Pasteurized Akermansia and Metabolic Health

What if the most effective probiotic isn’t alive? We dive into the surprising science of pasteurized Akkermansia muciniphila—how a heat-treated microbe can tighten the gut barrier, steady blood sugar, and spark fat oxidation without needing to survive your stomach. Drawing on recent human trials and compelling mechanistic insights, we unpack why preserving cell-wall signals and membrane proteins may matter more than colony counts, and why autoclaving destroys the very benefits pasteurization protects.

We break down Akkermansia’s unique role in maintaining a thick, resilient mucus layer that shields the intestinal lining and reduces permeability. From there, the systemic payoffs emerge: improved insulin sensitivity, GLP-1–like effects, reduced inflammation, and better liver fat metabolism. We also highlight the speed of change—often within weeks—when gut signaling and barrier integrity improve. Along the way, we explore the “food matrix” idea, showing how even non-living microbial fragments can shape the microbiome’s behavior.

Looking for practical steps? We outline how to track progress with a CGM, fasting insulin, and LPS-related markers. Then we share simple levers to support Akkermansia naturally: intermittent fasting, low-glycemic or ketogenic patterns, polyphenol-rich foods like cranberries, pectin from citrus peels or unripe apples, and regular aerobic training. Equally important, we call out what to avoid—artificial sweeteners like sucralose and aspartame that can suppress Akkermansia. For those considering a postbiotic, pasteurized Akkermansia offers a targeted, promising path for metabolic health, gut integrity, and even potential strength gains in older adults.

If this conversation sparks ideas or challenges a long-held belief about probiotics, share it with a friend, subscribe for more science-forward self-care, and leave a review to help others discover the show. What’s your next step to build a stronger gut?

For video, slide deck and open source references: www.thehealthedgepodcast.com

Transcript

Hellos And Travel Catch-Up

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Health Edge, translating the science of self-care. I'm Mark Pettis and I'm with my friend colleague John Bagnulo. John, good morning.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Good morning, Mark. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Doing great. Nice to see you. Here we're getting well into March now, and uh the turning our clocks ahead soon. And uh spring is uh in the air. Winter winter still has a pretty good hold on us here in New England, as you know. And yeah, uh but it's a it's a it's a promising time of year if you like light and uh warmer temperatures, and so uh good to good to be together.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Yeah, absolutely. How things would you they're good, they're good, and like you said, uh this time of year, you know that despite what it looks outside, that it's just a matter of time before you can get outside with a shorts and t-shirt.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

You were just down in Florida recently teaching?

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Yeah, I was in the Vero Beach area, which was uh really a great, you know, great break. Um, yeah, I had a program there at a place called Chosen, which is a it's a really interesting uh retreat center where they you know offer a lot of different different uh options for groups. So we had an amazing, amazing time there. Um and then I got to, you know, spend a couple weeks with a family. So it was great. So you got to get you got to get down to the Caribbean, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Wonderful. Yeah, we uh recently got back from St. Thomas, beautiful Saint Thomas, where we um we've had a place down there in in years past, which we have since um uh sold, but it's it's been a frequent destination for us, and it's a it's a beautiful island, and um you know places you revisit, you start to become very familiar with. So it's it's it's really like returning to a very familiar place, and it's always great to escape the New England winters. So yeah, we're very grateful in the Pettis family to be able to head south.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Oh, it's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

And to be with family, and uh, you know, as you know, John, nothing like being with family. And as I as my kids get older, my kids are in their 30s now, you know, they're family's family. So I feel uh lucky that my kids live close to home here and and we get to be together. And so it's as they say, priceless.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

So we have an interesting topic that you had brought to my attention uh some weeks back, John. Looking at the efficacy of uh a probiotic, in this example, acromantia, which is a type of organism that we've talked about before, that uh is pasteurized. So this is an organism that is uh pasteurized and then given uh as a uh uh I think some would call it a postbiotic supplement, and demonstrating in small numbers of people and in a clinical human trial of really interesting and positive effects on metabolic health, uh blood glucose, insulin, things that we talk about often that are known to be drivers of chronic complex disease. And um and it brings us, John, into this very broad black box of the gut and the gut ecosystem and probiotics and um and then acromancy a bit more specifically as kind of a unique player in this ecosystem and with some uniquely positive effects. And so um uh thank you for that information and and I look forward to looking at a few papers and uh kind of an overview of why this is an important topic. And um, and then we'll close with uh, you know, what does this mean? Is this a a supplement worth uh reaching for for those that are either taking a probiotic of a different nature? And it's really kind of a wild west out there when it when it comes to probiotics. Um and and so yeah, where how how would you begin to frame this uh this theme, John, as you looked at it initially?

