’s not to say that those who followed a high-fiber diet didn’t feel any gut health benefits.
“Although we did not see an increase in diversity as expected, we have seen an increase in the microbial ability to metabolize plants. The more fiber people ate, the more their microbiome was able to digest, ”says Wastyk. “These results were promising and suggest that if the study had been extended over a longer period of time, we might have observed a greater microbial and immune increase. response in the high fiber diet group. “
Subjects who entered the study with a more diverse gut microbiome and ate a high-fiber diet had improved their immune status by the end of the 10 week period.
“Because the top-fermented diet has had such a striking response to reproducibly increasing microbiome diversity, one can imagine that a hybrid diet rich in [both] fermented foods rich in fiber could synergize the effects observed here for an even greater impact on improving immune status, ”explains Wastyk.
As Vincent M. Pedre, MD, medical director of Pedre Integrative Health and author of “Happy Gut,” points out, many people in the United States (and other Western societies) have low gut microbiome diversity due to food choices, lifestyle habits, and even medication.
“Usually, the diversity of the gut microbiome is low due to exposure to antibiotics, the standard American diet, alcohol, and even stress,” he says.
The results of this study are hopeful, as they suggest that increasing your intake of fermented foods may help reduce inflammation caused by all of these factors. Pedre offers some examples of fermented foods that you can start adding to your diet today. They include:
- Greek yogurt
- Kefir
- Fermented cottage cheese
- Sauerkraut
- Sauerkraut juice
- Kimchi
- Pickles
- Fermented vegetables
- Kombucha
Pedre also notes some limitations of the study. A) This was a small, prospective, randomized study that only included 18 people in each group, and B) the groups were mostly white women.
“Due to the homogeneity of the participants, it would be great to repeat this study with a more diverse study population to see if these effects can be extrapolated to males and females, as well as to different ethnicities,” he says. .
To learn more, be sure to check out The Secret To Avoiding Obesity May Be In Your Gut, New Study Finds.
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