Equilibrium Environmental/Ancestral Probiotic, G|B General Biotics

 

 

1 Billion CFU from 115 strains

Shelf stable, no refrigeration required.

Delayed release capsules for proper delivery.

Small, easy to swallow capsules.

Designed in California, grown in the United States.

100% recyclable bottle, 100% compostable capsules.

 

 

Design Overview

Modern food is missing the microbes we evolved eating

They’ve been sterilized away.

Our fruits, vegetables, meats, nuts, grains – almost all our food – would be microbially unrecognizable to our ancestors. Our stomachs didn’t evolve in this environment.

Dietary microbes are required for normal digestive function

Healthy digestion is powered by a complex ecosystem, over 50 trillion microbial cells from 1,500 different strains. Aging, antibiotics, infection, and poor food choices can permanently destroy our strains, leaving holes in the ecosystem’s function.

In a natural environment your digestive ecosystem’s holes are filled by a constant influx of microbes already digesting the food you eat. In the modern world, these microbes are dead on arrival.

On average, modern humans to have less than half as many digestive strains as our ancestors.

Traditional probiotics don’t provide the missing strains

Most probiotics are simply large doses of the yeasts used to make bread, and the bacteria used to make yogurt. These aren’t the strains missing from our diets.

Until recently there was little that could be done. Sterilization is a necessity until better farming techniques can be found. It’s the best known method to protect against food-borne illness.

Equilibrium restores the dietary microbes lost as a by-product of widespread food sterilization

This product is a direct offshoot of the NIH’s Human Microbiome Project, a $115 million dollar census of humanity’s gut flora. The data tells a clear story: as a society our digestive flora is dying off, and this lack of diversity has causal links to western stomach issues.

Using our datasets, we identified the strain groups commonly missing from western microbiomes. We then worked backwards from this data to locate missing dietary microbes which provide the needed function.

What does evolutionarily normal digestion feel like?

• It’s alert and focused. Similar to the difference between a full night’s sleep and missing an hour or two.
• It’s relaxed. We are now big believers in the published correlations between happiness, stress, and a diverse microbiome.
• It’s better at digesting. We no longer worry about the “after effects” of our food choices.

In short: It’s nice. You’ll notice the difference.

Ready to experience evolutionarily normal digestion?

 

Ingredients:

• probiotics (115 strains in their natural ratios, 1 billion CFUs)
• prebiotic (ground organic flax seed)
• delayed release capsules (plant derived hypromellose)

Hypromellose is an ingredient used in gluten free bread. It is well studied, inert / non-toxic, and in our opinion is the safest known solution for delayed release capsules.

Contains trace amounts of soy, 20 parts per million (0.002%) or less gluten.

Contains no dairy, eggs, fish, shellfish, gelatin, nuts, wheat, casein, MSG, stearates (including magnesium stearate), GMO, artificial color or flavors.

Caution: As with any food or dietary supplement, consult your doctor before using this product, especially if you are nursing, pregnant, plan to become pregnant, are immunocompromised, under active health supervision, or anticipate surgery.

Disclaimer: This product is a nutritional supplement, and is solely intended to help you increase your microbial intake.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Although our scientists have performed NIH and NSF funded research, and have been published in Nature, Science, and PlosOne, these organizations do not necessarily endorse this specific product.

 

Who needs probiotics?

Everyone eating a modern diet.

In a natural environment your digestive ecosystem’s holes are filled by a constant influx of microbes already digesting the food you eat. In modern food, these microbes have been removed.

Who should be careful around probiotics?

If you have pregnant, nursing, have had a colostomy performed, or are under active medical supervision, please consult to your doctor before taking any probiotics.

 

What results can I expect?

A noticeable improvement in digestive function. 

 

What is the recommended dosage?

Anytime is good.

Have you performed any studies?

Yes. We have performed a month long pilot study which completed on October 10th, 2014.

Our next study is much more ambitious. We are creating a new way to perform high-potential-bias studies, and open sourcing the protocol. Some key features:

• Mandatory publishing of both positive and negative outcomes.
• Declaring the analysis procedures in advance of collecting data, to prevent statistical manipulation of results.
• Designed in the open, with the help of the evidence based nutrition community.

We hope the use of this protocol to rigorously verify product claims will become a new norm. If you are interested in contributing please see the discussion page on LessWrong.

How does Equilibrium differ from other probiotics?

Short answer: Equilibrium was designed using better science.

Longer answer: The probiotics commonly found in stores were created before metagenomics. These probiotics contain 1-30 strains of milk-digesting bacteria and wheat-digesting yeast. Large portions of the population have a sufficiently unbalanced mircobiome that these blunt tools proved beneficial: but now, General Biotics offers a much better alternative..

Metagenomics and high throughput gene sequencing are prerequisite to fully understanding an entire microbial ecosystem and were not available until about 10 years ago. The applications of these new techniques are only now reaching consumer products.

Using modern methods, we can do a much better job achieving the digestive potential hinted at by normal probiotics. By reasoning directly about ecosystem-level metabolic function, we can provide ecosystem-level fixes. This leads to a more robust solution than can be found using narrow-purpose strains.

 

What species and strains are in Equilibrium?

Due to its length, our strains list has its own page.

Food-sourced strain names

Equilibrium’s strain names read like a dictionary because it’s composed of food-sourced strains. Non-pathgenic, food-sourced strains received little study until the last decade or so, when high-throughput sequencing allowed researchers to collect (and name) them in bulk lots of 20,000 or more at a time.

References:

1. Bacterial Communities Associated with the Surfaces of Fresh Fruits and Vegetables
2. Unravelling the Diversity of the Grapevine Microbiome
3. Unexpected diversity during community succession in the apple flower microbiome
4. Bacterial diversity in agroecosystems

General Biotics
548 Market St #44477
San Francisco, CA, 94104