Food Matrix And Microbial DNA Signals

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Yeah, well, a couple things, um, and I may digress for just a moment as I kind of reflect back on some papers that I looked at, you know, I I think one of them was more than 10 years ago, um, which the researchers, it'll all be connected here in a minute, but the researchers looked, they were the broader topic of the study was on the food matrix and all the different components in a food that we often, you know, clinicians, consumers, whoever, we often don't appreciate. And so the researchers decided to look at some of the real subtleties of whole foods and what was part of the food matrix. And what they what they discovered and what was talked about in this paper was that if you take a food, let's say, out of the ground, or you take a food that has a microbial content to it, um, and what they were really looking at were soil-based organisms that would be on things like the skin of a carrot or on a potato. And the researchers found that when you make soup with carrots, let's say, because again, the broader topic of this this whole conversation was the food matrix. And there's a lot of things to foods that we just don't appreciate, they don't appear on the nutrition facts panel. Um, but that the carrots and the bacteria that are going to be on the surface of a carrot, even after it's after it's thoroughly washed, but it's gonna be made into soup, let's say, that the bacteria on the surface of that carrot, even after it's cooked, the DNA is passed off to other bacteria in the gut, even after it's cooked. And so they found they found the the DNA from these different soil-based organisms. They found it on the, you know, obviously the the organisms were on the carrots. Um, they they were no longer alive because the carrots had been cooked, but they were able to show how the soil-based organisms were passing on information to gut organisms that were alive when they looked at stool samples of people consuming the soup. So it was a real like, wow, real for me, when I when I looked at that paper, it was the first time that I ever appreciated the contributions that bacteria might make to the microbiome just in terms of their genetic material, right? Because we know there's a lot of swapping of DNA and genetic material. And, you know, I liked how you just referred to it as the black box, so to speak. That's, you know, I think that's a great description, Mark. There's so much that goes on in the microbiome that we have zero appreciation for. We just have no idea, you know, and and I think it's just so oversimplified to think like you take a probiotic or you know, you get this organism, and maybe you maybe you move the needle a little bit with respect to the populations there, but I just think it's there's so much more to the current uh of that river that we don't really appreciate. And I think that, you know, again, coming now to the topic we're we're on now, which is what is it on the surface of a bacterial cell wall, let's say, that signals for changes in that gut ecosystem, or maybe in the case of acromantia, the gut wall, you know, it really appears to be equally effective at tightening up the gap junctions of the gut wall as having the living acromantia there. If you look at some of these studies we're going to talk about. So yeah, it's just it's it's an amazing component to gut health, the microbiome, and the broader topic of how microbes affect our health. They don't have to be alive, right? They can they're either passing on information that's going to change the way bacteria maybe, you know, perform certain things in the gut or how they how they thrive in our gut, or they're going to contain substances that have direct effects on our physiology. And it doesn't, you know, doesn't have to be from a live organism, which I think is, I mean, I think that's probably the the biggest epiphany here.

