Episode 49: What are Postbiotics?

Episode 49: What are Postbiotics?

In this episode, I'm diving deep into one of my absolute favourite topics - gut health! As someone who's been fascinated by the gastrointestinal system since my Year 9 biology days, I'm thrilled to share the latest research about pre, pro, and particularly postbiotics. This episode builds upon our previous discussion in Episode 30 - Probiotics and Prebiotics in Children, taking your understanding of gut health to the next level!

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Links
https://nourishwithkarina.com/feedingbabies
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Highlights:

Introduction(00:00.574)
Podcast Summary: Gut Health and Probiotics (00:29.09)
Filming Experience and Post-Bacterials Overview (02:54.702)
Gut Microbiome and Child Health 05:11.67)
Gut Microbes and Fiber Importance (07:27.736)
Probiotics and Gut Microbiome Balance (09:50.796)
Probiotics and Gut Microbiome Support (12:08.578)
Postbiotics and Their Impact on Health (14:31.64)
Post-Bacterial Health in Children(16:48.898)
"Improving Children's Eating Habits" (19:09.932)
Impact of Carbohydrates on Child's Health (21:24.738)

Show notes

READ TRANSCRIPT

Show Notes

Key Points We'll Cover:

1. Gut-Brain Connection

Your gut truly is your second brain - discover how this amazing connection impacts your child's mood, cognition and overall health

2. Microbiome Magic

Learn why a balanced gut microbiome is crucial for nutrient absorption and immune system function

3. Fibre Facts

Explore practical ways to boost your child's fibre intake through everyday foods - it's simpler than you think!

4. Probiotic Power

Understanding which probiotic strains actually survive stomach acid and why the LGG strain is particularly beneficial for children

5. Postbiotic Potential

Discover these fascinating compounds produced by your gut bacteria and how they benefit your child's health

Helpful Resources:

🔗 For gut-healthy recipes and tips, visit: https://nourishwithkarina.com/healthy-recipes-for-kids

Remember, small, consistent changes make the biggest difference in your child's gut health.

Leave me a review or pop me a message on Instagram with your thoughts - I'd love to hear from you! 💕

Show notes:

- For more support with feeding your children, check out my Nourishing Kids Membership: - - -- Explore kid-friendly recipes: https://nourishwithkarina.com/kids-recipes

Let's turn those dinner table battles into joyful family memories!

