There are a lot of different diet plans that are on the market right now. Some of them ask you to eat a healthy dose of all the important vitamins and nutrients while others might focus on decreasing one too much and increasing the other in the process. One of the diets that can cause some issues is a high fat diet.

What is a High Fat Diet?

With this kind of diet, you are reducing almost all of your carbs and instead eating a lot of foods that are high in fats. Keto – the ketogenic diet – is among the most widely known of this type of eating strategies.  That said, it’s far from the only one that recommends that kind of nutritional balance.

In that particular case, the idea behind eating a high fat diet is to force the body into ketosis, which directs it to use its stored energy in a different way.  There are many opinions about the safety, effectiveness, and sustainability of this type of dieting, but that’s a topic for another day, as this post is meant to focus on the changes that eating in this way can make to your microbiome.

What Happens Inside Your Digestive System?

While the ideas might make sense in a high fat diet if you eat healthy fats, the average person doesn’t have a solid understanding about how to know if they are choosing a truly healthy or unhealthy option. After all, not all versions of this macronutrient are the same, and the options that are typically considered to be healthful – such as extra virgin olive oil, for instance – play a very different role in the body than margarine or most kinds of oil used for deep frying.

Moreover, now there is more research suggesting a high fat diet might be changing the way that the bacterium and other microorganisms in your gut work.  Of course, change isn’t always bad, so it’s important to take a closer look so you can better understand what taking on this type of eating strategy can do to your health other than reshaping the nature of the calories you’re consuming.

How Your High Fat Diet Affects Your Gut Bacteria

In your stomach, there is some benign bacteria that work to help digest food and keep things working properly. This diet is going to rewire your brain and make the bacteria work in a different way. Some people might not notice these changes if they are young or they are really healthy, but there are a lot of people who will be affected in a negative way and who are going to feel sick.

In a regular state, people are going to have bacteria in their stomach that help to keep the intestinal tract balanced. There are going to be a few shifts based on what you are eating, your stress levels, and if you are sick. But when you go on a high fat diet, you will see that the effect is immediate. The nutrients are going to start changing and some of the bacteria are going to start overpopulating in the gut while others who are more sensitive are going to vanish. You need to have all of these nutrients in place to stay healthy, so this can play some havoc on your digestive system.

It is best to eat variety of foods that are nice and balanced. Going to the extreme either with high fat or a high carb diet is not going to be good on your system. Having a nice balance between the two, along with a lot of other great nutrients, is the best way to keep the bacteria in your stomach happy and working properly.