It is true you are what you eat that eats you, as you may be aware their are trillions of little microorganisms that’s live in your gut microbiota outnumbering our human cells by 10 to 1.
Many people believe that our gut flora is only influenced by the probiotics your take either by fermented foods or by supplementation.
What’s really cool pardon the pun is that the gut microbiome also shifts according to the temperature it’s exposed to.
Many people have heard that cold exposure increases brown fat (the fat increases your metabolic rate)
But this is the first research I’ve seen showing that your gut microbiome also shifts with the cold environment too.
In this experiment they found that when they bred germ free mice and transplanted their cold adapted microbiota (they found that A. muciniphila bacteria is higher in cold adapted mice) they found it was sufficient to increase insulin sensitivity of the host and enable tolerance to cold partly by promoting the white fat browning, leading to increased energy expenditure and fat loss.
Pretty cool hey so you can see from this study that the microbiota as a key factor orchestrating the overall energy homeostasis during increased demand.
So now we know of a way to increase the Akkermansia muciniphila gut bacteria in our gut and that’s to get cold and become cold adapted now it makes sense why bears shed weight during the winter.
Study Highlights
- Cold exposure leads to marked changes in the gut microbiota composition
- Cold microbiota transplantation increases insulin sensitivity and WAT browning
- Cold exposure or cold transplantation increase the gut size and absorptive capacity
- Reconstitution of cold-suppressed A. muciniphila reverts the increased caloric uptake
[Source]