Pasteurization Versus Autoclave Effects

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Great context there, John. And I love the you often refer to the food matrix. Uh, this is such a fundamental uh uh principle around the relationship between food we consume and the health effects where we become so focused on specific nutrients and vitamins and minerals and macronutrients and uh um supplements where things are extracted from the matrix and then reintroduced into an animal or a human, and expecting that uh you know you you're going to see uh uh an effect that um it can get lost in the context of what it is to um receive that in the matrix of the foods that you're eating. And soil-based organisms are a good example. And and this other concept that you you touch on, John, of the historical thinking that if a probiotic was an alive organism, you weren't likely to see the full effects of whatever that might offer to the gut microbiome and that ecosystem. And and these recent papers that will look at would suggest that pasteurized forms of the bacteria uh that really offer a bacteria that's been destroyed, yet the some of the surface membrane proteins that are preserved continue to exert very significant biologic and metabolic effects. That's a very different kind of revelation as it relates to um this complex uh interaction. Uh so yeah, let me I'll bring up a few slides here, John.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

Yeah, that sounds great. And you just touched on something I think is really important, which was that pasteurization, which is a much, you know, I for just for everyone's sake here, it's a much milder form of heating cooking than let's say autoclave processing, right? Because I think that's something we'll get to with these studies that when the when the acromantia in this case were autoclaved, they did not have the favorable effect because they were completely destroyed by the high heat used in that, which might be twice what pasteurization is. So that's that's really, you know, again, it's it's cool because you think about the food matrix, you think about how foods are normally cooked with your making a soup, it's very similar to pasteurization, those temperatures, right? You're gonna be in the around 200, 212, let's say, specifically. No one is cooking food in their kitchen in an autoclave. And if they are, right? It's it's for very different purposes. So even things like that, those subtleties of how food processing influences the food matrix are incredible. Great.

How Akkermansia Protects The Gut Barrier

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Great points. And this is just a sampling. Uh we've tried to focus on some studies in recent years. And so one of the um uh questions that I'm often asked, John, and and I think when it comes to the uh microbiome, when it comes to probiotics, there are still so many more questions than uh there is clarity. Yeah. Uh but but you begin to see certain um um microbes that um are just getting more attention. They seem to exert broader, more diverse metabolic effects. And acromastia, mucinophilia is one of those uh types. And so again, this is a study from China, Korea, uh looking at uh type 2 diabetes and and related uh diseases. This is a uh review, and again, um this includes both animal and uh a few early human clinical trials. And uh again, this is just to kind of give people a sense of the themes here, how acromancia and metabolic health is now uh this was like two years ago, uh leading to some some clinical human clinical trials. Uh and and animal studies, this graphic is is incomplete here. It was cut off. But when you look at uh these are liver biopsies, you look at fat in the liver and uh acromantia, um, one of its metabolic effects that that we'll talk about in more detail is to enhance the burning or the beta oxidation of fat. And that's very desirable for most people. Um and that and the liver will reflect in a shrinkage or or a diminished size of fat in that organ. And that's what this particular study uh looked at. And then a little more recently, this is a nice clinical overview of uh benefits and harms of acromancia. And I'm gonna I'll pause on this graphic, John, and and ask you to comment. But this is a nice, I like this because it's a nice uh overview, graphic overview of some of the unique uh attributes of acromantia and its effect on the gut and gut barrier function. And just take us through John.

Systemic Links To Metabolic And Brain Health

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Well, you know, the name acromantia, mucinophilia says it all. So the mucin layer, feelia obviously um, you know, attracted to um somewhat dependent upon that mucin layer. Acromantia basically chews into that mucin or mucus-like layer of the intestinal wall. And when it chews into that layer, it actually stimulates the production of a better, a thicker, more protective layer. So, in essence, it's like a maintenance worker. It is constantly uh, you know, just stimulating the production of mucin and keeping that thick protective layer the way it should be, which is going to protect the brush border from a lot of different things, but it's it's going to help maintain a tighter level of intestinal permeability overall, better integrity for the intestinal wall. Um, and you know, I think that's what we know the most about acromantia is you know, really its preferred food sources. Um, like you said, some of the some of the more systemic effects that it has in terms of you know improving insulin sensitivity and increased beta oxidation. But at the gut wall, it's really maintaining that mucin layer. And when acromantia disappears and and we don't have that presence, then the the mucin, the protective mucous layer tends to get it it tends to get thinner. Um, it tends to have you know less of that protective role. You tend to have higher levels of intestinal permeability, you have to have typically higher, yeah, you have higher levels of sensitivity to different substances. I mean, I've heard there are a lot of theories out there about the disappearance of acromancia as it, and again, I'm not gonna be able to cite a study that would fully validate any of these theories, but I I have heard from different people in areas of their specialty, immunology, gastroenterology, that we've had overall this, you know, this more of a disappearance of acromancia, right? And it's why maybe we have the just the explosion that we have had in the last two decades of food allergies, intolerances, things that, you know, 30 or 40 years ago were fairly rare, are now quite common. You know, everything from peanut allergy. And again, I I again I'm not going to be able to, you know, fully support or or refute any of these because I don't, you know, I just don't have that stuff at my fingertips. But certainly um the gut microbiome relationship is integral to this conversation. And acromancia, as you pointed out, appears to be, you know, maybe one of the top two or three species of bacteria that that maintain the integrity of that frontier, right? That you know, 75% of our immune system is within one centimeter, one and a half centimeters of of the gut wall. And if you look at what maintains the gut wall, well, wow, acromancia is is really front and center for that conversation. So that's the way I really like to summarize its role at the in terms of gut health, Mark, is just the main the maintenance of that mucus layer. Um, and we know that when acromancia is insulted by things, either environmental exposures or things we eat, um, you know, it really its population can be influenced fairly dramatically. And we can maybe talk about that a little later on, but yeah, it's pivotal.

