Get those -biotics into your gut! Week 3 of Gut School

July 23, 2021 Lindsay Little

We all should be taking probiotics, right?

Kale no! Probiotics have become extremely popular in the last several years. Probiotic yogurt anyone? But there’s so much more to the story….

This week, in Gut School, we dove into health clues our body gives us to help us figure out what’s going on inside. Without being too graphic (This time! Check out the graphic attached to this if you want the details!), the clues I’m talking about literally get flushed down the toilet.

Yep. Welcome to week 3!

But this post isn’t about that. I figure I should probably ease everyone into that topic! Today, I wanted to write about something else we covered that is so incredibly important, the “-biotics” we need in our gut and how to get them there.

We’re talking about prebiotics, probiotics, and postbiotics. I’m betting you’ve only heard of one of those. Before reading Fiber Fueled by Dr. Will Bulsiewicz, I had only heard of probiotics.

First up, probiotics. Probiotics are living bacteria that have beneficial qualities for humans. They are what we refer to as “microbes”.

Next, prebiotics. Prebiotics are foods for the healthy gut microbes. They allow the probiotics to grow, reproduce, and benefit us.

Finally, postbiotics. This is where it gets really interesting. Postbiotics are compounds created by the good gut microbes. This is where the magic happens!

Here’s the fancy formula, which would be great to keep in the back of your head (there may be a test at the end! JK):

Prebiotics + Probiotics = Postbiotics

We need all three of these to have a healthy gut, and therefore, a healthy body. You may have heard me say it before, human health is largely determined by gut health. That’s really important to remember.

How do you get all these “-biotics” inside your body? Can’t you just take a pill?

My stance is always that we should try our best to get nutrients from food, first, and only if needed, look to supplementation, temporarily. However, I’ve said it before, there’s no money in Big Kale. There’s HUGE money in the pharmaceutical industry. So there’s a lot behind the marketing for something like probiotic supplements. So choose wisely. Let’s take a closer look.

Let’s start with prebiotics.

Prebiotics are found in certain types of fiber. Yes, fiber helps keep us “regular”, but it also has been shown to help reduce the risk of chronic disease, helps us lose weight and maintain a healthy weight, and helps us feel full, amongst other things. Remember, fiber only comes from plants. Most soluble fiber is prebiotic but most insoluble fiber is not. And we need both. A few food sources of prebiotic fiber include raw honey, miso, soy sauce, seaweed, cocoa, green and black tea, pomegranate, apple, blueberries, and reishi, shiitake, and maitake mushrooms.

Prebiotics are also found in resistant starches. These are found in foods like oats, rice, potatoes, and legumes. To increase the resistant starch in potatoes, bake them, then let them cool, and then reheat them. Each time you do that, the resistant starch increases.

Besides food sources, there are lots of prebiotic supplements to choose from. They include psyllium husk, partially hydrolyzed guar gum, acacia powder, and wheat dextrin (Benefiber). Adding one of these supplements can help to ease diarrhea and constipation and is beneficial for overall good health.

Hold up. What the kale, Lindsay? Weren’t you just talking smack about supplements?

Let me explain. Prebiotic supplements, such as acacia powder, are different than say, vitamin A supplements for a few reasons. First, these supplements are not really supplements, they are the powdered forms of plants. There’s nothing else in them. No fillers, dyes, preservatives, anti-caking agents, no capsules, ect. It’s just the plant. But they are categorized by the FDA as supplements because they are used for therapeutic reasons. Second, I don’t know about you, but I can’t just go cut down an acacia tree and eat it. So, an easy solution is to take the supplement.

On to probiotics. This is where the science gets a little iffy. There may be more marketing hype around these supplements than what the science actually supports. To review, probiotics are the bacteria living in your gut that feed off of the prebiotics you eat but can’t digest.

You could take a probiotic supplement. But the problem is, probiotics are living things. If you take them in pill form, they need to survive the very acidic environment of your stomach and then all the way through to your colon, or large intestine. That’s a difficult task.

Let me be clear here, you cannot fix a bad diet with probiotics. They are not magic bullets. They can be rather expensive, especially when you consider that your stomach acid kills most of them. Another thing to note is that probiotics do not stick around after you stop taking them. They don’t usually colonize your gut permanently. They do produce postbiotics, which is great, but a few days after you stop taking them, it’s like they were never there in the first place.

With the exception of a few chronic conditions, such as irritable bowel syndrome, not everyone needs to be taking them. A better way to spend your money may be on eating fermented foods, such as sauerkraut, and taking a prebiotic supplement.

Ok, now for the real magic….postbiotics! This is a super complicated topic so I’m going to keep it short.

You know how we produce waste after food goes through us? That’s the same thing that happens to those good bacteria in your gut. Only it’s not waste to us! They’re postbiotics! These postbiotics are short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and researchers are finding that they are the key to good gut health.

You can’t get postbiotics without feeding your microbes prebiotics. There’s not a “postbiotic pill”.