Issue 14: Probiotic Power Boosts Health

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Welcome to Weekly.health’s 14th issue. Every week, we explore cutting-edge research, actionable advice, and science-backed nutrition insights to help you live longer and healthier.

Our aim is to help you live another 10 healthy years and cut your risk of age-related disease.

🗒️ In This Issue:

• 🔬 Longevity Spotlight: Extracts of chocolate reduce inflammaging

• 📚 Books We’re Reading Right Now

• 📈 Research Digest: What’s new in nutrition science

• 🍶 Probiotic Power Boosts Health

• 🛍️ Things You Might Like

• ❤️ Support Weekly.health: Help us keep the research flowing

• 📘 Glossary of Terms: Definitions for technical terms in this issue

🔬 Longevity Spotlight: Extracts of chocolate reduce inflammaging

Daily cocoa extract may reduce inflammaging:
A two-year trial in older adults found that daily cocoa extract (500 mg flavanols, including 80 mg epicatechin) reduced hsCRP - a key marker of inflammation - by 8.4% compared with placebo. It also increased interferon-γ, an immune-related protein. While other markers didn’t shift, this supports cocoa’s role in lowering chronic “inflammaging” which could help explain the 27% lower risk of cardiovascular death seen in the wider COSMOS trial. (source)

A note from the Weekly.health team: We add cacao nibs to our cereal, snack on 85%+ dark chocolate, and add raw cacao powder to shakes and smoothies as an easy way to bump up our flavanol intake. Similar levels to those used in the above study can be found in just a heaped tablespoon of high-flavanol cacao powder, but the key is to look for products with minimum quoted levels of flavanols.

📚 Books We’re Reading Right Now

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📈 Research Digest: What’s New in Nutrition Science

Here’s the best of recent nutrition research:

🥦 Broccoli fights blood sugar, poor cholesterol, and inflammation
A new review of 84 trials shows sulforaphane - a compound in broccoli, kale, and brussels sprouts - can improve blood sugar, lower “bad” cholesterol, and reduce inflammation. What works? Eating about 30g raw broccoli sprouts daily (a small handful), or 400g broccoli a week, made a difference in studies. Supplements providing around 100–150 μmol/day sulforaphane also helped. Tip: lightly steam broccoli to keep sulforaphane active, or add raw sprouts to salads. (source)

🌱 Chickpeas & lentils may be lower calorie than we thought
If you have been cutting calories and adding pulses to your diet, you may be losing weight faster than expected. This trial found that chickpeas provide ~123 kcal per serving (85.5 g) and lentils ~119 kcal per serving (98.5 g), both around 8-16% lower than the standard calorie estimates used on labels. If you enjoy pulses, you may be getting fewer calories than you think, making them a smart choice for weight management and blood sugar control. (source)

💥 Greek yoghurt supercharges workouts
In a 12-week study, men who ate Greek yoghurt after training (200 g right after, another an hour later, plus before bed) had lower inflammation and avoided the muscle stress seen with a carb snack. On rest days, they ate 150 g twice. The takeaway? Swap your post-workout snack for Greek yoghurt to recover faster and protect your muscles. (source)

🍶 The probiotic power of yoghurt to boost health

Not just a tasty snack, but a gut-friendly probiotic powerhouse.

Yoghurt is made by fermenting milk with certain bacteria strains - often called good bacteria because they confer benefits when consumed and out-compete bad bacteria in your gut.

At Weekly.health we’ve been fermenting our own yoghurt for years to ensure the probiotic punch we get is as strong as possible. Shop-bought yoghurt can be pasteurised, meaning there’s no live bacteria in there. Even if it’s not pasteurised, the longer it’s been on the shelf, the less live bacteria it contains.

Making your own yoghurt can be many times stronger than what you find in the shop.

Yoghurt helps boost immunity

A 2021 meta-analysis of 22 trials and over 10,000 participants found that consuming probiotic-rich yoghurt was associated with signficantly reduced respiratory infections - participants were 19% less likely to catch a cold or other respiratory tract infection. (source)

Another review found consuming live yoghurt reduced allergy symptoms, kept cholesterol stable (whereas pasteurised yoghurt did not), increased the activity of key immune ells, and even reduced the negative impact of stress on immunity. Some bacterial strains even reduced post-birth infection risk in new mothers. (source)

The research supports including a modest amount of yoghurt in your diet, but only if that yoghurt is live.

Yoghurt and heart health

From the above review, live yoghurt intake has been associated with improved cholesterol levels, reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, lower body weight, lower BMI, improved insulin levels, and overall improved cardio-metabolic profiles than those not consuming yoghurt, even when overweight.

