10 Types of Microbes I Use at Home

As a probiologist that sells bacteria for a living, I am excited about the many uses of bacteria in daily life, and to address the big challenges of our civilization, like feeding the world and reducing carbon emissions. Here are 10 microbial solutions I use to bring balance to my health, home, and garden.

I/ Bacteria for the home

1.?????Yokuu Bacilli for cleaning the home

Yokuu?is a Belgian startup that developed a range of products to bring bacteria back to the inside of our homes and kindly sent me a set to try. The company’s name comes from Shinrin-Yoku, the Japanese therapeutic practice of forest bathing, which supports mental wellness and immunity, thanks to the senses, the substances of the forest, and the contact with its microorganisms.

It offers tablets that keep for a couple of years and can be reconstituted with water to make a bathroom cleaning spray, a multi-purpose cleanser, a glass spray, a floor cleaning powder, dishwasher tablets, and my favorite, the washing machine sheets!

For the tablets, dissolve in water, and for the surface cleaning powder, just use a tablespoon in your warm cleaning water, while for the laundry, one sheet per machine and you’ll have clean, fragrant, Bacilli-covered clothing. I believe these laundry sheets have solved the bad canalization smells we had before.

Why use microbes in cleaning products? To increase the abundance of microbes in your home – and apparently, these formulas help reduce groups of microorganisms associated with allergies, dust mites, etc. (but I never saw the data). Plus, the idea is also to keep surfaces clean for longer, as the applied bacteria feed on dust particles. Yet for me, there’s still an open question: can such products based on the same few Bacilli applied to all surfaces risk reducing bacterial diversity overall?

What else?

Yokuu is not the only one proposing bacteria-based cleaning solutions, the Italian company Copma commercializes well-studied Bacilli in the context of hospitals and transports for cleaning solutions under the name of?PCHS?(Probiotic Cleaning Hygiene System). In hospitals,?Elisabetta Caselli’s work?showed a tremendous reduction of the pathogen load and their antimicrobial resistance genes (by 99.9%) and halving nosocomial infections. The studies from her group in the past 15 years showed such benefits when applied in hospitals, schools, retirement homes, and transportation. I am not sure however if these products are available for individuals.

2.?????Kombucha vinegar as an anti-limestone

Still in cleaning products, here’s a homemade one.

When making kombucha, I sometimes let it ferment too long, and it becomes very acidic. It can no longer be drunk, so I let it ferment even more and it becomes kombucha vinegar, which can be used in seasoning, or to remove limestone accumulation in the bathroom, sink, and boiler. Because our home water is so hard, we use it quite a lot.

II/ Bacteria for the self

3.?????Biotic cosmetics

Gallinée Microbiome Skincare and LaFlore? Live Probiotic Skincare offer cosmetics and soaps to deliver prebiotics and postbiotics to the skin and scalp. I tried Gallinée’s shampoo and LaFlore face cream which seemed to make my skin smoother. I also tried PROBIOTICAL S.P.A. ’s Skinbacs, tyndalized bacteria for face cream and eye contour.

Why care for their skin microbiome?

The skin suffers similar attacks as the gut exposed to antimicrobials from food and antibiotics: as we shower with soap and hot water, the fatty protective layer on our skin is damaged, and so are bacteria inhabiting it. The creams and cosmetics we apply also impact the skin microbiome – they are usually packed with preservatives to impede microorganisms from growing in the product, and do the same on the skin. The regulation requires this for hygiene, but we have some paradigm changes to work on.

The body smells are not produced by our skin itself, but by the bacteria that inhabit it. Unfortunately, when we wash, it seems the pathobionts and those causing bad smells are faster to regrow. This is why?Chris Callewaert, Dr. Armpit,?who works on armpit microbial transplants, suggests stopping showering and shampooing for a month or two, to see how the new balance plays out. If you manage to do that, you’re a microbial hero and I want to hear about your experience!

4.?????Food supplements probiotics and postbiotics

I am not a regular supplements consumer with a routine of one capsule a day –but whenever I remember, I enrich my breakfast with probiotics, vitamin D, iron, and/or omega 3. The products I take regularly are our TargEDys’ EnteroSatys with?Hafnia alvei?HA4597 (the company where I work), especially when I have sugar cravings and want to keep in control of my food intake, the postbiotic?Akkermansia muciniphila, because my gut tests revealed I didn’t host the precious Verrucomicrobia, our PhyliaBiome for the oxytocin mimetics and adaptogen, a product with?L. plantarum?DR7 studied for the enhancement of serotonin pathways – because I believe the world needs more of the happy neurotransmitter and less of the pleasure-addiction dopamine, and Alflorex?B. longum?35624 for its anti-inflammatory properties.

5.?????Yogurt starter cultures

Every week, I use Alsa starter cultures readily available from the supermarket to make homemade yogurts, and recently I tried Yogumel, a brand from AB-BIOTICS available in Spain, with added benefits for immune defenses or digestion.

