What Are Postbiotics and What Are Their Benefits?
We’ve got the inside scoop on the buzziest new wellness ingredient, and how postbiotics help from your gut to your garden, thanks to our Senior R&D Manager Hasitha Guvvala.
Q: What even is a postbiotic?
A: Probiotics may be microscopic but they’re still living organisms that have to eat to live. Postbiotics are the third part of that process: probiotics eat and ferment foods (called prebiotics) and then produce beneficial substances called postbiotics. Just like different microbes prefer different foods, different probiotics produce different postbiotics—but they can include enzymes, antioxidants, bio-cleaners, and organic acids (like lactic acid).
Postbiotics are exciting because they’re one of the key ways probiotics act to support the health of the ecosystem they’re in—whether that’s your body, an animals’ body, or external ecosystems like soil and gardens.
Q: What are the benefits of postbiotics?
A: So many! And again, it depends on the type of postbiotic and the application. Let’s look at postbiotics for your gut health, for example: in our guts, one of our microbes’ jobs is to break down our food. As they do this, they do several things, including convert nutrients into forms our bodies can easily use.
And they produce postbiotics that include antioxidants and short-chain fatty acids, which (among many other things) help support our metabolisms, help insulin work more effectively—stopping the development of diabetes—and play an important anti-inflammatory role to help prevent and reduce the effects of chronic diseases like Crohn’s and IBD.
Other types of postbiotics can be used in our environments, for example, postbiotic bio-cleaners. The probiotics that create these make them to help their own survival and they have the ability to break down dirt, grease, and grime while remaining 100% natural and biodegradable.
Q: And plants benefit from postbiotics too?
A: Yep! Plants may not eat the same types of foods we do, but they have microbiomes in the soil they live in—and the microbes there help support plants in many of the same ways they support our own health, including immune and digestive health. Building healthy, living soil means soil full of microorganisms that then help break down and convert nutrients into forms plants’ can more easily use, and creating beneficial substances, like organic acids, that support plant health.
SCD Probiotics + Postbiotics
Over the past 22 years of studying and working with probiotics, we’ve developed a patented method of bio-fermentation. We combine multiple probiotic strains to “grow up together” and ferment them with raw, natural ingredients—then bottle the living ecosystem they’ve formed, including the postbiotics they’ve created.
