Clarity Prebiotic Blend

Clarity Prebiotic Blend™ is designed to soothe your gut microbes to maintain a normal, healthy gut lining. Amazingly, those gut microbes can communicate with your brain. A balanced and diverse set of gut microbes sends an “all okay” signal, contributing to mental focus and mood stability.

To keep your beneficial gut microbes healthy, Clarity Prebiotic Blend combines natural fiber, polyphenols, flavonoids, and antioxidants that your gut can’t digest, but your microbes love. Those well-fed microbes then produce fatty acids that nourish and maintain your gut lining. A healthy lining lets nutrients in, but keeps bacteria out. Healthy microbes also produce neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, which can contribute to positive moods. This is called the gut-brain axis.

Research indicates that a diverse gut is a healthy gut, so Clarity Prebiotic Blend has multiple prebiotics to encourage a variety of beneficial microbes like Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria species. Prebiotics and probiotics that confer mental health benefits are called psychobiotics. According to one study, “most of the human diseases affecting westernized countries are associated with dysbiosis and loss of microbial diversity in the gut microbiota.”†

If you are already eating enough fruits and veggies to get 30 grams of fiber a day, you likely won’t find much benefit from Clarity Prebiotic Blend. For instance, you can get 30 grams of fiber if you eat 11 cups of broccoli every day:

But if you’re not getting that, you might benefit from a supplemental fiber boost. Ideally, you should eat a lot more veggies and a lot fewer donuts, right? But sometimes life gets in the way, and supplemental extracts can fill the gap.

A jar of Clarity Prebiotic Blend contains a 30-day supply that you can sprinkle over food or mix in with liquids. You can even cook with it. It has a slightly sweet taste that goes with anything.

Ingredients

All of the ingredients in Clarity Prebiotic Blend have been minimally processed. They are typically dried and then milled to a powder, concentrating their goodness and making them easy to digest. High-calorie sugars are removed, so the ingredients are healthy for anyone worried about their blood sugar levels.

We use plants containing a variety of fibers, flavonoids and polyphenols to encourage a diversity of beneficial bacteria in the gut. The primary beneficiaries of these various fibers are Bifidobacteria and Lactobacillus species, which are protective against pathogens and provide short-chain fatty acids to nourish the gut lining.

We know the provenance of all our ingredients. Their quality and sustainability is impeccable. Our ingredients come from all over the world, where the plants grow best and thus leave the lightest footprint on the environment. In every choice we make, we opt for sustainability and quality.

We are excited to offer this blend to our friends who want to stay mentally sharp, focused and upbeat in a world with its share of stress. We suggest you try a jar to see if you like it. If you have any problems, like extra gas, cut back on the serving size and slowly increase your consumption. If you don’t normally eat a lot of veggies, Clarity should be eased into.

Jerusalem artichokes

Jerusalem artichokes are not artichokes and they aren’t from Jerusalem. They taste a little like artichokes, but they are fast-growing tubers with yellow flowers on long stalks and look nothing like artichokes. They were named after the Italian word for sunflower, girasole, which then morphed over the years into Jerusalem. Now that we’ve dispensed with the word play, let’s look at how healthy they are.

Jerusalem artichokes contain a lot of inulin, a prebiotic that microbes use to create short-chain fatty acids that nourish and aid in the continuous repair of the gut lining. In combination with other fibers, it leads to the growth of Bifidobacteria and Lactobacillus species, both of which are guardians of the gut, keeping pathogens at bay. Studies have shown that dietary inulin can reduce neuroinflammation.†

Jerusalem artichokes also contain raffinose and stachyose, two oligosaccharides containing galactose, making them versions of galacto-oligosaccharide or GOS. That, in turn, raises levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) which can have an anti-anxiety effect.†

Potato Resistant Starch

You might not think of potatoes as health food, but that’s because we end up cooking them and adding lots of delicious fats, like butter, sour cream and bacon. But raw potatoes contain something called resistant starch that is a superfood for your beneficial microbes. It gets its name because it is resistant to digestion, unlike cooked potatoes. In that sense, it is a lot like fiber that makes it through the gut intact so that it can feed the microbes in your colon.

