01/17/2025
Are the benefits of probiotics endless? The research continues to pile up in 2024!
Sep 7, 2024
The evidence that probiotics affect just about every aspect of health has accumulated significantly in recent years, and this year is no exception.
In early 2024 studies from Italy and China showed that probiotic supplements—also known as “beneficial bacteria” or “flora”—provide benefits for skin health and pain management.
Now, with months still left in the year, additional studies are showing benefits in additional—and diverse—spheres of health: cognitive health, weight loss, heart health, mental well-being, and irritable bowel syndrome.
The common link between the diverse nature of these various studies is that they all seem to prove the old adage that “Good health starts in the gut.”
Twenty years ago it was common knowledge that maintaining a healthy gut provided a layer of defense against bacterial and viral infections. Ten years ago it was common knowledge that there existed a “gut-brain axis,” and that a healthy gut provided protection against brain-related disorders.
And now we are learning that a healthy gut—with diverse colonies of bacteria—is linked to other aspects of health not previously considered.
Here are four pivotal studies from 2024 that show the benefits of probiotics may indeed be endless.
1. Cognitive benefits
Researchers in Taiwan found that a probiotic blend “tailored to the individual” could help offset cognitive decline as people age.
In another nod to gut-brain axis science, the researchers reported that the probiotic profiles of those with cognitive impairment significantly differed from those in the cognitively normal group.
In older adults, the importance of gut microbiota becomes even more pronounced due to changes in physiology and immune degradation that accompany normal aging. These can impact the diversity and function of the gut microbiota, including shifts in the dominant bacterial species that are present.
“These insights suggest that tailored probiotic supplements… could offer an innovative method for addressing age-related diseases and functional declines,” the researchers wrote in the study summary.
The study was published July 2024 in Briefings in Bioinformatics.
2. Weight loss and heart health
A study conducted in South Korea found twelve weeks of daily supplementation with probiotics significantly decreased body fat, leg fat and BMI in obese women.
In addition the probiotic supplementation was associated with improvements in serum triglyceride levels—demonstrating a link between probiotics and heart health.
The link between the gut microbiota and obesity was first reported in 2006 by a research group at Washington University in St. Louis. The researchers discovered that microbial populations in the gut are different between obese and lean people, and that when the obese people lost weight their microflora reverted back to that observed in a lean person.
In the new study the total fat mass of the probiotics group decreased 2.6 times and the trunk fat mass decreased seven times compared to those in the placebo group.
The study was published in the September 2024 issue of Food & Function.
3. Offsetting stress
Daily supplementation with probiotics was shown to “boost happiness and perceived stress scores” in moderately to highly stressed participants, according to a new study from New Zealand.
At the end of the four week study period, 10% more participants in the probiotic group claimed to have become happy compared to the placebo group.
Since a 10% difference is not considered enough to be “statistically significant” the researchers cautioned that follow-up research will be necessary. However, previous research has highlighted the potential of probiotics in positively impacting mental health by regulating the neuroendocrine response to stress, and by reducing inflammation in the nervous system.
Because of this research the term “psychobiotics” is already being widely used in reference to probiotics.
The study was published in Nutrients in August 2024.
4. Treatment for IBS
A randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled trial conducted in India concluded that treatment with probiotic supplements improved symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
The study period was 12 weeks and included 200 participants who received either probiotic capsules or a placebo once daily. The primary outcome was change in total “IBS-Symptom Severity Scale” score from baseline, compared to placebo.
In addition, all the secondary outcomes that were measured—stool consistency, quality of life, abdominal pain severity and anxiety scores—also improved.
The study was published in Gut Microbes in April 2024
