The Digest

During our live Webinar: "Intro to Pendulum," customers submitted questions to be answered by Colleen Cutcliffe, PhD, CEO and Co-Founder of Pendulum. Below are her actual answers, lightly tidied up for grammar and readability but kept true to how they were said.

How long do I need to take Pendulum for the microbiome to "seed"? Is it indefinite?

When you think about your microbiome, you should think about it almost like a high-performing car, where you want a high-performing engine and to give it great fuel. The high-performing engine here in your body is your microbiome, and the great fuel is the food you're eating, your nutrition. You can't talk about a healthy microbiome without talking about good nutrition.

Some of the things you can do to help bolster your microbiome and these strains is have a high-fiber, high-polyphenol diet. Think about your produce section, that's where your fruits and veggies are, those leafy greens and fruits that have both fiber and polyphenols in them. Think about your beans section, lentils and beans are really high in fiber. Your spice section, if you love lots of flavor in your food, great, because those spices have polyphenols in them. Green teas are great for polyphenols. So thinking about your grocery shopping and the food you're eating is really important for your microbiome.

The one-two punch is if you can supplement with these strains plus have that diet, you're giving your body not just the probiotics, but the food that feeds them.

I'm going to give an answer that's going to be very dissatisfying, which is that how long you have to be on these totally depends on you. You're an individual, we all have different microbiomes, we all have different eating habits, but in general, if you give yourself that one-two punch of taking these microbes and eating great food, you ought to see things happening within 90 days. For some people, you'll see it within 2 days. For some people, it'll take 6 months, so there's a wide range.

The other thing to think about is why you might be low or depleted in these strains. If you live a stressful life — your job's hard, you've got kids, you're pulled in a million directions a day, and you have a ton of responsibilities — then you might always have a microbiome that's being pushed toward depletion because of that stress. In that case, you probably want to keep taking these probiotics for longer. 

Personally, I live a relatively stressful life, and there's a lot going on, and I've been on Pendulum Glucose Control basically since we started studying it, and I take it every day because it's an easy thing to start my day with. I throw these two pills down with my coffee, and I feel like I'm going to work my hardest today to have good nutrition, be low stress, and keep everything moving along, but at least I've got my probiotics and my gut health working for me. So it really depends on whether you want to take these on a daily basis long term, or if you want to be able to get off of them, but there are lots of different protocols. There's no one right answer for everybody.

How did you choose the name "Pendulum"?

That's a good question. The name was actually inspired by the Foucault Pendulum, so nerd out with me for a second. There's one in Paris, which is where it was developed, and there's also one in San Francisco, in the Science Center. This is a pendulum that goes in a perfect circle, based on the Earth's gravitational force, and we just thought that was so cool. It's the movement of nature and the precision of science, a perfect circle. We were really aiming to do that with Pendulum, we want to create scientifically based products that have accuracy and precision to them, but that really use your body's natural systems.

Which Pendulum products should I start with?

If you're taking Metabolic Daily or you're taking Glucose Control, you're getting all five strains. If you want to double down on your Akkermansia, you could also just take Metabolic Daily and you'll be getting more Akkermansia as well. So I recommend to people, just pick one of these. I'd recommend taking Glucose Control if you're trying to reduce your A1C*, and then pairing it with a Polyphenol Booster.

*for the nutritional management of type 2 diabetes

How does the gut microbiome produce GLP-1?

I love that question, because it gives us a chance to talk about GLP-1. The way it's supposed to work in your body is: you eat a meal, and your microbiome is like this little manufacturing factory that has all this stuff going on in it, and one of the departments in that factory takes that food and stimulates GLP-1. It basically says, okay, we just ate something, it probably has sugar in it, so we need to stimulate GLP-1. That department tells the body to release GLP-1 into the bloodstream, and you get GLP-1 going up.