I also tested recently a French brand called?Brin de Foli?to ferment vegetable milks. Plant-based would be a healthy and more sustainable alternative to dairy, but so far I have not been convinced of the taste, texture, and naturality of formulations – let alone price! Brin de Foli’s starter cultures are several grams heavy because of the added starch for the texture, which I am not a fan of. The startup is now redirecting the strategy towards vegetal kefir. Yogut Me was also working on this since several years but I don't believe the vegetable yogurt machine is available yet. If anyone is working on this and wants testers, let me know!

6.?????Yeast for beer fermentation

We sometimes brew homemade beer with our sapient and well-equipped friends, and couldn’t go anywhere without?Saccharomyces cerevisiae! It’s an almost day-long process with several steps of grinding the cereals, boiling, refreshing, adding ingredients, heating again, and then leaving the yeast to do its magic. The beauty of making homemade beer is that we can test different recipes every time – the smoked and the fruity ones are excellent! – and reuse the cans indefinitely.

It's a fun day to spend with friends, and a couple of weeks after we meet again for bottling, then share the production.

Why is homemade beer better for you?

Mass-market beer is usually pasteurized or filtered to a level that removes yeast, because it quadruples its shelf life. We don’t filter yeasts out of our beer, so beyond the fun and convivial time, it’s also a healthier practice to drink live microorganisms.

7.?????Yeast for salads and soups

Nutritional yeast is a superfood packed with nutrients and brings great taste to salads and soup, all of that from a very sustainable source.?Saccharomyces cerevisiae?is rich in many vitamins (B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B8, B9), minerals (magnesium, calcium, potassium, phosphorus and zinc) protein and fiber.

This powder really enhances the flavor, with its umami touch, and completes the dish with micronutrients and more protein. With 32g per 100g for the version I use, blended with wheat germ, it’s richer than beef and almost as proteinaceous as soy! As a flexitarian –?the best diet for a diverse microbiome?– I keep an eye on non-meat protein sources, and it’s a great one.

8.?????Kombucha

Kombucha is SCOBY-fermented tea, made from brewing tea and sugar with a “hat” floating on top, composed of yeasts and bacteria, that turn the sugar into acetic acid, vitamins and minerals.

I mentioned kombucha vinegar as a cleaning product, but it can also be used in seasoning or marinades, and when well-balanced, kombucha is a nice, fresh and fizzy summer drink rich in microbes.

Wondering about the supposed benefits of kombucha, I?investigated its scientific backing and found few publications. Kombucha microorganisms don’t qualify as probiotics – they are not sufficiently characterized and have not demonstrated health benefits in humans, but in vitro, and animal data is promising.

III/ Bacteria for plants

9.?????Bokashi for fermenting compost

Bokashi is a blend of microorganisms with wheat bran and beet molasses thriving in anaerobic environments (in the absence of oxygen) developed to be sprinkled on organic waste at home, in a sealed container like a bucket with a tight lid.

Depending on your consumption habits, you should need no more than 2-3 kg of Bokashi per year for a household of 2 adults.

The benefits of fermenting your organic waste with Bokashi are two-fold:

-???????It’s easy to keep in the house or balcony without attracting animals or causing bad smells, because you keep the waste, layered with bokashi, in airtight containers, and the microorganisms prevent the ones of rot from developing

-???????It enriches your compost with organic matter and micronutrients, and the juice of compost is an excellent fertilizer for plants.

The producers claim that “Bokashi activator makes the soil more fertile and creates a healthy micro-organic composition in soil that is almost dead” (from?Moutta.net) but I can’t trace any publications backing the statement, only?a study of hydroponic bell peppers?comparing conventional to Bokashi that shows better results in the conventional treatment.

NB: Once the bucket is full and has fermented for a few weeks, you still need to empty it on a compost pile, so it’s a practice that works if you have a garden or can deliver the bucket contents to a common compost pile in your town.

10.??Microorganisms for the vegetable garden

Marc-André Selosse in Jamais Seul provides a fantastic testimony of?how much plants also rely on their symbiotic partnerships. Unfortunately, the Green Revolution has increased agriculture’s yields almost globally, but at the cost of destructing soil life, and plants’ partners, as well shown in?What Your Food Ate.

At the level of my vegetable garden, I wanted to help seedlings grow in the best conditions. So when I planted them from their nursery to their bigger pots, and from the pot to the vegetable garden, I added Bacteriosol? granules with the compost.

The?manufacturers claim?that these Effective Microbes are better than a fertilizer because they produce humus, help plants resist better to drought and diseases, and improve yield, taste, and conservation of the produce.

It is easy to use, but again, in this product category, there is no obligation of declaring the microbes used, or providing insights regarding their stability, and there is little scientific evidence backing these strong claims – Bacteriosol? doesn’t yield any results on Pubmed, and just one on Google Scholars were it was shown?remarkable for young date palms.

Conclusion

These are just a few concrete applications of microbes that I personally use at home, but there are many more uses of course in countless industries, in agriculture, beekeeping, food and beverage, chemical plants, medicine and biotechnology, bioremediation, carbon compensation, production of construction materials for furniture, buildings, clothing… Some novel ideas are being developed by entrepreneurs as shown in?Thriving with Microbes. The more we realize microorganisms are the biggest resource of natural allies we have, the better armed we will be to answer the big challenges of our time. So don't hesitate to spread the word!