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Our guts are teeming with bacteria. (Nopparit/E+/Getty Images)
We don't each respond to the aforesaid diets successful the aforesaid way, and results from a caller survey assistance explicate why: Gut microbes that people nutrient much methane are besides capable to compression much vigor and calories retired of high-fiber foods.
Everyone is antithetic erstwhile it comes to the mix of bacteria and different microorganisms that reside successful their gut, called the gut microbiome.
We already know that methane-producing microbes called methanogens tin alteration successful abundance, which means methane (CH4) accumulation besides varies from idiosyncratic to person. According to this caller research, these differences successful our microbiomes mightiness besides person implications for however overmuch vigor we get from our food.
Led by a squad from Arizona State University (ASU), the caller survey analyzed information from a clinical trial that enactment 17 participants connected 2 diets – a low-fiber, Western-style diet, and a high-fiber fare – past measured the magnitude of methane produced (at some ends of the body).
Related: Lifting Weights Could Change Your Gut Microbiome Within Weeks
Adding successful information from humor and stool samples, the squad recovered that, among those pursuing the high-fiber diet, the radical releasing much methane had besides extracted much calories from their food. It suggests these high-methane microbiomes are fundamentally much businesslike astatine breaking down fiber for energy.
"That quality has important implications for fare interventions," says microbiologist Blake Dirks, from ASU.
"It shows radical connected the aforesaid fare tin respond differently. Part of that is owed to the creation of their gut microbiome."
Gut microbes that interruption down fibre nutrient a scope of byproducts that are converted into different compounds, specified arsenic methane (CH4) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S), which we either sorb oregon excrete. (Dirks et al., ISME J., 2025)The researchers noted an summation successful the levels of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) successful the humor of the higher methane producers, peculiarly 1 called propionate. SCFAs are made erstwhile gut microbes interruption down and ferment fiber, and propionate has been linked to a range of wellness benefits, including reduced junk nutrient cravings.
This fermentation process besides creates hydrogen, which methanogens tin past person to methane. The researchers deliberation that arsenic the hydrogen gets converted, this helps to wide the mode for much fibre to beryllium digested.
"The quality assemblage itself doesn't marque methane, lone the microbes do," says microbiome researcher Rosy Krajmalnik-Brown, from ASU.
"So we suggested it tin beryllium a biomarker that signals businesslike microbial accumulation of short-chain fatty acids."
High-fiber diets person agelong been associated with a scope of wellness benefits: Fiber helps support the digestive strategy running smoothly, and cultivates a gut microbiome that's more resistant to harm and disease.
What this survey adds is other item connected wherefore fibre mightiness beryllium much efficiently processed successful definite guts that are affluent successful methanogens. It's not yet clear, though, whether this is beneficial oregon not; fibre improves digestion, but this benignant of microbiome besides extracts more calories.
The survey squad suggests these methanogens whitethorn person been indispensable successful early humans, enabling them to extract arsenic overmuch nutrition from their nutrient arsenic possible. But the foods that marque up modern, Western diets tend to beryllium acold much energy-dense and fiber-poor, truthful this peculiar gut premix is mode retired of its constituent now.
It's different illustration of however cardinal our gut microbiomes are to galore bodily processes. Next, the researchers privation to grow their experiments to look much intimately astatine however methanogens mightiness interaction dieting, and however this works crossed a broader scope of people.
"The participants successful our survey were comparatively healthy," says Dirks.
"One happening that I deliberation would beryllium worthy to look astatine is however different populations respond to these types of diets – radical with obesity, diabetes oregon different kinds of wellness states."
The probe has been published successful the ISME Journal.
