Caya Biome

10/05/2026

We’re excited to share our gut health supporting daily synbiotic this Friday. And, excited to see all the other local wellness companies on display!

09/25/2026

A baby's first bite of solid food doesn't just start weaning — it flips a switch inside the gut biome.

Researchers in Cork, Ireland followed 125 infants through 250 stool samples collected before and after solid foods entered the picture. Formula-fed babies showed a much bigger shift than breastfed ones — 162 altered metabolic pathways compared with just seven — as their gut bacteria pivoted from simple milk sugars to breaking down complex plant starches. How long a baby was breastfed mattered more to that shift than the exact week solids began.

It's a reminder that the biome starts building its story long before we're paying attention.

Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-71325-4

09/15/2026

The signals of brain aging may show up decades before the symptoms do.

UCLA researchers scanned the brains of nearly 1,500 adults and built an index of how old each brain looked next to the person's actual age. Brains that looked older than their years scored lower on tests of working memory and focus. In one of the groups, the team also analyzed stool samples — and a higher score tracked with particular gut bacteria and the chemical byproducts they produce.

Add brain health to the list of things the biome appears to have a hand in.

Read more:

A new UCLA study has found a connection between how quickly the brain ages and the bacteria and chemical byproducts found in the gut, offering a fresh clue into what drives brain aging long before symptoms appear.

09/11/2026

Your gut may say more about your inflammation than your birthday does.

In a study of nearly 1,200 adults published in Nature Communications, the makeup of the gut biome explained more variation in inflammatory markers than chronological age did — for 97% of the cytokines measured. People carrying one low-diversity bacterial profile showed an inflammation pattern that usually appears decades later in life. Those with the most diverse biome showed the opposite: lower inflammation, and lower disease risk across roughly eight years of follow-up.

Diversity, it turns out, is one of the clearest signals of a biome that's working.

Read more:

Gut microbiota composition explained more variation than chronological age in nearly all inflammatory cytokines and most physiological measures examined, with specific microbial profiles linked to markedly different patterns of inflammation across adulthood. People with the Bacteroides 2 enterotype....

09/07/2026

The gut doesn't talk to the brain so much as to specific parts of it.

Researchers at the University of Surrey and the University of Roehampton imaged the brains of 61 healthy young women and sequenced their gut bacteria in the same study. Microbial pathways for making and breaking down neuroactive compounds tracked with levels of GABA and glutamate, the brain's two main chemical messengers — but the pattern shifted from region to region. Most earlier evidence for a gut-brain link came from animals, not people.

The team calls these associations, not causes. Still, it's a sharper map of where the gut biome and brain health meet.

Read more:

Surrey and Roehampton researchers found gut bacteria linked to key brain chemicals GABA and glutamate in a new human study. Discover more.

09/03/2026

Today's story: a Frontiers in Nutrition mouse study (via ScienceDaily, Aug 31) found sucralose and stevia shifted gut bacteria and lowered short-chain fatty acids — with some changes still detectable two generations later.

Picked it because the study's central measurement is SCFAs, which puts it directly on Caya's postbiotic-metabolite spine: a story where SCFAs going down is the bad news sets up the brand's argument without the post mentioning Caya at all. It's a mouse study, so the draft flags that twice and makes no advice or treatment claim.

Skipped the Mayo IBS story (used yesterday) and two disease-adjacent items. Full rationale and caveats are in source.md.

Sources: Popular sweeteners may leave effects that last for generations — ScienceDaily · Frontiers in Nutrition, 10.3389/fnut.2026.1694149

09/01/2026

Your gut bacteria may be making a molecule your body cannot make on its own.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet found that gut bacteria take nitrate from beets and leafy greens and non-heme iron from beans and whole grains, and assemble them into compounds called dinitrosyl iron complexes. In germ-free mice the compounds were absent entirely — no bacteria, no molecule. Raising those levels in an animal model of cardiometabolic disease improved blood pressure, vascular function, blood sugar control and liver fat, though the human work is still ahead.

The biome doesn't just break food down. It builds something new.

Read more:

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have discovered that gut bacteria can convert dietary nitrate and iron into protective molecules that may reduce the risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. The study, published in Cell, reveals a new way in which the gut microbiota helps protect vital bod...

08/31/2026

The bacteria in a baby's gut mostly come from one place, and it isn't where researchers expected.

A new Nature study followed 714 Dutch mothers and their infants from early pregnancy through the first birthday — 4,526 samples in all. The mother's gut biome turned out to be the main reservoir for her baby's gut strains, with only occasional handoffs from the vaginal or breast milk biomes. The team also found that mothers whose infants developed eczema in that first year tended to have less diverse gut biomes, a link that held even after accounting for smoking and family history of allergy. Why, they can't yet say.

The complete biome — gut, oral, skin — is a conversation that starts earlier than most of us would guess.

Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10922-9

08/25/2026

Doubling your fiber for four months may not change your biome at all.

That is what a Stanford team found, and Scientific American weighed it this week against "fibermaxxing" — the trend of eating as much fiber as possible. Participants who doubled their intake gained no microbial diversity, and none of the 19 inflammatory markers the researchers tracked went down. The people eating more fermented food did see more diverse microbes and lower inflammation.

Fiber feeds the biome you have; fermented food appears to widen it.

Read more: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-fibermaxxing-work-it-may-depend-on-your-microbiome/

08/12/2026

There were no live cultures in it, and the gut biome changed anyway.

A new four-week trial gave 76 healthy adults a postbiotic, not living bacteria, but the material fermentation leaves behind. Compared with placebo, that group showed enrichment of 33 beneficial gut species, including Akkermansia and Bifidobacterium, along with reduced levels of IL-8, an immune signaling marker. Overall diversity didn't move. But, composition did.

Fermentation delivers more than bacteria. It leaves behind the work they did.

Read more:

A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial found that daily supplementation with Verb Biotics’ oat-based postbiotic, Keystone, enriched beneficial gut microbiota, reduced pro-inflammatory biomarkers, and improved emotional wellness in healthy adults over four weeks. Mechanistic studies s...