The benefits of resistant starch are many and varied, including keeping insulin and blood sugars at healthy levels, reducing appetite and lowering inflammation.†

The potato starch in Clarity Prebiotic Blend is vegan, gluten free, Kosher, and non-GMO.

Aronia Berries

Aronia berries, also called chokeberries, are tart little bundles of flavonoids and polyphenols, nutrients that delight the beneficial bacteria in your gut. These berries have the highest levels of flavonoids and polyphenols of any berries so far studied, so they provide a lot of bang per gram. They contain anthocyanins and pro-anthocyanidins, which have strong antioxidant properties. They have been shown to have anti-obesity effects, and seem to improve insulin sensitivity.† They also have anti-pathogen effects, mostly due to the pro-anthocyanidins.†

By affecting gut microbes, polyphenols and flavonoids can reduce neuroinflammation and help to improve memory and cognitive function.† Researchers are finding that dietary polyphenols and flavonoids play a big role in the prevention and treatment of neurological disorders.†

For a condensed flavonoid and polyphenol punch, it’s hard to beat Aronia berries and that’s why we include it in Clarity Prebiotic Blend.

Apple Peel Powder

Do we need to remind you that apples are healthy? Researcher Dianne Hyson at Cal State University Sacramento says, “Exposure to apples and apple products has been associated with beneficial effects on risk, markers, and etiology of cancer, cardiovascular disease, asthma, and Alzheimer’s disease. Recent work suggests that these products may also be associated with improved outcomes related to cognitive decline of normal aging, diabetes, weight management, bone health, pulmonary function, and gastrointestinal protection.”† And that, apparently, is how you keep the doctor away.

Apple peels are the most nutrient-intense part of the apple. Sadly, manufacturers often toss them away in favor of the sugary flesh they covet for juice and applesauce. Happily, we have secured a supply of organic apples whose peels are saved, quickly and gently dried, and then milled into a powder. No chemical processing is used, preventing contamination and keeping toxic solvents out of the environment and out of you. That simple natural process ensures that the flavonoids and polyphenols remain intact. Apple peels contain a variety of polyphenols and flavonoids, including quercetin, anthocyanins, and catechin – all strong antioxidants.

At least one study has shown that apple peel powder is helpful to joint function and range of motion.† That’s what you would expect from antioxidants that protect tissues and thus avert any inflammatory response.

The apple peels we use in Clarity Prebiotic Blend are vegan, gluten free, non-GMO and USDA-certified organic.

Green Tea Extract

Green tea is a rich source of polyphenols, amazing nutrients that microbes love. Studies show that green tea helps to reduce anxiety while improving cognition and memory.†

There are three constituents of green tea that have been repeatedly shown to improve mood and cognition, namely caffeine, L-theanine, and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG).† Each has an important effect, but when they are combined the effect is significantly enhanced. A meta-analysis looking at 49 studies provided evidence that L-theanine and caffeine have clear beneficial effects on sustained attention, memory, and suppression of distraction.†

The green tea we use in Clarity Prebiotic Blend is minimally processed: it is steamed and then dried, liberating the maximal amount of polyphenols with a minimal amount of fuss.

Sunflower Lecithin

Lecithin was first isolated from egg yolks by Théodore Gobley in 1845. Soon he was finding lecithin everywhere, but especially in brains. Clarity’s lecithin doesn’t come from egg yolks or brains; it is extracted by cold-pressing sunflower seeds. It is, however, very brain-friendly. Sunflower lecithin is less common and more expensive than soy lecithin, but it avoids problems with soy, like allergies, Kosher status, and GMO origins.

Lecithin is a good source of choline, an essential nutrient, but is is also a natural emulsifier that can improve absorption of the other ingredients. The sunflower lecithin we use in Clarity Prebiotic Blend is vegan, Kosher, and non-GMO.

† These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.