The Gut Biome: Essential to Health
The gut is home to trillions of bacteria that form a micro-ecosystem, also known as the microbiome. The gut microbiome influences a multitude of physiological functions in the body. The gut biome also produces a wide range of compounds that can be used by the body and other microorganisms. These interactions are vital for the balance of microbes in the gut that are essential for health. Maintaining a healthy microbiome starts with what you feed your gut; the healthier your gut biome, the healthier you are too. In fact, gut health has been associated with better digestion, improved mood and a healthy immune system function.1 Sustaining a healthy intestinal tract starts by nourishing the balance of your intestinal flora. Two of the best ways to maintain intestinal health are by helping microbes already there to proliferate by giving them the foods (prebiotics) they eat and adding living microbes (probiotics) to your system. 
Prebiotic-rich foods include fermented foods and fibre-rich foods. By feeding your gut prebiotics, you provide food for probiotics; these probiotics produce by-products known as post-biotics (via fermentation), which also deliver many health benefits. Another way to boost intestinal health is by assisting this process by supplementing directly with post-biotics.
What are Post-Biotics?
Research has shown that many of the health benefits of probiotics are actually caused by something called post-biotics. These include many different by-products produced by probiotics in your intestinal tract including metabolites, microbial cell fractions, functional proteins, extracellular polysaccharides, cell lysates, short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and many other bio-compounds. These by-products are more stable and may be even more effective than probiotics at improving the health and performance measures scientists associated with probiotics.
Other Benefits of Post-Biotics
Post-biotics circumvent the challenges of current probiotic supplements, including maintaining longer shelf life and reducing the need for specific packaging that protects the delicate probiotics from damage, cold storage and transport, not to mention maintaining a better product efficacy during transit through the intestinal system to the desired location.1 Post-biotics have also shown to have direct positive effects on overall health, digestion and even metabolism. One of the main post-biotics is butyric acid (also known as butyrate), a short-chain fatty acid that has been the focus of this relatively new wave of gut health supplements for a few good reasons.
Short-Chain Fatty Acid Formation In The Gut
What Is Butyrate?
Butyrate is one of the most common SCFAs found in your gut, along with acetic and propionic acid. These three SCFAs make up almost 95 percent of the total SCFAs in the gut.2 It’s the by-product of bacterial fermentation of undigested carbohydrates, including fibre in the gut. Eating foods with a high amount of resistant starch such as fruit, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds and vegetables will boost the amount of butyrate in your gut naturally.
The primary function of butyrate is to provide your colon cells with energy. It also plays a role in regulating water and electrolyte absor
ption in the gut, providing support for the epithelial barrier, modulating visceral sensitivity and intestinal motility and helping moderate inflammation and oxidative stress. Supplementing with butyrate offers many potential health benefits, including the following:
- Weight management
- Metabolic wellness
- Gut health
- Improved sleep quality
- Helping with butyrate deficiency (brought on by unhealthy, low-fibre diets)
The Problem with Butyrate: Introducing NNB Nutrition’s NewBiome Tributyrin
Despite all the benefits associated with butyrate, direct supplementation isn’t ideal. Because butyrate is a very strong acid, taking it orally is just not possible, not to mention that butyrate has a strong, unpleasant odour. Additionally, digestion and metabolism of butyrate is rapid, resulting in a lower concentration than required for its beneficial effects.
Despite these setbacks, there’s still a way to get the benefits of this post-biotic thanks to NNB Nutrition, which has developed a stable SCFA called tributyrin, a short-chain triglyceride with three butyrate molecules attached to glycerol. 
The result is a stable, non-volatile compound that is rapidly absorbed and hydrolyzed by the pancreatic and gastric lipases to yield glycerol and three active compounds of butyrate. These butyrate molecules get delivered exactly where they’re needed in the colon, passing through the stomach and intestine intact.
Tributyrin also has low toxicity and is three to four times more potent than sodium butyrate, and because NNB Nutrition uses a specialized purification technique to remove butyric acid, it yields a clean product with no odour. What’s more, tributyrin studies have also found this compound may provide many of the same benefits as butyrate, including weight management, gut and immune health, supporting muscle growth and even improving sleep.
Research Supporting the Benefits of Tributyrin in NNB Nutrition’s NewBiome
Metabolism & Weight Management
Tributyrin has shown promise as an effective treatment for weight management. In one study completed on eight-week-old male mice, tributyrin showed protection against diet-induced body weight gain and visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue masses, as well as insulin resistance.3 The study compared a standard diet with water with a high-fat diet with tributyrin given three times per week for 10 weeks. Results showed that tributyrin reduced body weight gain—specifically fat mass in high-fat-diet mice—and increased energy expenditure. Tributyrin also attenuated insulin resistance and glucose intolerance. Tributyrin also attenuated macrophage and white adipose tissue production of inflammatory mediators.
Gut & Immune Health
Gut and immune health can be affected by many contributing factors. When the intestinal microbiome is disrupted, it can cause gut dysbiosis. This causes a microbial imbalance between good and bad bacteria in the gut. Gut dysbiosis can lead to butyrate deficiency because of microbiota changes, which can affect metabolism, immunity and barrier protection of the gut.
Tributyrin has been shown in studies in mice to be useful for supporting a healthy gut lining and normalizing healthy intestinal permeability. Research has also shown that oral administration of tributyrin can have positive effects on colonic restructuring in an animal model. This research demonstrates a potential positive treatment for colitis, by reducing mucosal damage and gut inflammation.4 Tributyrin supplementation may also provide immune support by blunting the immune response.5, 6
Better Sleep
Supplementing with tributyrin may even help you get a better quality of sleep. Some evidence suggests that the intestinal microbiota is a source of sleep-promoting signals, via a link between the gut wall microflora and the sleep-generating mechanisms in the brain. When tributyrin was supplemented orally in mice, there was an increase in non-rapid eye movement sleep by 47 percent above baseline for four hours after treatment.7 Tributyrin may serve as a bacterial-derived sleep-promoting signal, promoting a better quality of sleep.
Muscle Growth
Tributyrin may be a promoter of muscle growth and repair via satellite cell myogenesis. Myogenesis is the promotion of muscle tissue development. It has been found that HDAC (histone deacetylase) inhibitors such as butyrate have positive outcomes on the promotion of satellite cell myogenesis.8 HDAC is an enzyme that removes a specific acetyl group, allowing the DNA to wrap more tightly. This is important because DNA is wrapped around a histone, and DNA expression is regulated by acetylation and deacetylation. HDAC inhibitor can therefore alter satellite cell regulation, allowing expression to occur.9
In one study, it was found that satellite cells of piglets treated with tributyrin had altered myogenic potential, while piglets who received tributyrin had about a 40 percent increase in DNA-protein ratio after 21 days, showing potential for enhanced muscle growth.10 Piglets who received tributyrin during the neonatal phase had improved growth performance at the end of the study and had about a 10 percent larger loin eye area and muscle fibre cross‐sectional area. These findings suggest that tributyrin is a potent promoter of muscle growth via altered satellite cell myogenesis.
How to Use NNB Nutrition’s NewBiome Tributyrin
Gut health is important for many reasons, including immunity, weight management support, blood glucose metabolism and even sleep. If you have taken pre- 
and probiotics and want to try a new method to support your gut health, consider using NewBiome tributyrin. Two servings per day of 500 to 1000 milligrams are enough to experience the benefits. You can also look for NNB Nutrition’s NewBiome tributyrin in gut health products containing pre-, pro- or even post-biotic ingredients.
For more information on NewBiome tributyrin, go to www.nnbnutrition.com.
Scientific References: