I’m presuming that like most reading this column I’m not the only one who has never heard of postbiotics till recently. When we consume pre and probiotics found in fermented foods like sauerkraut and yoghurt respectively we make postbiotics which have beneficial effects on the balance of our gut microbes, enhance our gut’s and the rest of our body’s immune system and manufacture a host of vitamins and other substances that are good for us. In other words the finished product that does all the good things. We aren’t dependent on a process that might go awry in the assembly stage.
While this might sound like a slam dunk mimicking an idealized GUT milieu requires a certain level of technological wizardry. Nevertheless the end result has the promise of delivering an entity that is more resilient, substantially more powerful and with much wider ranging advantages compared with currently available probiotics. Research however is still in its infancy and it might be some time before postbiotics become commercially available.
