Good and Bad gut bugs

 Interesting lesson today.  We've all heard of probiotics , but today I learned about prebiotics which are the foods your microbes eat and postbiotics which are the chemicals which the gut microbes produce after eating the food you send them.  This is what it's all about really because you need these postbiotics to produce vitamins, immune responses, enzymes, things that keep body cells going etc.  

Getting the right prebiotics in your food is a matter of eating a good variety of foods, especially plants.

The Zoe poo analysis looks for the presence of 15 'good microbes' that produce the important postbiotics and 15 'bad' ones that produce harmful postbiotics or just get in the way of the good stuff.  Research shows that people with the 15 good ones in their gut have all round better health e.g less belly fat, lower blood pressure, better sugar handling etc.

Hmm I think I might have a few of the bad ones.  We'll see.  The good news is that Zoe will give me a personalised list of gut suppressors - foods that I should avoid or limit so as to not feed the baddies I have and  a list of gut boosters - foods that promote the goodies.