Pasteurized Outperforms Live: Early Trials

GLP-1, Fat Oxidation, And Butyrate

SPEAKER_00 18:41

That's a great thank you, John, for that that overview. And we've, uh as I think most of our listeners know, um have for many years been exploring in more depth how the gut and this critical barrier, mucin barrier that you refer to, and the integrity of the uh junctions that uh tightly align our gastrointestinal cells is really a uh kind of a fault line in human biology, human health, where uh disruptions here, you know, what we historically would have called leaky gut, uh, or uh, you know, when I'm with my medical colleagues, I refer to gut barrier trafficking or gut barrier function, and that that seems more palatable, I guess, uh than leaky gut. Uh and uh you you begin to see how this systemic inflammation, this alteration in integrity really does have these downstream uh um magnified effects that that we can now connect to obesity and diabetes and cardiovascular disease and depression and um um degenerative neurologic diseases. So you so you really do see how from a systems perspective, how how critical all of this this really is. And uh and some of these uh studies now looking at pasteurized acromantia, uh kind of a next generation, right? Uh postbiotic, uh and and uh postbiotic as I interpret uh this uh language, John, is really this is um a live organism that has been uh modified in this case by through pasteurization, um, enough to kill the organism, but as you pointed out, John, not enough to uh destroy the signaling molecules and the membranes of this organism. Uh and that appears to be uh an effective modification. And uh again, the early studies are showing improvements in insulin, gut barrier function, uh, and it and it interestingly, and for reasons that I can't explain, even appears to have greater efficacy than its live counterpart. Uh and it does in early studies appear to be quite safe for adults and kids uh in managing uh all of these cardiometabolic risks from obesity to, as we talked about, fatty liver and visceral fat, certainly management of uh glucose and insulin. And so it it's exciting to uh perhaps have a um to move from this a wild west of All kinds of different organisms and colony forming units and to a more specific targeted surface membrane molecular strategy that is probably an easier way for people to access the potential benefits that acromancia offers.

