probiotics

We have turned probiotics into the miracle pill of the 21st century. Science has something to say about it

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They are in pharmacies, along with vitamins C and multivitamin complexes. They are on the shelves of organic supermarkets, between adaptogens and turmeric shots. They occupy the reels of TikTok with the same enthusiasm with which before detox juices populated. Probiotics – supplements with live microorganisms that supposedly strengthen the intestinal flora – have become the health amulet of the 21st century. The promise is simple and seductive: take these “good” bacteria in a capsule and your gut, your brain, your immune system, and your skin will function better. The business accompanies the promise. According to different estimates from the sectorthe global probiotics market was valued at around $114 billion in 2025 and is projected to continue growing at a sustained rate over the next decade. However, there is a problem that science has been contemplating for years: taken massively and indiscriminately, probiotic supplements not only do not improve the microbiome in the majority of healthy people. In some cases, they can actively block it. A forgotten organ that regulates almost everything. The human intestine is home to trillions of microorganisms—bacteria, fungi, viruses—that form an ecosystem as complex and personal as a fingerprint. According to gastroenterologist Chris Dammanfrom the University of Washington, who has been studying the microbiome for 20 years, this ecosystem acts as “the gateway to the body’s overall health.” Diets with more fiber, fruit and vegetables are those that generate the greatest variety and richness of bacteria in the intestine, and healthy bacteria produce short-chain fatty acids that support the health of the intestinal lining, according to the clinical documents of the Whole Health from the US Veterans Administration. The microbiota is not just digestion. A review published in the journal Nutrients by researchers at the University of Cassino in Italy, details how the gut microbiota modulates neurochemical pathways involving serotonin, dopamine, GABA and glutamate, as well as the immune and endocrine axes. Microbial imbalance—what scientists call dysbiosis—contributes to low-grade systemic inflammation, impaired neuroplasticity, and altered stress responses, all of which are linked to mood disorders and cognitive decline. However, the most striking fact is that Approximately 95% of the body’s serotonin is synthesized in the intestinenot in the brain. Whether the intestine is good or bad is no small matter. Take care of the microbiota is key to healthbut to make good use of probiotics it is important to first understand their real mechanism. And that’s where things get complicated. Years of warning. The problem with probiotics is not that they never work. The thing is that we have turned them into a general use resource, something that is taken preventively and continuously, without diagnosis, without medical indication and without understanding what is really happening in each person’s intestine. A product with real and very specific benefits that social networks have turned into a universal solution. Dammam explains it clearly: Probiotic supplements purchased without a prescription are not sufficiently regulated. You don’t really know what you’re taking. Products vary greatly in labeling accuracy, presence of adulterants, and legitimacy of their claims, according to VA Program documents. Prescribing probiotics is difficult even for doctors: there are thousands of products on the market, each claiming superiority over the other. Many have “special recipes,” proprietary strains or combinations of multiple organisms that the VA wryly describes as “a microbiological shotgun approach.” The problem, ultimately, is not just the lack of regulation. It’s that we start from a wrong premise. The science behind. Dr. De la Puerta, an expert in microbiota, sums it up with a phrase that does not leave much room for interpretation: “If you want a healthy microbiota, you probably don’t need to live taking probiotics.” He said it in podcast by Dr. José Abellán in one of the most shared analyzes of intestinal health in recent weeks. Her central argument is not that probiotics are useless—in fact, she herself admits that she uses and prescribes them frequently—but that they are becoming a permanent habit when they are designed to be a one-time tool. “You have to take them to get you out of a place,” he explains. And he gives his own case as an example: “My microbiota is fairly good, but I have a lot of stress. So I take probiotics from time to time.” The key is in those two words: seasons. Deeper investigations. The latest science backs up exactly this nuance. A review published in Trends in Microbiology concludes that the composition of the microbiome varies greatly depending on geography, age and lifestyle, which directly calls into question the efficacy of universal probiotic treatments and requires that the design of any effective probiotic takes into account microbial diversity and specific adaptation to the context of each host. The Probiota 2025 conference, held in Copenhagen, confirmed this same idea: Geographic and demographic variations reveal microbiome profiles so different among healthy populations that it is impossible to define a universal standard of a “healthy microbiome.” There is another equally serious problem, which Dr. De la Puerta points out precisely: not all probiotics are the same, even if we sell them as if they were. “Take a probiotic, stabilizer, immunomodulator, neuroactive, high load, low load, monostrain, multistrain…”, he lists. Some have more to do with the immune system, others with digestive health, others with mood. The most successful interventions are those informed by a microbial profile prior to treatment, which allows predicting therapeutic efficacy. “That’s why it doesn’t make much sense to buy them at random simply because someone has recommended them on social networks,” the expert details. The garden already planted. There is a conceptual error that lies at the bottom of this entire debate. We take probiotics as if the intestine were empty land waiting to be repopulated. But in the vast majority of healthy adults, the intestinal ecosystem is already established and has its own defenses. According to the VA Programcontinuing to take them once a healthy intestinal ecosystem is formed would be like planting an already planted garden. The real problem, … Read more

We take more and more mercury through fish. There are those who want to solve it with “design” probiotics

