Gut Health

Gut Health

Inside Job

+ Gut-Supporting: Probiotics and polyphenols join forces to help maintain good gut bacteria growth. 

+ Probiotic-Powered: Living cultures that promote good gut bacteria to thrive and crowd out bad bacteria.


Beauty coming from within isn’t just a cliché, it’s just one of the many truths about the human gut. We explore the power of probiotics and how a healthy microbiome is the key to overall health and wellbeing. 


What is the microbiome?

Your gut microbiome is a pretty big deal. These trillions of tiny bacteria that live within us may go unnoticed, but are working their magic nonetheless. These hard-working microorganisms in our gut work silently to break down the food we eat and produce by-products that influence our health on a daily basis. One must take care of their microbiome, so it can do all that good, and probiotics will help you do just that. 


What are probiotics?

Probiotics are members of your larger microbiome community and are a combination of live beneficial bacteria or yeasts that naturally live in your body (4). Together with eating a variety of fruits, vegetables, and fibre-rich whole-grains, probiotics will help your microbiome to thrive. 


You might be thinking, ‘Wait, isn’t bacteria bad for me?’ Not these guys! Probiotics are made up of the good kind of bacteria that keep your body healthy and functioning like a well-oiled machine. This beneficial bacteria helps you in many ways, including fighting off other harmful bacteria by acting as its competition. The good bacteria crowds out the bad guys, stealing away their resources and preventing them from taking over. Probiotics also promote a diverse microbial environment, one of the keys to good gut health (1). 


What are the benefits of probiotics? 

Once they reach your gut, probiotics produce substances with positive effects; and that’s when the real magic starts to happen. Probiotics’ main output are short-chain fatty-acids, which help to support the cells that line your gut, preventing any bad bacteria you may have ingested from leaking through into your bloodstream. Other powerful effects include lowering cholesterol levels in your blood, destroying disease-causing cells, producing B vitamins, and helping you rebound after infections (3,4). 

 

Different types of probiotics come with unique benefits. Greenhouse uses a vegan probiotic called Bacillus coagulans GBI-30 6086. This strain of probiotics is able to withstand the highly acidic environment of the stomach (5), ensuring that it’s not broken down before it can reach your small intestine and take action.

Once active in the small intestines, Bacillus coagulans aid in the digestion of carbohydrates and proteins, so your body can break down and use these nutrients more effectively. With regard to protein specifically, it has been shown to maximize absorption, amplifying the effects of protein intake from food or supplements (5). 

By creating a healthier microbiome environment, Bacillus coagulans also reduce the occurrence of gas and bloating after eating and eases symptoms of common digestive health disorders linked to bacterial imbalance like Irritable Bowel Syndrome (5).

The Gut-X Connection: Having a healthy gut isn’t just good for digestion. There are said to be numerous links between your gut health and other systems of your body, such as your brain, immune system, and skin (6). A strong immune system means a balanced immune system, that elicits balanced responses when threatened. The microbiota found in the gut helps to regulate immune homeostasis in more ways than one, playing an important role in shaping both innate and adaptive immune homeostasis, such as helping to develop cells that protect the body against infection (7). 

The communication between the brain and the gut reveals the importance of our gut microbiota even further, with proven links between emotional and cognitive brain centres with the goings on of the gut (8). Many links between issues with gut bacteria imbalance and central nervous disorders, such as anxiety and depressive behaviours have been found (8). Finally, evidence also suggests that true beauty can indeed be found from within! Again, homeostasis is key when it comes to skin health (9). Many studies have shown that when the gut is inflamed, there too you will find conditions linked to skin inflammation (9).

Ready, set, glow!


SOURCES:

  1. New Frontiers in Probiotic Research
  2. Probiotics: What you need to know
  3. Probiotics Fact Sheet
  4. Probiotics
  5. Probiotic Bacillus coagulans GBI-30, 6086 Improves Protein Absorption and Utilization
  6. Gut-Brain-Skin Axis in Psoriasis
  7. The Role of Gut Microbiota in Immune Homeostasis and Autoimmunity
  8. The Gut-Brain Axis: Interactions Between Enteric Microbiota, Central and Enteric Nervous Systems
  9. The Gut Microbiome as a Major Regulator of the Gut-Skin Axis
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