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Your gut biome affects nearly every system of your body – from heart health, to immune function, vitamin absorption, and even mood regulation. There’s much more to it than just digestion and regular poops. Keeping a healthy gut is key to optimizing performance, and using the right probiotic helps you do just that.

There’s a community of 38,000,000,000,000 (that’s 38 trillion) microorganisms, mostly bacteria, living in and on your body. The majority of them reside in your gastrointestinal tract, but many others live in diverse places like your mouth, your skin, and your armpits.

They represent 50% of you by cell count. Collectively, the genes harbored in these trillions of microbial cells constitute your microbiome.

Arguably the misconception of the century is that all bacteria are bad. Of the trillions of species that exist, we now know less than 100 pose a threat to humans. Most are harmless and many are beneficial to our health. The ones that live in us and on us are absolutely essential.

Originally our gut microbiome forms before and during birth through a process called “seeding”, where we absorb bacteria from our mothers. After birth this biome continues to grow as we’re exposed to the outside world – siblings, dogs, nature, the ground, etc. You get the point.

Bacteria we come in contact with from the outside environment continues to add to our microbial biodiversity.

That’s why it’s critical to be exposed to the outside world and “dirty” things as a child – someone that grows up in a hermetically sealed, sterile environment never has a chance to develop the necessary microbiome they need, which can reduce immune system responses and lead to a host of other negative outcomes.

After the first few years of your life, these early microbial colonize stabilize in your gut biome into what is called the steady-state microbiome, resembling more or less what you have today.

What does the gut biome actually do? 

Those trillions of beneficial bacteria we mentioned reside along your epithelial wall, and (partly by sheer strength in numbers) maintain your gut barrier integrity, making it difficult for inhospitable bacteria to penetrate. They help maintain an acidic environment to dissuade certain alkaline-loving pathogenic bacteria from taking root.

They support the secretion of intestinal mucus and collaborate closely with your gut’s ‘gatekeepers’ (tight junctions) to modulate what should (ie. nutrients) or shouldn’t (ie. undigested food particles or pathogenic bacteria) pass through to the body.

Gut bacteria also offer powerful anti-inflammatory effects beyond the gut, reducing oxidative stress (imbalance between free radicals and detoxifying antioxidants) and managing the production of regulatory T-cells (the ones that help your body distinguish between self and intruder).

Beyond this, bacteria also synthesize essential vitamins B and K and defend against E. coli and other intruders in the urogenital tract.

Scientists are constantly discovering new associations between our microbiome and our health. New findings around the gut-brain axis are emerging which indicate that our gut flora may even impact our mood, appetite, behavior, and circadian rhythm—functions we thought were relegated just to the brain.

So how can you maintain optimal gut health to support all these functions? 

There are two main keys to this: avoiding antibiotic use unless it’s 100% necessary since they don’t discriminate against good and bad bacteria, and using live-strain probiotics to help strengthen the bacteria you already have. For the sake of this article we’ll focus on the latter.

The official definition of ‘probiotics’, authored by a 2002 UN/WHO expert panel (chaired by our Chief Scientist, Dr. Gregor Reid), says: Live microorganisms which, when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host.

This refers to strains of beneficial bacteria that must be alive when they are consumed. ‘Live’ is a critical word here, which means they have to survive throughout manufacturing, transportation (sometimes in hot conditions), and sitting on the shelf—until they reach your mouth.

Now as you may know, a lot of fermented foods like kimchi and kombucha contain live bacteria, which is great. The distinction is that they are not necessarily reliable sources of beneficial, effective, and live bacteria in adequate amounts. Adequate being the key word there.

And that’s why probiotic supplements are so vital: they provide exact measures of specific bacteria strains that are tailored towards human health. The problem is that not all supplements are made the same.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) categorizes one class of probiotics as ‘live microbial dietary supplements’. While there are detailed laws and regulations for dietary supplements, the supplement market is under-enforced. As such, the term ‘probiotic’ has been used for marketing and enticement purposes, and much of the science has been lost in translation, or even ignored.

In short, the vast majority of supplements out there labeled “probiotic” at best have very little effect and at worst could actually be harmful.

Seem overwhelming? We get it.

But lucky for you, our team at Biohacker Blueprint is full of nerds who love spending hours digging through research to find the best supplements out there, ones that are backed up by real science. And that’s exactly what you’ll find below.

HIGHLIGHTS:

The Top 3 Best Probiotic Supplements of 2022

Full Breakdown

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