Although ketogenic diets are controversial, people who embrace them experience various health benefits, including reduced cholesterol, weight loss, better sleep, and increased energy levels. Food ratios in keto diets consist of 75% fat, 5% carbohydrates, and 20% proteins. This way, the body burns fat instead of glucose to generate energy, leading to weight loss.
Keep in mind that these advantages aren’t apparent to everyone. Instead, they depend on how well your body breaks down the fat. If your body experiences challenges in processing fats, you can experience digestive issues like cramping, bloating, and diarrhea. Ketogenic diet restrictions can complicate this issue by making it difficult to meet your daily nutritional needs.
Your microbiome plays a critical role in fat digestion and absorption. If you’re on keto diet and have challenges digesting fats or have poor gut health, probiotics can help. Here are four key benefits of adding them to your diet.
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1.They Improve The Digestion of Dietary Fat
Taking probiotics on keto diet is highly beneficial for improving dietary fat digestion by increasing friendly bacteria in your gut, providing the energy balance you need to boost fat metabolism.
A keto diet can deny your body some of the nutrients it needs and expose you to gut bacteria imbalances. Probiotics restore balance and keep harmful bacteria from overgrowing while re-establishing good bacteria. A rich supply of good intestinal bacteria increases dietary fat digestion efficiency.
The bacteria multiply in the small intestines, secreting digestive enzymes that break down dietary fat. Additionally, the microbes produce bioactive compounds that stimulate intestinal cells to absorb and transport fat in the body. This process promotes rapid fat metabolism during keto and boosts increased absorption of other vitamins like vitamin D.
2.They Boost Nutrient Absorption
Keto diets are restrictive in the amount and type of nutrients they provide. Because of the drastic changes in your diet, your body may lack in calcium, magnesium, iron, sodium, and potassium, among others.
In some situations, the problem may be in the amount your body absorbs instead of the quantities you eat, which can be due to the problems with the microbiome in your gut. Low nutrient absorption means that you may experience challenges meeting your daily nutritional needs, so taking probiotics is significantly beneficial in keeping your digestive microbiome balanced.
When taken on keto, the good bacterium in probiotics increases nutrition absorption in the gut. Some bacteria strains can synthesize vitamins K and B, calcium, zinc, and iron.
3.They Lower Cholesterol Levels
The other benefit of taking probiotics on a keto diet is lowering cholesterol levels. In the gut, probiotics bind cholesterol, effectively stopping its absorption into the body. Some probiotic bacteria strains have an enzyme known as bile salt hydrolase that processes bile salts in the gut for excretion through stool.
The body needs cholesterol to produce bile, which means the cholesterol in the body replaces the lost bile salts. Probiotics also generate compounds known as short-chain fatty acids that prevent the formation of cholesterol in the liver. With these mechanisms, combining probiotics with keto diet becomes an effective strategy for lowering cholesterol levels.
4.They Keep Your Immune System Strong
Probiotics on the keto diet play an important role in maintaining a healthy immune system. Keto diets have low amounts of carbohydrates, which can easily result in mineral and vitamin deficiencies. These deficiencies can expose you to severe allergic reactions and diseases, including urinary tract, skin and respiratory infections.
Probiotics boost your immunity by generating specific vitamins and preventing infections. They help in reducing inflammations linked to the ketogenic diet. The high amounts of fat intake cause diarrhea in some keto diet lovers because of bacterial imbalances in the gut. Probiotics help minimize the length and severity of diarrhea conditions by restoring gut bacteria balance.
Final Thoughts
The keto diet is increasingly becoming popular as people pursue weight loss goals. This diet encourages consuming high amounts of fat while maintaining a low carbohydrate intake. The change in fat and carbohydrate quantities pushes the body to digest fat and convert it into energy instead of glucose.
But this shift isn’t as easy as it sounds. For most people, changing from a regular diet to a ketogenic one can result in various health problems, including diarrhea, unmet nutritional needs, and weak immunity. Including probiotics in your diet can minimize these harmful effects by balancing the microbiome in your gut. If you’re on a keto diet and aren’t sure whether you should add probiotics, the four benefits discussed above can help convince you.
