Kombucha tea may be linked to fat loss, finds study

According to research conducted at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and published in the journal PLOS Genetics, drinking kombucha tea may help reduce fat accumulation and lower triglyceride levels.

When a person has too much fat stored within their body, particularly triglycerides, it can increase their risk for several health conditions, including cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis, stroke, and heart failure.

Kombucha tea is a fermented drink made from black tea and a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. The addition of bacteria and yeast also makes it a probiotic beverage. Previous animal and small-scale human studies have suggested that kombucha may be helpful in the treatment of several diseases, including diabetes, liver disease, and gut health. Other animal and pre-clinical research has found that kombucha may assist with different aspects of cardiovascular health, such as lowering cholesterol levels and high blood pressure.

In the study, researchers used C. elegans to investigate whether intestinal colonization with Kombucha-associated microbial species rewired host metabolism and developed a reproducible method to culture animals on lawns of KT microbes consisting of microbes found in all commercial and homebrewed KTs.

The results revealed that animals feeding on KT microbes accumulate significantly less fat than animals consuming either an E. coli diet, any of the individual three KT-associated microbial species, or a simple non-fermenting mix of these three species. Furthermore, the data suggested that KT consumption reduces fat storage by modulating host lipid metabolism pathways rather than restricting caloric intake.

“We were very surprised to find that the probiotic microbes in kombucha tea could colonize the worm gut and stimulate a fasting-like metabolic response in the host, which occurred even though these animals showed no defects in intestinal nutrient absorption. Incredibly, this response was only seen in animals consuming microbes isolated from a long-term, fully fermented kombucha tea culture and not a simple mix of non-fermenting kombucha-associated microbes. This observation suggested that microbial metabolites produced during the fermentation process could be shaping host metabolic pathways,” said Rob Dowen, PhD, professor of cell biology and physiology in the School of Medicine at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and lead author of this study.

Reference: Rachel N. DuMez-Kornegay,Lillian S. Baker,Alexis J. Morris,Whitney L. M. DeLoach,Robert H. Dowen; Kombucha Tea-associated microbes remodel host metabolic pathways to suppress lipid accumulation; Journal: PLOS Genetics; https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1011003