Poor blood sugar control is not only the province of the full-blown diabetic. New evidence shows that a brief bout of high-fat, calorie-laden foods can lead to insulin resistance, a biomarker of the disease.
A small study out of the United Kingdom has pitted a popular probiotic against insulin resistance brought on by diet.
The study:
17 healthy people were split into 2 groups:
- Group 1 consumed milk fermented with a strain of Lactobacillus casei 2x a day for a total of four weeks.
- Group 2 received no supplementation
For the first 3 weeks, the participants ate their normal diets. Then here’s the twist: for the last week of the study, both fat and calories given soared: fat became 65% of energy and calories increased by 50%.
Results:
- Weight increased by 0.6 kg in the control group but the probiotic group gained half that at 0.3 kg.
- Whole-body insulin sensitivity was checked by an oral glucose tolerance test before and after overfeeding. The control group saw a drop in insulin sensitivity by a whopping 27%. There was no change in the probiotic-fed group.
The study appears as Probiotic supplementation prevents high-fat, overfeeding-induced insulin resistance in human subjects in the British Journal of Nutrition.
Author Carl J. Hulston and colleagues concluded that “probiotic supplementation may be useful in the prevention of diet-induced metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes.”