A study published in eBioMedicine says that eating a cup of beans every day is good for the gut bacteria. Besides that, it controls the host markers that are linked to metabolic obesity and colon cancer.
Xiaotao Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and his colleagues did a food change that was low-risk and didn’t involve surgery. He was interested in the gut bacteria of overweight people who had had colorectal cancer in the past.
Also, 55 patients were randomly assigned to either stick to their normal diet without beans or add a cup of study beans to it every day after four weeks.
The researchers found that 87% of the patients made it through the 16-week study. It showed a rise in the number and types of bacteria, which suggests that the prebiotics worked to help. More faecalibacterium, eubacterium, and bifidobacterium, for example.
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Researchers saw changes in the circulating metabolome that were caused by both food and microbiome. For example, pipecolic acid levels went up and indole levels went down. Still, these changes went back to normal when the food was changed again. There were no big changes in blood lipoproteins after eight weeks. However, interleukin-10 receptor-α levels went down and proteomic signs of the inflammatory response in the intestines and throughout the body went up.
Adding one cup of navy beans to the diet every day or most days of the week was a safe, scalable way to change the gut microbiome of high-risk patients who might not be able to or willing to make bigger changes to their normal eating habits without a lot of help.
The authors wrote