Measuring Change: Glucose And Inflammation

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Is that a fair Yeah, that's great, Mark. I mean, I absolutely I think two big things come out of these, you know, these first papers on this. Number one is there's just it's you know, the efficacy of those colonizing, you know, those colony forming units, uh, do they they don't always survive, whether it's stomach acid, whether it's other microbes that they hit first. But for whatever reason, you know, taking some of these, some of these really important life forms, but taking them in a live form, they don't always, they don't always make it, is the best way I can summarize it, right? So you've got really mixed results in terms of using a live form of acromancia to change the landscape of the microbiome. Just they, for whatever reason, they don't seem to take um across all populations and in all you know different situations. So you got that component to it. Lower efficacy of just trying to establish a uh a greater uh population of acromancia doesn't always happen. And then you get the whole safety component, which some of it is a little ridiculous, you know, in terms of the regulations that are put on the use of live um microbes, you know, there's there's there's still some attempt by FDA oversight here to regulate what people are taking in terms of live bacteria. I laugh because they're so there's so much better uses of their resources than than this. But um, that being said, you've got the whole safety component to this. And if you can circumnavigate both of those with a pasteurized and non-live bacteria whose cell wall contains really powerful signals uh for gut health, you know, whether it's a gut wall. And you know, the other thing that we haven't talked about is this paper, limited population. I think there were 100 adults over the age of 60 who took a heat-treated acromantia and had significant gains in muscle mass and strength compared to those who got the control. Like that's to me, that's almost mind-bending, meaning that there was something in that heat-treated acromantia that increased muscle protein synthesis, uh, recovery benefits from strength training. That's, you know, that's like in an entirely different area here than improving metabolic syndrome, which obviously public health-wise is, you know, that would be goal number one. But if you think about the benefits to muscle mass and potentially all the, you know, everything that comes with that, that's that's another really intriguing level of this story. But yeah, that's it, man. You got you got heat-treated bacteria that are now producing more favorable results than taking live forms. That's it's a game changer.

Lifestyle Levers To Grow Akkermansia

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Very much so. And uh just uh bringing this home with uh a few um other sort of high-level uh conclusions from the research that that currently exists. You know, we've talked about metabolic health, uh, weight, and and fat loss with pasteurized acromancia. Um also uh, and I I didn't include this paper, but you will find GLP1 type effects uh from acromancia in these in these studies, and it's always uh important to look at how a pharmacologic uh intervention uh in the example of GLP1 is very popular currently, uh those effects uh can be mimicked uh through other mechanisms. And uh GLP1 is one of the mechanisms whereby acromantia um exerts these metabolic beneficial effects and uh you know inflammation, of course, is the sort of the passport to aging and reduced health span. Um you know, you just tend to see improvement, global improvements uh in this metabolic landscape. And again, uh this is interesting. I think we'll have a lot more to learn about why it is that pasteurization um may have more beneficial effects than uh, you know, an actual live uh bacteria, which is has been the sort of the standard of a probiotic recommendation. And so, you know, we we we've again just by way of a summary uh reducing fat accumulation through this enhancement of fat oxidation and mimicking GLP1 and and other metabolic effects. Uh we know that Acromancia John also is an important um producer of butyrate. Yeah, absolutely. Butyrate as a uh metabolic byproduct of fermentation and an important signaling molecule, uh saturated fat of uh a short chain saturated fat is also a very uh active area of research now in gut health. And so butyrate, um very much a byproduct of acromancia, and that that is very important in its metabolic effects. And and I think we're going to see a lot more clinical human trials here. This appears to be very slow, very interesting. And again, uh I'm always struck, John, by in the in the human studies that have been done, and how quickly you can begin to see these metabolic changes. We've talked a lot about how quickly you can see changes with reducing carbohydrate intake and um uh you know ketogenic uh approaches to metabolic health. Uh uh when one can leverage the gut and get an amplification of many of these diverse metabolic pathways, they seem to have profound effects in very short time frames.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Yeah, we a couple weeks, you know, you know, two to three weeks, you start to see like major changes in that endocrine component, you know, insulin sensitivity. Um it's it's really remarkable.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Very much so. And so, John, if somebody uh before we conclude, if if somebody somebody maybe is debating now whether whether to take uh a pasteurized acromancia uh postbiotic, um which I would definitely uh consider and uh would have no hesitation to recommend. Um and I would suggest that there are many things one can follow. Often when you're taking a supplement, it's hard to know. I mean, you know, you may or not or not notice a difference in how you feel. Um, but when it comes to glucose, if as you measure that, uh if you're wearing a continuous glucose monitor, when you're looking at uh inflammation, when you're looking at insulin levels, um many labs now can measure uh LPS, lipopolyceptide as a marker of gut permeability. I mean, there are many things of course you can look at uh as a measurable way of demonstrating change with this, which is the other really good thing about it, in my view. So um, but outside of that, John, uh somebody says, geez, Dr. Bagnulo, uh, you know, how can I get maybe more acromancia or help the acromancy I have thrive in in ways that maybe it's not what are what are some of the lifestyle or nutrition strategies that you would recommend to them?

