By Adam
Coffee, in all its various forms, reigns as one of the most popular beverages on the planet.
More than 400 million cups of coffee are consumed every single day in the US, and that number continues to rise as coffee becomes one of the most socially acceptable drugs to partake in.
Sadly while numerous studies show coffee as a boon to health, some indicate it’s a potentially dangerous beverage, all that being said, coffee drinkers just got good news as research indicates it may improve gut health.
Perhaps one of the most significant medical findings in the past 30 years is the discovery that bacteria cultures that live in the gastrointestinal tract are essential for high-functioning health.
The discovery that these bacteria, commonly referred to as probiotics, are critical to our health has led to the development of all kinds of supplements to help improve our digestive health.
And while those supplements certainly aren’t unnecessary, it turns out that consuming a few cups of coffee a day may be a suitable way to help boost gut health.
Coffee Implicated In Weight Loss – How that May Improve Probiotic Levels
While coffee has been positively associated with improvements in preventing cardiovascular disease and boosting brain function, a recent study by researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX, discovered it might also help to influence changes in gut macrobiotica.
These changes make for a more hospitable environment for probiotics to inhabit and allow for the proliferation of good bacteria while dangerous bacteria die off.
Dr. Li Jiao, one of the co-authors of the study, indicated they already knew that coffee had positive effects on metabolic health, and they wished to see if the coffee was responsible.
“The beneficial roles of coffee consumption in metabolic diseases have previously been shown,” Dr. Jiao told Medical News Today. “We set out to examine whether phytochemical ‘caffeine’ in coffee would account for this beneficial effect.”
In their survey, they took 34 participants and had them submit to both a colonoscopy and endoscopy.
In so doing, they were able to accurately assess the relative health of their colons, a resting spot for various kinds of good and bad bacteria.
Performing various analyses of miscellaneous segments of the colon, they ran tests that identified what types of bacteria were present.
They also asked the study participants to report on how much coffee they drank a day.
The researchers said high consumption was 82.9 mg or more, and low was less than 82.9 mg.
The researchers obtained 97 “snap-frozen colonic mucosa biopsies” from various segments of these individuals’ colons, extracted microbial DNA, and performed 16s rRNA sequencing analysis.
Study Revealed that Coffee Boosted and Throttled Bacteria Levels
The study concluded that coffee helped improve the health of the gut in two distinct ways.
A write up on the study stated the following “The analyses revealed that high caffeine consumers had high levels of the bacterial genera Faecalibacterium and Roseburia, but low levels of Erysipelatoclostridium — a ‘potentially harmful” bacterial genus.’
Previous studies in humans have linked E. udramosum with metabolic syndrome, and animal studies found links with e”upregulation of small intestinal glucose and fat transporters,” which enhanced diet-induced obesity.”
While the researchers didn’t make any advisements on coffee consumption, they did note there was clear evidence that coffee “increased richness and evenness of the mucosa-associated gut microbiota.”
