Microscopic organisms surround us at all times, and are an unavoidable and essential part of life on earth. Bacteria, yeasts, and microbes are in the air we breathe, on the surfaces we touch, and make their homes in the food we eat, playing an extremely important role in agriculture and the ecosystem. Microbes are the most common and most abundant life form on the planet, and balance the chemistry of their immediate environment.
While most people associate bacteria and microorganisms with germs, pathogens, disease, and other unwanted elements, they actually make up the greater part of the metabolic function of the body. There are many different types of bacteria and microbes, and many of them are, in fact, essential to the health of the body.
The human digestive tract is home to a vast society of microbes that work in harmony with the body to deliver a wide range of health benefits. The synergistic relationship between these microbes, which are referred to as the microbiota of the body, provides us with the ability to harvest energy from food, increases the efficiency with which our bodies are able to absorb nutrients, and modulate immune system function.
The microbiota of the body, which consists of the gut flora, is often referred to as the “hidden organ” due to the significant impact it has on the function of the immune system. More than 70% of the immune system function of the body occurs as a direct result of the microbiome of the body, which makes caring for this element of your body extremely important.
In order to promote gut bacteria health, many health conscious individuals take probiotic supplements that contain colony-forming units of healthy microbes that reinforce the microbiome, assisting with digestion and reducing inflammation. These solutions, however, are extremely difficult to track.
It’s not possible to determine whether the probiotic supplements you are taking are having a positive effect outside of self-reported benefits, which are often caused by the placebo effect.
A new home-testing kit, however, is making it possible for health enthusiasts to assess the balance and health of their digestive bacteria with a simple, powerful, and intelligent solution. The uBiota solution is the first of its kind, and is a scientifically proven method of tracking the probiotic effects of dietary regimen.
In this article, we’ll take a look at the uBiota solution and find out how it works to help you decide if it’s the right health tracking service for your needs.
What is uBiota?
Stating their company mission as revealing the deep interconnections between the processes of life on earth and microbes, uBiota is a pioneer in a new form of testing that aims to make simple, easy microbiotic testing accessible to health enthusiasts around the world.
By delivering technological solutions that make it possible for anybody to monitor the ongoing health of the microbiome in their body, uBiota want to help you explore your personal microbes and find out how to improve them.
How uBiota Works
The uBiota solution consists of a Personal Metagenomics Kit, or PMK, that is delivered directly to a health conscious consumer in order to provide them with the ability to assess the health of their microbiome at home. uBiota use a form of testing called Ribosomal sequencing, which is an extremely powerful way of assessing the balance of an ecosystem.
The Ribosomal sequencing abilities of the PMK provided by uBiota uses specialized messenger RNA, called mRNA sequencing to determine the structure, balance, and composition of the microbiome of the body. This process provides a snapshot of the ribosomes that are active in a cell at a specific point in time, which allows the PMK to determine the composition of the gut biota.
The uBiota solution provides consumers with a full breakdown of the composition of their microbiome by percentage, detailing all of the different species of gut flora present and their distribution. By arming consumers with this information uBiota makes it possible to see whether the specific probiotic strains included in your probiotic supplement are actually working, or whether they’re ineffective.
As recent clinical investigations have found that most of the probiotic supplements available on the market today are less than 20% as effective as they claim, this new testing procedure is set to cause a stir in the probiotic industry.
Many probiotic supplements are dead on arrival due to the poor packaging techniques used by probiotic supplement companies – extreme temperatures and time plays an important role in the potency of a probiotic supplement, so the PMK provided by uBiota makes it easy to tell whether your solution is working or not.
Getting started with uBiota is simple- interested health enthusiasts simply order a PMK from the uBiota website, which is shipped directly to their home. After providing a sample and mailing it back to uBiota, the consumer is then provided with a detailed and actionable report via their uBiota account.
The uBiota Team
The uBiota platform is the brainchild of Kael Fischer, who works as a Research Assistant Professor of Pathology at the University of Utah School of Medicine. Having researched the function of the microbiome for more than two decades through the study of computational biology and metagenomics.
Together with Ben Chan, who has a significant amount of experience in phage therapy and works as an associate Research Scientist in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, the uBiota team have developed a powerful and accessible tool that makes at-home microbiome testing possible.
uBiota don’t only offer personal PMK testing either. The powerful Ribosomal sequencing tools provided by uBiota can also be used to test a wide range of samples, and as such, uBiota provide a flexible testing service at variable rates for citizen scientists around the world.
uBiota Verdict
The uBiota solution is the world's first accessible consume-focused microbial testing service, and offers a powerful and reliable way to assess the health and structure of the microbiome in your body. If you’d like to find out whether your probiotics are working, the uBiota platform is definitely worth trying out.
