What's the deal with BIOTICS?

If you’re a Friend of the Goats, you will hear lots of words that end in “biotics.”

Prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics, synbiotics… how’s a person meant to tell them apart?

Let’s break it down:

Bio = life.

Biotic = anything relating to living organisms.

Biome = an area classified according to the species that live in that location.

When we’re talking about gut health (and here at CG, we’re ALWAYS talking about gut health ; ) a word that ends in “biotics” is something that refers to the living organisms and processes that occur inside your gut “biome.”

Thinking this way, it’s logical enough that an ANTIbiotic kills life inside your gut (anti = against).

What about all the other biotics floating around?

PREbiotics come first (pre=before). They are the food your good gut bugs need, in order to thrive.
Next comes PRObiotic, which is the scientific term for those good gut bugs (pro = positive). They’re the star players in gut health.
POSTbiotics come afterwards (post=after). They’re the helpful molecules that your good gut bugs produce, once they’re fed and happy.
SYNbiotics are a combination of prebiotics and probiotics(syn=together). This is simply a way of referring to the good bugs plus their food supply – like a honeybee plus a wildflower meadow. Everything you need for a healthy ecosystem is included.

Think about the things that happen inside your gut in three interconnected modules:

First, you need to consume your PREbiotics. These are complex fibres that feed the good bugs in your gut. You can get prebiotics from your diet or from our Complete Prebiotic.
Second, are the PRObiotics, or good gut bugs themselves. Pro means beneficial, and these bugs are helpful for your health. You already have some of these in your system, but probiotics are delicate and continually get killed off over time by antibiotics, chemicals and stress. This is which is why it’s important to keep topping them up inside your system by drinking a daily dose of Kefir, which contains more live beneficial bacteria to repopulate your gut.
The third module is POSTbiotics, which are the molecules that are produced at the end of the process, once your good gut bugs have fermented up the food that you’ve given them. The POSTbiotics that we concentrate on in our microbiome test include short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) like butyrate, acetate and propionate. These are helpful molecules that reduce inflammation, regulate appetite and can even make you feel happier. We use these postbiotics as markers to see how effectively the processes inside your gut are working.