In the months following smoking cessation, ex-smokers gain on average between 4 and 5 kilos. A weight gain that everyone puts on the account of the small nibbles of the day, supposed to compensate for the lack of nicotine. But now a team of Swiss researchers has just found the real reason for this weight gain. It is not the Tagada strawberries or the Pépito that make you fat but quite simply the modification of the composition of your intestinal flora.
The content of our gut captivates many researchers! A few days ago, two studies from the National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRA) told us that having an intestinal flora poor in bacteria had consequences. on the development of obesity and certain diseases linked to being overweight. This time, we learn that quitting smoking changes the composition of our intestinal flora and that the disappearance of certain bacteria present in the feces, makes us fat.
For Pr Gerhard Rogler, of the University Hospital of Zurich, author of this new study funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), these results on humans simply confirm the conclusions of previous research. conducted on mice.
This time around twenty people, non-smokers, smokers and recent ex-smokers, have replaced the rodents. For the experiment, all agreed not to modify anything in their diet and not to give in to any sweet tooth cravings: however, people who had stop smoking gained 2.2 kg during the nine weeks of the experiment, even without having changed their eating habits.
By studying the bacteria present in the feces of these “guinea pigs”, the researchers also found that the diversity of the intestinal flora of ex-smokers was greatly reduced.
It is therefore not a higher caloric intake, but the modification of the composition of the intestinal flora which would explain the extra pounds after stopping smoking.