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The presence of mercury in fish (or in some fish) is A growing problem in the field of food security. Prolonged exposure to this pollutant is an important risk to people’s health, a risk that could go worse in the coming years. Detox, but real. A team of researchers has manipulated a bacterium present in the digestive system of humans to do it Able to eliminate methylmercury present in fish. In a study with mice, the mechanism allowed this toxin to reach other organs of the animal, such as brain or liver. An increasing problem. He methylmercury It is a cation, a molecule with a positive charge, which gives its name to a series of compounds that integrate this form of mercury. Methylmercurio is also the most common way in which we can find organic mercury naturally. Mercury in its different forms is a pollutant present not only in some pesticides but also in Gas emissions to the atmosphere. These mercury residues end up arriving at the sea and the trophic chain, a process called “biomagnification.” This heavy metal tends to accumulate more in larger fish and in those closest to the cusp of the “food pyramid.” And from there, to our kitchens. Design bacteria. The work It started from a known bacterium and abundant in our digestive system, Thetaiotaomicron bacteroids. It inserted coding DNA enzymes from another known bacterium present in the soil, a bacterium with a determining feature, its resistance to mercury. Probiotics The team first checked In vitro that these bacteria had managed to become resistant to methylmercury, and then administer bacteria to mice. These soon were integrated into the digestive system of mammals, which was administered orally to study the impact. The team first analyzed the effect of The administration of a large amount of this compound. They found that in the mice to whom the new bacterium had been administered, the mercury began to disappear shortly after its administration, a purification process that lasted for about four days. In the long term. The team also studied the effects of moderate but prolonged mercury consumption in time. The team altered the mice diet and made it rich in red tuna, one of the fish with higher heavy metal concentrations. Not only did they verify that the methylmercury continued to disappear from the digestive systems of the mice, they also verified that it did not permeate the body of these. The team studied the effect on pregnant mice, checking that methylmercury levels were kept low in maternal and fetal tissues, including less toxicity in the fetus’s brain. The details of the study were published In an article In the magazine Cell Host & Microbe. A problem that will go worse before better. The study opens the way to the use of “design” probiotics that could help us avoid the worst consequences of mercury pollution. This method does not attack the root problem but, as their own creators explain, it can help us address a problem without a short -term solution. “Despite global efforts to reduce mercury emissions and their accumulation in fish, metercurio levels are not expected stood out in a press release Amina Schartup, co -author of the study. In Xataka | Some researchers were following a tuna. Suddenly they discovered that I was on a road on the way to Birmingham Image | Ryutaro Tsukata

The secret for a healthier chocolate is in prebiotics and probiotics. And now we know the “recipe”

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The effect of chocolate on our health is ambiguous. Although some of these preparations based on the fruit of cocoa can report benefits for our health, the usual thing is usually that the sugar and other additions end up deriving in a final product far from being classified as “healthy”. Chocolate, healthier. Now, a group of researchers works on the development of a chocolate with additives that make it healthier. For this they have resorted to add prebiotic and probiotic ingredients in their recipe. Prebiotics + probiotics. Pre- and probiotics are two types of foods that help Regulate our intestinal microbioma. The difference between them is how they do it. Prebiotics are foods that provide nutrients to this microbiome. While probiotics are foods that provide us with microbiota, that is, they contain organisms such as bacteria that help us develop our digestive functions more effectively. The proposal of this team of researchers is to add prebiotic and probiotic ingredients to chocolate. Until now, the idea of ​​adding these elements to chocolate had already been investigated, but doing so had become a somewhat “laborious” task, those responsible for the new study explain. To avoid this complication, the team decided to resort to prebiotics that required a minimum processing such as corn and honey. Five formulas. The team combined the ingredients in different ways to obtain five formulas to compare. The first, reference, contained the usual ingredients in chocolate (such as cocoa butter, powdered cocoa and powdered milk). The rest contained prebiotics (corn and honey); a prebiotic (which could be Lactobacillus Acidophilus LA-14, o Lactobacillus rhamnosus Gg), and an additive to give flavor (which would be cinnamon or orange). Keeping sensations. One of the factors that the equipment wanted to put to the test were the fat levels of these products since the texture of the resulting product depends on these. They found that the formulas maintained this characteristic consistently but also pointed out some differences between conventional chocolate and sinbiotics (those that were subject to the study). For example They observed They added orange showed a lower pH (greater acidity), greater humidity and higher protein levels compared to the rest. They also observed that the four symbiotic chocolates presented higher levels of antioxidants. These lost some consistency, which made them less crispy. Counting microbes. The study also included an analysis of the survival capacity of the bacteria used. They found that these continued to maintain their vitality after 125 days of chocolate storage. The team also submitted these to “stomach conditions” and found that microbes were also able to survive these conditions for more than five hours. The details of the study were published In an article In the magazine ACS Food Science & Technology. The benefits (and risks) of chocolate. The effects, positive and negative, of chocolate can be associated with certain compounds, some present in their main ingredient and others in additives. One of the key elements is antioxidants. Antioxidants are especially in black chocolate, and among them Epicatechina stands outa type of flavonol. These compounds can protect us from free radicals, which has been associated with better cardiac health, a “balanced” immune system, a lower risk of diabetes, and other potential benefits. On the other hand, the sugars and fats present in chocolates can be made harmful if we consume excessive amounts, especially if we consume is not dark chocolate but more sweetened versions of the product. In Xataka | Some scientists designed the “perfect chocolate”, and the secret is in physics Image | Tamas Pap

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