Greetings, Eric Bakker, naturopath, thanks for coming back.
Thanks for coming back so many times, if you've been watching my channel now for some time.
You'll find a lot of videos, you can go through them, there are playlists, please check them
all out.
We've been talking about postbiotics.
I had recently a subscriber ask me, "Eric, I've heard about this term postbiotics, what
the heck are they?
Is it something to do with bacteria or ... " It wasn't that long ago that I heard the word
prebiotics, which a guy basically discovered in the '90s, so I've been recommending probiotics
now for over 30 years, a long time ago now.
In a time when people thought they were only in yogurt, supplements were coming out but
they weren't popular and as you know, I'm not a fan of prebiotics in supplements, I'm
a fan of food continuing prebiotics.
It makes sense because you've got a much more complex arrangement of different kinds of
sugars and starches there, which benefit the bacteria far more than just giving a factory-made
prebiotic kind of sugar, I'm not a fan of that at all.Same reason why I'm not a fan
of drinking loads and loads of green juices all the time, because you're not really getting
the fiber.
The fiber is what the gut needs.
Bacteria thrive on fiber, the fermentation improves and the bacteria grown on this.
Now, what are postbiotics?
Well, if you've got prebiotics, you've got probiotics, you've got postbiotics.
They come after the probiotics.
So postbiotics occur as the waste products from a probiotic.
So of course, you've got to go to the toilet and poop and waste gets produced, but so do
bacteria.
They have to produce waste too and then they die and new bacteria get growing, but bacteria
do make stuff that's not really nice.
So I don't know whether you call it probiotic poop, or whatever you call it, but postbiotics
are produced by beneficial bacteria.
Now, these have proven, through various studies, to really improve different aspects of your
immune function, which again proves that when you've got very, very good levels of the lactobacillus
group and the bifidobacteria group, when you've got nice balanced amounts of prevotella bacteria
and bacteroides bacteria, when all of these guys are in their place and in sufficient
numbers, they confer very, very good health to you, but the postbiotics have a particularly
good effect on immunity, and it makes sense.
The more good bacteria you've got, the stronger the immune system, but now we're actually
understanding mechanisms by why immunity is improved through the probiotics.So how do
you get more postbiotics?
Well you can actually get more by eating also sauerkraut and kimchi and kefir and natto
and these sorts of foods that contain bacteria, because no doubt they'll contain also waste
products of good bacteria as well but just be careful, as I always mention to people,
don't just start taking loads and loads and loads of kefir and kimchi and sauerkraut in
your diet.
Some people are crazy.
They contact me, they get a lot of bloating and gas and they'll have literally four or
five different types of these cultured and fermented foods throughout the day thinking
they're going to improve their health.
You can't jump the gun, you need to slowly improve your diet and lifestyle and the bacteria
will follow suit.
You can't just dump a whole heap of stuff in here and think it's all going to turn out
good.It's like exercise.
If you're unfit, you start slowly getting fit, increasingly fit, your fitness level
increases, exercise intensity increases and before you know it, you become fit, then very
fit, then you become as fit as you want to be.
Now the gut's the same.
The bacteria need time to develop.
The bad ones need to slowly go down, the good ones need to come up, the balance needs to
improve really gently.
It's going to give you more digestive comfort and the end result is a more powerful immune
system, you won't get sick anymore, you won't get gut problems anymore and the likelihood
of getting one of the chronic diseases like cancer, or diabetes, it's probably not going
to happen for a long, long time.
We're all going to die, but we want to die healthy, we don't want to die sick and decrepit,
all right?
Now, postbiotics are also proven to significantly improve childhood eczema and also pre-diabetes.
So if you're concerned about pre-diabetes and you've been checked out and the doctor's
spoken to you about this, make sure that you have sufficient levels of beneficial bacteria
and also these foods which I often speak about, because they will boost up the postbiotics,
which will confer strong immunity.
Thanks for tuning in.