High yoghurt intake was also found to reduce all-cause mortality (risk of death from all causes) by 11%, and reduced cardiovascular disease mortality by 16%.

Yoghurt and overweight / obesity

While you might expect that high-fat foods to be associated with weight gain, observational studies found those who consume the most whole-fat yoghurt were less likely to experience: abdominal obesity, raised triglycerides, poor levels of HDL cholesterol, high blood pressure, and high blood sugar levels.

This suggests that despite the increased calories in whole-fat yoghurt versus low-fat equivalents, other factors contribute to improved metabolic health. (source)

Yoghurt and diabetes

Consuming 300 g/day of a probiotic yoghurt for 6 weeks was shown to improve antioxidant status, fasting blood sugar levels, and hemoglobin A1c levels (a marker of long-term blood sugar control) in those with type 2 diabetes. It also reduces total and LDL cholesterol, lowering the risk of cardiovascular disease. (source)

Another trial found that 200 g/day of probiotic yoghurt for 9 weeks in the third trimester of pregnancy inhibited the increase in serum insulin levels and the risk of developing insulin resistance. (source)

Both of these studies compared probiotic yoghurt against conventional yoghurt, finding that these outcomes are associated with the bacteria in the live, probiotic yoghurt.

Fresh probiotic yoghurt matters

A study published earlier this year looked at how the quantity of bacteria in yoghurt changed over 21 days. It found that with yoghurt made using cow milk, the good bacteria declined by 21% over 21 days. No data was captured after this point. Yoghurt made using sheep milk, or a blend of cow and sheep milk, actually performed significantly worse. The blend declined by 83% and the sheep milk probiotics declined by 44% by day 21. (source)

An earlier study ran over a 35 day period and found similar results. Some bacterial strains declined by 50% over 35 days, while others declined by 90%. (source)

These studies show how important it is to consume probiotic yoghurt as soon as possible, and that the yoghurt you buy, which would have spent time in a factory, in transit, and then sitting on a shelf, is likely not as healthy as you might hope.

That being said, this absolutely does not make store-bought probiotic yoghurt useless, as even reduced bacterial counts do confer benefits.

Making your own yoghurt

It might sound scary, but this is remarkably easy, and people have made their own for thousands of years.

The process we follow each week is relatively simple;

1. Heat full-fat fresh milk to 72 °C (161 °F) for 15-30 seconds to pasteurise, or purchase pasteurised milk

   1. Hotter temperatures may produce creamier, thicker yoghurt, but is not strictly necessary

2. Allow the milk to cool to around 42–45 °C (107–113 °F), and then mix in your preferred probiotic strain

3. Keep warm at that same temperature for at least eight hours, up to 24 hours, depending on the strain

4. Cool in the refrigerator, and then serve

With this method you can use any bacterial strain advertised for yoghurt-making, and most probiotic supplements can also be used.

This is the best way to ensure that the yoghurt you consume is the freshest and strongest (in bacterial strain quantity) possible.

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Our takeaways

Research shows that it’s not just a coagulated mass of milk that has supposed health benefits, but a live, good-bacteria-filled bowl of fermented, probiotic-rich yoghurt that carries a wealth of benefits.

200-300 g/day of probiotic yoghurt appears to be the sweet spot. But, again, research suggests that this should be a probiotic yoghurt that contains live bacteria.

Conventional yoghurt that has been pasteurised contains no or little live bacteria, and may not confer the same health benefits.

If buying a yoghurt when grocery shopping, look for terminology that suggests ‘live’, ‘live-cultured’, ‘probiotic’, and similar, and consider steering clear from any product that doesn’t use similar terms on the packaging.

We also suggest against buying flavoured yoghurts, as these often contain sugars, artificial flavourings, and emulsifiers that are generally less beneficial to our health.

But, store-bought yoghurt likely has lost some potency, as much as 90% according to studies, so making your own is likely much more reliable.

🛍️ Things You Might Like

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🙏 Thanks for Reading!

That’s the end of this issue of Weekly.health.

This newsletter is written by a small, independent team, led by James — who’s been following nutrition science for nearly 20 years and is now working towards a formal, industry-recognised qualification.

We’re based in England, so if you’re over the pond, you might notice a few strange spellings.

Our goal is to make cutting-edge, evidence-based nutrition advice simple, useful, and genuinely applicable to everyday life.

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See you next week!

📖 Glossary of Terms in This Issue (Alphabetical Order)

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