- Join me inside Nourishing Kids: Nourish with Karina

- Follow me on Instagram for more tips and updates: @NourishWithKarina

Introduction(00:00.574)
You're listening to the Easy Feed Podcast, episode number 49. What are post-biotics? Hi there, I'm Karina Savage and with over 20 years experience feeding children, including my own, I've learnt all the secrets that busy mums need to get their children eating better and actually enjoying healthy foods. So a huge welcome to the Easy Feed Podcast.
Podcast Summary: Gut Health and Probiotics (00:29.09)
Hi there, welcome back. It's great to have you. Today we are talking about a topic very close to my heart. Look, if we're not talking about dogs and animals, it's about gut health. So today I'm talking, and this podcast is not about animals, but today I'm talking about gut health and pre, pro and post biotics. Because it's, you know, an ever emerging area. We are learning more and more about it all the time. My interest in this area.
really started way back when I was in year nine, can picture in my mind that year nine biology room with the textbook in front of me, looking at the gastrointestinal tract and being in awe of the phenomenal ability of the gut to digest and absorb various nutrients happens at various parts of the gastrointestinal tract, mostly in the small intestine or the small bowel as you would call it. But I've always been fascinated by this.
thing called the gut, which is the small and large intestine. And really we are learning more and more about the gut over the weeks and the months and the years and the decades. But certainly, you know, what we know now really has uncovered the phenomenal relationship between the gut and the rest of the body. So your gut truly is the second brain, you know, gut feeling.
isn't just a term that's thrown around. It's actually legitimate. Your gut is your second brain. We share so many of the neurotransmitters between the gut and the brain. They go from the gut to the brain. They talk to each other. It's via the gut brain axis. The gut brain axis is real and the impact of our gut on our brain health, on our cognition, on our mood, on our systemic health is genuine. It's legitimate.
And we really need to be focusing more on this area for our children because it really impacts on their long-term health. So I know that I have talked about probiotics in the previous episode or two, especially episode 30 covers this topic as well. But today I want to talk about a new concept, which is post-biotics. I recently had the pleasure of doing a talk.
Filming Experience and Post-Bacterials Overview (02:54.702)
In fact, it's quite funny actually, because I had to find a white lab coat because this company that I was doing some filming for, it wasn't a talk, it was filming, they wanted me to wear a specific outfit for the filming and I had to go and saw the white lab coat. And I managed to find one. It's not easy to find a white lab coat, but within a few days, but I managed to find one at a university bookshop, believe it or not. And it kind of makes sense because the med students there need lab coats.
Um, so I had to go and find this white lab coat for the filming and the guy at checkout at the bookshop, lovely guy said to me, do you need goggles with that? I was like, yeah, no, don't need goggles, for the filming that would look incredibly funny. But yeah, I got my white lab coat and we did this filming. And basically they wanted to do some filming on pre, pro and post biotics. When all put together in a product is known as
Well, this is the new terminology for it. So you might start to hear a little bit more about post-biotics. I wouldn't say you'll hear about them in the next kind of couple of months because it's quite a new thing. Look, I think, you know, we've been talking about gut health for decades and only now is it really, really popular. Well, you know, the last few years, but definitely it's something that you'll hear about maybe later on, but...
You know, I like to stay ahead of the game and have all of the latest cutting edge information for you. And you know, it's my bag, right? know, kids gut health is, a key focus of mine. And so I want to share with you today a little more about post-biotics, but before we do that, let's just do a little recap on microbiome and probiotics and prebiotics and what it all means because you know,
If you're like me, you can kind of listen to this over and over again. And then every time something else sinks in, because sometimes you do need to, well, usually you do need to listen to something many, many times. And each time you listen to it, you learn something new. And so, yeah, let's dive into a little more about gut microbiome and, you know, how your gut health is impacts your entire systemic health and your brain health via the gut brain axis.
Gut Microbiome and Child Health 05:11.67)
And really a healthy gut microbiome enables your child to digest food, absorb food, critical nutrients effectively. Nutrients like calcium, iron, vitamin A, D, all of which are essential for bone growth and development and maintaining a strong immune system. Now, when that gut microbiome is imbalanced, and you may have heard me talk before about dysbiosis when you've got an imbalance of the good bacteria and the bad bacteria.
That imbalance causes problems. So it can increase risk of allergies. It can increase risk of infection and sickness. It can mean that it takes a lot longer to recover from illness and it can also impact on nutrient absorption. So when the gut microbiome is in balance, kids can feel more poorly. They may have poorer mood, concentration, behaviour.
And look, you know, they're kids, so it's almost, it is impossible to know what the exact cause is of their poor behaviour, but it's all interrelated. It can impact on their sleep. So we need to look at their health holistically, as always, and we need to really be thinking about how much of a role is their gut microbiome playing on their overall health and wellbeing.
We're seeing a lot more iron deficiency these days and I just wonder how much of it links back to gut health because, you know, even people that are eating meat, eating iron rich foods, they're not necessarily absorbing or sustaining adequate iron levels in their blood. And I think, well, you know, how much of that is actually a role of the gut microbiome.
So I think it's a great area of research and it would be good to dig a bit more into this area and do some more studies in this area as well because nutrient absorption can be impacted by gut microbiome and it's a very interesting topic. So to promote a healthy gut, we start at the basics, we strip it right back and we focus on plant foods, making sure that our kids are eating a diet rich in fiber and fiber otherwise known as prebiotics.
Gut Microbes and Fiber Importance (07:27.736)