Where To Find Resources And Wrap-Up

SPEAKER_01 30:30

Well, that's a great, you know, a great question, or maybe a point is that you know, many of us have at least modest amounts of acromancia, and sometimes they just need a little help, right? And what research has shown in terms of associations as well as some cause and effect is that intermittent fasting, um, you know, a more ketogenic lifestyle, those tend to support higher levels of acromancia. And the the line of thought here is that if people eat too frequently, um, you know, eating every, let's say every two hours, right? That that constant influx of food stuff and carbohydrates in particular, it suppresses acromancia populations. Um, and it, you know, again, is it because they are going to be outcompeted by other families of bacteria, or is it because it creates an environment where acromancia is less likely to work on that mucin layer that we talked about, and it's going to be almost like preoccupied or distracted by kind of food stuff that's coming into the digestive tract. You know, that part's less clear, but we know that really frequent eating tends to be associated with lower levels of acromancia, whereas intermittent fasting, a ketogenic diet, less carbohydrates, appears to be associated or supportive of higher levels of acromancia. So that would be one observation that's really consistent across research on this bacteria. The other is um it's very sensitive to certain acromancia is very sensitive to certain chemicals and artificial sweeteners in particular. Uh studies have looked at sucralose, studies have looked at uh, you know, nutrisweet, aspartame, and very, very minute amounts of those artificial sweeteners tend to have very detrimental effects on acromancia populations. So artificial sweeteners really suppress it. Uh, intermittent fasting tends to really encourage the growth of acromancia. Uh, we know that polyphenols, like the right, the the polyphenols that would be fine at found cranberries are one that I, you know, like off the top of my head, I know cranberries contain a mix of polyphenols that appear to be incredibly conducive to feeding acromancia. Uh pectin does as well. Pectin being found in you know certain fruits like citrus fruits and in the peels of citrus fruits and in unripe apples. Uh, they have much, much more pectin than, let's say, a ripe apple. But pectin, and you can you can buy obviously pectin powder, people use it for canning. And you wouldn't need to get modified citrus pectin to feed acromancia. You could use pectin powder that would be fine for like making jam at home and which people use for you know a long time when they made their own uh fruit fruit preserve. So there's a lot of different polyphenols that feed acromancia. Pectin is the type of fiber that's most effective at feeding it. And you want to give yourself a break from eating, whether that, you know, whether you need a 13-hour or a 14-hour, I don't know that. I just know that you know not eating all the time is generally associated with higher levels of acromancia. Those are some of the big kind of high-level observations. And the last one is people who are more aerobically active, and again, the thought on this, it has something to do with blood flow to the gut. But people who are kind of in a more higher intensity aerobic activity level, they tend to also have higher levels of higher levels of acromantia. So then, of course, the question becomes, you know, is is acromantia, you know, a byproduct of some of these lifestyle components? Um, or is it, you know, is it also making those lifestyle components um a little easier for people to even adopt? That's, you know, because we know there's a a back and forth, right? Gut microbes have a lot of influence on our mind, on our aerobic capacity, as you know, you and I have talked about, it's not a it's not a one-way street, it's probably a two-way street to some extent, right? So I think it's really it's a it's a really fascinating topic, though, because all of those different components of lifestyle that you and I have talked about, acromancia seems to be really intertwined with those uh intricately.

SPEAKER_00 35:02

Brilliant way to close this discussion, John. Thank you for that. Yeah, that's awesome. And um, this uh recording will be on our uh website, the healthedgepodcast.com. We'll put a few of the papers that we referenced here that are open source on that site as well. And um John's Substack um uh material is just awesome. His last one checked in. This is just brilliant news to use. And and thank you, Mark.

SPEAKER_01 35:40

Appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

Of course. Please check out John's Substack. You'll be very glad that you did. Uh and until next week, John, great, great reviewing this topic. Uh we'll thank you, Mark. Relevant for next week. And until then, you be well. Stay well, my friend. Hey, you as well, buddy.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

Take care.