So we can’t just eat any foods that have tons of bacteria strains like kimchi and Greek yogurt and assume all those are good for our gut right? Our guts probably already have a lot of bacteria we don’t want, and it’s possible these foods might either not do anything for that ratio, possibly make it negative.
No, if you are eating like that, and you are lean, you got it 95% figured out (unless you still have IBS or other inflammatory **** like that). This is my most complicated design, but it is more for the masses.
I explain it a decent bit at the end of the Gut and Muscle write-up...
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Will it work for me and what to expect
With the science out of the way, the obvious question is “How much do you need and/or should you want pro- and prebiotics to fix your gut and your body?”
Because the gut and systemic inflammation affect every system, and basically every cell, in your body, a good probiotic/prebiotic combo kind of stands apart from any other category of supplement. It is most analogous to going from a shitty diet to a good diet or from an okay diet to a perfect one.
We briefly mentioned hardgainers and the “skinny fat” phenotype, earlier. You definitely want to fix your gut. I would expect around an extra 10 lbs of muscle in a year, as your body starts living up to its genetic potential. For significantly fat people (and, even moreso, if showing signs of glucose intolerance), you absolutely need to fix your gut. I would expect very noticeable body composition changes in 1-3 months, and borderline miraculous ones in a year. This article has been about muscle mass, but as we alluded to with the mention of Metabolic Syndrome, the gut and inflammation play a huge role in health, as well.
Other general parameters pointing toward its usefulness for you are being over 30, the fatter you are, the worse your diet is, being in a calorie surplus, and having a (personal or family) history of inflammatory related conditions (heart disease, blood pressure, auto-immune, IBS/IBD, etc.).
On other hand, if you are 19, quite lean, on great diet with low-moderate carbs including fruits and veggies, with an iron stomach, and in a calorie deficit, it is not going to noticeably do a lot for you. It would be much more of a preventative measure to keep your cells young as you get older, to keep you still being awesome 5-10+ years from now. A big exception would be during bulking phases – and, the dirtier the bulk, the more it would help. Likewise, if you tend to go off the rails during holidays or vacations, it is damage control."
