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Probiotic Science - Activated Probiotics

Science · Activated Probiotics

Probiotic science

A probiotic has to survive being manufactured, survive the shelf, survive your stomach, and still be the exact strain that was studied. Most of what separates one product from another happens before it ever reaches you.

Micro-encapsulation — getting there alive

Swallowing a probiotic means sending it through the most hostile stretch of the digestive tract. Stomach acid sits near pH 1–3; the duodenum adds bile salts and pancreatic enzymes. Uncoated cells are not built for that journey — roughly one in five survives it.

5×

Micro-encapsulation

Five times more efficient delivery

Cells are coated in food-grade vegetable fatty acids, forming a barrier that carries them intact through stomach acid to the intestine. Just 2 billion coated cells achieve the gut colonisation that would otherwise take 10 billion uncoated — only about 20% of traditional uncoated cells survive the gastro-duodenal passage.

250%+ in gastric juice
250%+ pancreatic
8× combined
Shelf stable

Uncoated cells are lost across the stomach and duodenum; the fatty-acid coating carries them through to where they are meant to act.

Cross-section of a coated probiotic cell

5×

more efficient delivery

~20%

of uncoated cells survive transit

2bn

coated does the work of 10bn uncoated

refrigeration required

AFU — counting what is actually alive

Almost every probiotic on the shelf is sold in CFU: colony forming units. It is a hundred-year-old method — spread the sample on agar, wait, and count the colonies that grow. The trouble is what it misses.

A colony only appears if a cell can divide repeatedly on a plate. Cells that clump or grow in chains produce one colony between them, however many cells are in the chain. Cells that are alive and metabolically active but stressed — by drying, by manufacturing, by time on a shelf — may produce no colony at all. Both are counted as nothing.

AFU — active fluorescent units — measures differently. A fluorescent stain distinguishes intact, active cells from dead ones, and a flow cytometer counts them individually as they pass a detector, one at a time. Chains are counted as the several cells they are. Active-but-stressed cells are counted as active, because they are.

A plate count undercounts by design: chained cells share a colony and stressed cells grow none. Flow cytometry counts each active cell individually.

Flow cytometry: a stained sample passes a laser, and detectors sort live from dead cells

Flow cytometry is now a recognised international standard for enumerating probiotics (ISO 19344 / IDF 232). Declaring in AFU means the number on the label is a count of cells that are actually active — not a count of the ones that happened to grow on agar.

One dose, one seal

Probiotics are living cells, and the thing that kills them on a shelf is moisture. Which makes the jar — the format most of the category still uses — a strange choice.

Open a jar and humid air reaches every remaining capsule at once. Do that daily for two months and the last capsule has been exposed sixty times before anyone takes it. The dose at the bottom of the jar is not the dose that was packed.

Every Activated Probiotics product is packed dose by dose, in pharmaceutical-grade alu/alu — either a blister for capsules or a stick sachet for powders. Each dose sits in its own sealed cell and meets the air once, at the moment it is taken. The last dose in the pack is protected exactly as well as the first.

A clear jar of loose probiotic capsules — The category standard A jar. Every capsule exposed to humid air on every opening, for the life of the pack.

Alu/alu blister strips of capsules — Alu/alu blister Capsules, individually sealed. Foil on both faces — no light, no moisture, no oxygen until you press one out.

Individual stick sachet of probiotic powder — Stick sachet The same principle for powders — one dose per sealed stick, opened once and used.

Every opening of a jar admits humid air to the whole remaining contents. A blister exposes only the dose being taken.

Strain specificity

"Contains Lactobacillus" tells you roughly as much as "contains mammal". The research that matters is done on named, characterised strains — and the results belong to that strain, not to its species and not to probiotics in general.

Two strains of the same species can differ by hundreds of genes. Those genes decide whether a strain can stick to the gut lining, what compounds it produces, and whether it survives long enough to do either. Which is why every product in our range names its strains down to the deposit number.

Two strains tested side by side in a single trial produced different results — the cleanest available demonstration that an outcome belongs to the strain.

Twelve labelled probiotic species rendered side by side

Example one · same species, different strain

L. rhamnosus HN001 and B. lactis HN019

Both were given to mothers in the same New Zealand trial, on the same schedule, in the same population, with follow-up continuing to age eleven. Only one arm showed a measurable effect. Nothing differed but the strain — which is precisely why the label has to name it.

Example two · same strain, different partner

L. salivarius LS01, alone and with B632

LS01 on its own has been studied in adults for skin comfort. Paired with B. breve B632, it has been studied in children for respiratory wellbeing. Same strain, different combination, different body of research — so they are two different products, and we keep them apart.

Every strain in the range, and what each was studied for → Meet the strains

Acknowledgement of country

In the spirit of reconciliation, Biome Australia acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community.We pay our respect to their elders past, present and emerging, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.