Personalized Digestive-Health Supplement Subscription Service Boosts Fiber, Improves Users’ Gut Health, Company Says
According to data from Carbiotix, nearly 100% of PersonalGut users reported improved gut health after four months of using the service; as many as 60% of users achieved “optimal gut health” during that period.
Photo © iStockphoto.com/VikaValter
A personalized prebiotic subscription service called PersonalGut (Carbiotix; Lund, Sweden) may help improve users’ overall gut health by training gut bacteria to consume more prebiotic fiber. According to data from Carbiotix, nearly 100% of PersonalGut users reported improved gut health after four months of using the service; as many as 60% of users achieved “optimal gut health” during that period.
PersonalGut is a subscription-based supplement service that focuses on increasing users’ soluble fiber intake, thus training the bacteria in the gut to consume more fiber over time. The subscription service includes three components: a personalized soluble fiber in sachet form, a multi-sample gut microbiome kit, and prepaid return mailing envelopes. Users mix the personalized prebiotic fiber with any beverage, then take a monthly sample of their gut microbiome and return it to the company. Each month, the company analyzes the microbiome sample to determine users’ Fiber Loving Bacteria (FLB) index, a metric developed by Carbiotix. The company says that each person has a unique number of fiber-loving bacteria, ranging from 10% to 50% of their total gut bacteria flora. A low number of fiber-loving bacteria may indicate gut-health concerns, it says, and increasing the number of fiber-loving bacteria over time can lead to a more stable microbiome.
According to the company, the end result is “a gut flora that is much more diverse and stable, and much less sensitive to foods that may have previously caused discomfort.”
Peter Falck, CEO, Carbiotix, explained in a press release how the program works: “We leverage each person’s own host probiotic bacteria and thus the body’s own natural ability to improve and optimize gut health.” According to Falck, the PersonalGut approach attempts to mimic human’s diets from over 10,000 years ago, when fiber represented a more significant portion of food consumed, and where “good” gut bacteria, like Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria, thrived.
The company says this system has unique benefits over other methods of improving digestive health, like the low-FODMAP (fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols) diet. FODMAPs are short-chain carbohydrates and sugar alcohols that are poorly absorbed by the body. Because they are poorly absorbed, they can cause abdominal pain and bloating. Soluble fiber is found in many FODMAP-promoted foods, including beans, peas, and lentils. The company says that because PersonalGut promotes a more stable microbiome by training the gut to consume more fiber, users may not have to avoid certain foods that cause gastrointestinal distress, as they would by adhering to a low-FODMAP diet.
The company also says that an optimized and stable gut flora may also be more sensitive to the onset of unexplained inflammation in the body. “There are many scientists who believe that a large number of leading metabolic and chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, IBS, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, certain cancers, and neurological diseases are a result of inflammation caused by the starving of these good gut bacteria and a disproportionate presence of pathogenic species, directly attributable to our modern diet lacking adequate fiber,” Falck stated. “The current results, although preliminary, are very encouraging and we will continue to build further confirmation of our efficacy as customers send in their monthly gut microbiome samples and our customer base grows.”
In addition to PersonalGut, the company offers LoveGut, which also measures users’ FLB index using the microbiome sample kit.
Added Kristofer Cook, CEO, Carbiotix: “We truly believe that poor gut health, which reflects the state of most people today, is now a choice for many and that we have two simple, affordable and effective solutions to improve and optimize gut health, ultimately allowing people to realize the potential health benefits that may come as a result.”
Carbiotix is a biotechnology subsidiary company of the department of biotechnology at Lund University in Sweden.
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