Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

.jp.j. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

This is Scientific American's 60-second science. I'm Christopher Entagata. Got a minute?

The microbes in our gut play a big role in helping us digest our food.

But as they break down nutrients, they also generate secondary compounds that can influence our health.

Take carnitine or letheison, substances found in red meat.

When your gut microbes break them down, the bugs excrete the waste product trimethylamine,

or TMA, which your liver enzymes convert to trimethelamine and oxide, TMAO,

and that substance ups the risk of heart disease.

But the effect isn't limited to red meat eaters.

We're constantly feeding our gut microbes these compounds.

And even the most ardent, vegetarian or vegan, it happens.

Stanley Hazen, a physician in preventive cardiology at Cleveland Clinic.

Every time you eat, even when you eat a pickle or a cucumber or, you know, a pure piece of lettuce,

once you eat something, your gallbladder

contracts and squirts some bile into the intestines to try to help digest the food. And even bile,

he says, has compounds like lethison that gut microbes digest into TMA. So why not block the gut

microbes from making TMA in the first place?

Hazen and his colleagues found a substance that does just that. It's a kind of butanol called

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