feeds the microbes in our gut, it feeds the healthy bacteria and it helps to keep those healthy bacteria in good population, good, the communities are thriving basically. So we need plant foods to feed the bacteria so that they stay healthy and they are thriving and they are reproducing. So we, what we don't want is a lack of fibre to kill off the good bacteria so they're not reproducing.
And instead the harmful bacteria, pathogenic bacteria take over and that's when you get the imbalance. And what happens if we're not feeding our gut or our children's gut with these plant foods, these fibres, these prebiotics, there's the sexy name for it. Then what happens is the gut mucosal layer, it needs fuel. The microbes need fuel. They sit in the lining of the gut. And if we're not
feeding these microbes with the fibers that they need, then they start to munch on the food that they can access in the actual gut mucosal lining. And what that does is it starts to basically degrade your own gut lining and it starts to break it down. And that's when we get a leaky gut. That's when we increase our risk of getting sick because our gut becomes more leaky and pathogens and viruses that we would normally
repel actually get through those cracks in the mucosa, they get into our system and then we get sick. So that's why we need to feed our gut microbes, those plant foods, those fibres, because that's the food for the gut microbes to keep them happy, to keep the gut integrity strong so that we can keep out all the baddies and the pathogens so that we don't get sick or our kids don't get sick. So fibre rich foods include things like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds.
You know, green bananas are high in resistant starch, but if you don't like green bananas and regular bananas also contain fiber. Wholemeal bread is a great source of fiber. Nuts, peanut butter, seeds, fruits and vegetables with the skin on where possible. All great sources of fiber that will feed the gut microbes in our kid's gut and keep them healthy. Okay, moving on to probiotics. Probiotics are what we add to our gut if we're wanting to help
Probiotics and Gut Microbiome Balance (09:50.796)
balance the good and the bad bugs. So probiotics are live beneficial bacteria that help to top up the gut with good bacteria. And they can be found in fermented products like kefir, yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut. Now the ones that are in supplement form can easily get killed off by the acidic environment of our stomach. Our stomach is
designed to be acidic because we need it to be acidic to help the digestion process of our food proteins and carbohydrates and food that's in our gut. So the acidic environment helps to digest food before it passes into the gastrointestinal tract because we need it to kill bacteria. We want the gut to be acidic. It's part of our immune defense. It's part of our protective mechanism of keeping us healthy. So we have an acidic gut for many reasons.
But what that means though, is if we take probiotic supplements, some of those don't make it past the acidic environment of the stomach. So if you are taking a probiotic supplement, you do need to be careful about what you're taking because, or what you're giving to your children, because a lot of them basically are just getting killed in the stomach and then you're getting, you you're basically pulling them out and there's no benefit. So, and that is very different to what I'm talking about in a minute, which is
post-biotics, which can include dead bacteria, but that's a different type. Okay. It's not one that's been killed and digested by your stomach acid. So the probiotic strain that often does survive the gastric acid in your stomach is the LGG bacteria that's been shown to be pretty tough and actually resists some of the acidic.
degradation from the stomach and actually make it to the large bowel. So that's one strain that's been shown to be beneficial then. That's a strain that's been commonly studied in the pediatric population and is quite a good strain. So that's the lactobacillus rhamnosus GG strain. So that's if you were going to take a supplement, the LGG strain is a good one there. So taking probiotics certainly can help to rebalance the gut microbiome if...
Probiotics and Gut Microbiome Support (12:08.578)
there's been an imbalance for whatever reason, if there's been a bad gastro bug or a bad virus or lots of antibiotic exposure that really can destroy that happy balance of microbes in the gut, that's when probiotics can be beneficial. Also with babies that may have a dysbiosis for whatever reason, again, whether they've been hit with antibiotics, whether they were...
perhaps born by C-section and there was no judgment there because I was a C-section baby, you know, at the end of the day, you want to just have a healthy baby, but C-section babies do have a different gut microbiome and so sometimes supplementing them with probiotics can be beneficial as long as it's the right one. Babies that are formula fed and the formula doesn't contain a probiotic, that can be beneficial then to give the probiotic to your baby. So there's situations when...
Probiotics supplements can be beneficial, certainly in the world of allergy with the patients, the little ones that I see with allergies and eczema. Sometimes, quite often, I will recommend specific probiotics to support them. So, probiotics definitely have their place, but at the end of the day, we really need to try and strip it back to basics and focus on the bigger picture, the healthy balanced diet and the lifestyle factors that are going to help support a healthy gut microbiome in general.
So eating well, exercising, and definitely focusing on plenty of those plant-based, fiber-rich foods. Processed foods, takeaway foods, such as, you your big fast food chains, those processed foods are inflammatory and they negatively impact our gut bacteria. When I say, you know, eat healthy, it's not only about increasing the fiber and those plant foods, but it's also avoiding a lot of those processed fast foods because they negatively impact our gut.
So postbiotics, and I'll redo the Harvard definition of postbiotics, the term refers to the waste left behind after your body digests both prebiotics and probiotics. So what this means is it's basically a byproduct of the digestive process. So postbiotics are created, it's happening in your bowel as you're listening to this podcast. Human nature is phenomenal.
Postbiotics and Their Impact on Health (14:31.64)
You know, we're never going to catch up to human hate. Medicine does its best to try to understand the human body, but it's always going to be gazillion steps ahead of us. So as we speak, your body contains postbiotics. Your body is producing postbiotics that are beneficially impacting your health right now. Postbiotics are produced when your microbes ferment the prebiotics. So I'm talking about the food, those plant foods that you want your children to have.
