Bariatric Surgery Can Improve Your Gut Health

If you follow health trends, you might occasionally spoon Greek yogurt onto your granola or drink a bottle of kombucha. Both provide probiotics, which are so-called “good bacteria” to have in your gut.

That’s a baby step toward good gut health. Science is discovering that a healthy microbiome, as the gut health realm is known, can help you in many ways.

If you’re obese, there’s more to learn. New studies show that weight-loss surgery improves gut health — markedly. Researchers aren’t sure why that’s true, but the evidence is solid.

Understanding Gut Health

We often use the word “gut” to mean stomach, but scientifically it’s way more than that. The gut refers to the entire digestive tract. After food goes into your mouth and before you release it as feces, it travels through 30 feet of connected muscular hoses within your insides: notably, that includes your bowels, which are the small intestines and large intestines — also called the colon.

Trillions of bacteria live in this interior part of you. Fungi and viruses are in there, too. The trio moves your food through the steps of digestion. It breaks food down, pulls out nutrients so your body can use them and pushes the waste toward the anus.

Some of the bacteria are dubbed “friendly” or “good.” “Bad” ones cohabitate with those. When the good ones take over, they can affect areas that you might not think are related to your gut health.

• Obesity
• Depression
• Skin quality
• Mood
• Brain health
• Feeling satiated after eating reasonable amounts

If your microbiome is off-balance, the opposite can happen. In fact, unbalanced gut bacteria can lead to inflammation within your gut, which can contribute to obesity.

How To Achieve Good Gut Health

In a perfect world, we’ll all eat and drink the fermented items that naturally contain probiotics (not all do), and that will give us a robust microbiome. These are especially gut-healthy foods:

• Kefir, a liquid yogurt
• Yogurt with “live and active cultures”
• Kimchi, fermented cabbage
• Kombucha, a bubbly soda-like product
• Sauerkraut, pickled cabbage
• Miso (soy paste) and tamari, Japanese flavorings
• Buttermilk
• Aged cheeses that aren’t pasteurized

Extra virgin olive oil helps balance the good over the bad.

At the same time, we should avoid ultra-processed foods. Even skinny people who eat a lot of ultra-processed foods can have terrible gut bacteria, which can lead to high cholesterol, diabetes and sickly skin. If the label lists emulsifiers such as carrageenan, diglycerides and polysorbate 80, put those back on the shelf. Those ingredients can contribute to inflaming your intestines. Long-term, a prevalence of bad gut bacteria can change the pH acid/alkaline balance in your bowels, making various bacteria difficult to grow.

Mainstream and holistic brands sell probiotic supplements. They might help balance your gut flora, but it’s hard to tell. The scientific community is still assessing what we need in our gut, so any pills or powders, over the counter or prescription, have been designed via educated guess.

Bariatric Surgery Improves Gut Health

If you’re medically overweight or obese, weight-loss surgery is another way to improve your gut health. The reasons are not yet clear.

Your gut hormone and regulatory protein levels are likely to improve after a procedure such as a gastric bypass or sleeve gastrectomy, and the changes will last for several years. Ghrelin is a  hormone that stimulates hunger, and good gut bacteria keeps that under control. Other elements evolve too, including those that may control “hedonic eating.” That’s the full pint of ice cream or whole bag of potato chips you devour when you’re not even hungry.

Your brain and microbiome are in constant communication, and gut health affects the messages that signal your desire to eat. Your gut produces mood regulators, including nearly all your serotonin and half your dopamine. That same microbiome keeps in contact with your central nervous system, which can swing you toward or away from depression.

Scientists have even found that when a large amount of a lean mouse’s gut bacteria was transferred to a larger mouse, the mouse destined to become obese remained slim.

Obesity is a complex issue. It’s not just about calorie intake and calorie expenditure. Gut health is a big factor. Existing research shows that bariatric surgery is a proven way to lose weight, improve your gut bacteria and sustain both.