Research
Micronutrients & recovery
VLCD increases the microbial metabolic capacity for butyrate fermentation, whereas LSG decreases it, despite no significant change in actual faecal butyrate concentrations for either group.
Dieting (VLCD) trains your gut bacteria to be more efficient at producing butyrate, a beneficial short-chain fatty acid. Surgery (LSG) reduces this efficiency. However, because you aren't eating much fiber, you don't necessarily see more butyrate in your stool.
ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Summed values tended to result in a mean increase of 380.2 ± 52.5% in the metabolic capacity of these KEGG orthologues for butyrate fermentation after 6 months of VLCD program ... and a decrease for the LSG intervention −184.4±63.0%
Why this rating
Small sample size, but clear directional changes in metabolic capacity.
Source
Effects of Surgical and Dietary Weight Loss Therapy for Obesity on Gut Microbiota Composition and Nutrient Absorption
Antje Damms-Machado et al. · BioMed Research International · 2015
DOI 10.1155/2015/806248
clinical_study · n=10Cited 292×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG) induces a leaner gut microbiota phenotype (increased Bacteroidetes, decreased Firmicutes) and enhances fat malabsorption, whereas very low calorie diet (VLCD) increases the energy-reabsorbing potential of the microbiota despite achieving identical weight loss.Moderate
- LSG increases the excretion of nonesterified fatty acids (NEFAs) and alters bile acid metabolism, leading to increased malabsorption of energy-rich substrates, whereas VLCD does not significantly alter faecal fatty acid excretion.Moderate
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