to benefit their microbes. When their microbes eat those fibers, eat that plant food, that's when they produce these postbiotics. And healthy postbiotics include nutrients such as vitamins, amino acids, and substances called antimicrobial peptides. Now that's a pretty scientific terminology there, but all of these things enhance the immune system and they slow down the growth of harmful bacteria.
Other postbiotic substances include things like short chain fatty acids and it helps the healthy bacteria flourish. So postbiotics are the third and very integral step of the gut microbiome process of fermentation. So we ferment those plant foods to produce those postbiotics and those postbiotics have also been called metabolites.
Basically they're messengers. They can send messages to the brain. They can send messages to other parts of the body and it supports our general health. So, you know, it's quite a specific complex process. But if you just think about the fact that when our healthy bugs munch on the fibre that we eat, they produce these valuable probiotics that affect every part of your health. You may hear post biotics called a dead probiotic.
And certainly a dead probiotic is a postbiotic, but then we have different types of postbiotics and all of them can have immune enhancing effects. So postbiotics have been studied quite extensively now and they have been shown to be beneficial for our children's health in many ways. They help to strengthen the gut barrier, helping to reduce sickness and infection.
Post-Bacterial Health in Children(16:48.898)
They may also play a role in reducing inflammation and the risk of allergies, eczema and obesity. And they may also play a role in the cognitive development and mental health of your child via the gut brain access, as I was talking about before. So basically the best thing that you can do for your child is not run out and buy post-biotics. It's to give them plenty of plant foods. And I know that
Fussy eaters especially can struggle with enough plant foods, but it doesn't have to be in the form of vegetables. It can be in the form of wholemeal bread and peanut butter, or it can be in the form of a bowl of porridge with some blueberries, or it can be in the form of a muesli bar that's got oats in it, that's still got fiber in it, that's still feeding the gut microbes of your child's body and still benefiting them because then they'll still be producing those post-biotics which are benefiting their health. So it's a beautiful intricate
process of these prebiotics, which is plant foods that feeds the gut microbes that produces these postbiotics, which as I said, is the key final step in a fully functioning, healthy gut. And it's happening in all of our bodies as we speak. But we're just learning more and more about it and the benefits of it. And this will continue to expand and explode in
science and in general health. And you'll probably see post-biotics, as I said, appear more and more on the shelf. We see probiotics everywhere now. We now see the word prebiotics added to lots of food. When really you don't have to spend the money on that, just buy some Weet-Bix or buy some blueberries or some Zoltanas. But these post-biotics, as I said, you may start to see these come into foods or supplements in the future. So.
It's me just giving you a really early 101 on post-biotics and what this means. But really at the end of the day, all of these factors is significantly affect your child's gut health and therefore their overall health. And it's like a spiderweb. It just has an effect on so many parts of their body. So if we can just strip it back, focus on the plant foods and just try to make little changes.
"Improving Children's Eating Habits" (19:09.932)
As I talk about in my Fussy Eating program and my Nourishing Kids membership, which the program is in my membership, I talk about little changes, little changes done consistently make a big difference over time. So even if you can get your child to literally have one more mouthful of something that's plant-based every day, literally one more mouthful, then over the days and the weeks and the months and the years, that makes a difference. And if that one mouthful turns into two mouthfuls, then amazing.
It's just that small, small progress that builds momentum over time and then makes a big difference. And yes, if we look at the big picture to try to get them to eat these healthier foods, then we do need to come at it from a very calm place, a very lighthearted place where we're just bringing that healthy food into our day. We're not pushing them or over talking about these healthy food because the more we talk about food, the more they're not going to eat it.
Just bringing these healthy foods in, just subtly just slotting them in and putting them on a platter and throwing in some extra nuts on a platter as long as they're, over the age of three. Throwing some extra popcorn, popcorn's hard fiber into a platter or, you know, tipping your tin of lentils into your spaghetti bolognese or what else can we do? Look, there's so many things that we can do to add fiber into our children's day. It's just about one little change that you can do consistently.
We're all busy, we're all overwhelmed, we're all overloaded. So you just need to pick one simple change that you can make today and every day to make a difference over the days and the weeks and the months, because you just need one simple change. And if you can build on that amazing, if you just stick to that one thing, then that's still going to be a win. It's still going to be better than it was yesterday. Right? So just focus on one simple change that you can do to increase your child's intake of fibre and then focus on that and then.
You know, once you've achieved that win, then build from there. But really at the end of the day, it's about just trying to keep it simple, give them lots of plant foods to nourish their gut. And then that's going to mean that they get sick less often. It's going to mean that they're healthier. They're potentially going to be able to concentrate more. Obviously.
Impact of Carbohydrates on Child's Health (21:24.738)
Concentration and general health is also impacted by other things. You know, the concentration of a child is going to be significantly impacted by the type of carbohydrates and whether they're having fast sugars or slow sugars. And also, as I said before, junk food will dramatically impact their overall health and wellbeing as well. But bit by bit we'll get there. That's a little 101 for you today on pre, pro and post-biotics.
Please leave me a review on this one. I'd love to know your thoughts. Please send me a message on Instagram. I'd love to hear any questions or comments you have. And we'll wrap it up there. I will chat to you again soon. Bye for now.