That does two important things: it stimulates the insulin response, so you're metabolizing the sugars you just ate, and it tells your brain, hey, we just ate, we don't need to eat again for a while. Over time, that GLP-1 in your bloodstream goes back down, you get hungry again, you eat food, your microbiome does its job, and you get GLP-1 back up again. So GLP-1 in your bloodstream is supposed to be on this cycle, but if you start to lose those microbes or that signaling pathway, you're getting the wrong amount of GLP-1 at the wrong time, you get sugar cravings, and you're not metabolizing your sugars properly.

How do female hormones (menopause, perimenopause, postpartum) interact with the microbiome?

The microbiome doesn't just stimulate the GLP-1 hormone, it's also involved in a wide variety of other hormones, including estrogen. This is such an interesting question, and I'll say the research on this is really early, unfortunately there's not a lot of research on menopause in general, and even less on menopause and the microbiome, so we're learning a ton every day. Stay tuned, because we're super excited about this topic.

One interesting thing to know is that women's microbiomes actually look really different from men's. Between puberty and menopause, if you gave me a sample of your microbiome, I could tell you if you were a man or a woman, that's how different they look. On the other side of menopause, though, our microbiomes start to look more like men's, so post-menopausal, if you gave me your microbiome, I couldn't tell if you were a man or a woman. The big thing that's happening is we're losing important strains in our microbiome that interact with estrogen.

One of the most interesting sets of studies that have come out involve strains, not currently on the market, entirely novel, that may be able to increase your body's free estrogen naturally. That's pretty amazing. So stay tuned, because I think the microbiome is going to be a really big opportunity for those of us going through perimenopause, with that sharp decline in estrogen, to see how we can use our microbiome to level that out so the symptoms aren't so terrible. This is a really exciting area of research.

What happens if I miss a few days of taking my probiotic?

Much like the unsatisfying answer before, I'll give it again, it kind of depends on you. There's a published clinical trial where we actually asked this exact question. We had people on Glucose Control for 90 days, and then we had them go 30 days without taking any probiotics, and looked at their microbiome after that washout period. What we found is that most people didn't have the strains anymore after that 30-day washout, but there was a fraction, about 15 to 20% of people, who did still have those microbes. 

The question is, how did those people get the colonization when others didn't? That's under a lot of study. Some theories are that those people had a microbial ecosystem with a gap in it that was just waiting for these strains to show up, very warm and inviting for these new players to come do their job. Another theory is that those people might have also cleaned up their diet a bit, increasing fiber or polyphenols, which would help feed these strains and help them colonize long term. We don't know the answer for sure, but it really depends on you. You might get great colonization, or you might be someone where it falls off after 2 days, it just depends.

How does the microbiome recover after taking antibiotics?

When you take antibiotics, as I said, it's sort of like a nuclear bomb to your microbiome, so you want to think about how to repopulate with good strains. One interesting thing about antibiotics is there was a study showing kids who are on a lot of antibiotics later in life are more prone to obesity and type 2 diabetes. The Mayo Clinic actually repeated that study and showed that if you're under 2 years old and on a lot of antibiotics, later in life you're prone to obesity, diabetes, allergies, asthma, ADHD, and celiac disease, all tied to multiple doses of antibiotics.

So what can you do if you're going on an antibiotic? The first thing, getting back to nutrition, is it's almost like you've got a clean slate after taking antibiotics, so when you're going off them, really trying to increase your fiber and polyphenols is important. There have been some interesting studies showing that if you're on a probiotic and stay on it through antibiotic treatment, somehow there's something about your microbiome that enables those strains to grow more easily on the other side of the antibiotic. It's almost like there's some kind of memory system. We don't really understand it yet.

How do the polyphenols and fiber we eat nourish the microbes that live in us?

A little 101 lesson on the microbiome: probiotics are all the bacteria, viruses, and fungi. Those are the live bugs that are called probiotics. Prebiotics are the food that feed those probiotics, that's where fibers and vegetables and fruits and all the things in your grocery store come into play. If you think about it, all these microbes are living inside you, so what you eat is what they eat, and what you don't eat, they don't get to eat. When you choose to eat foods that feed these butyrate producers, these high-fiber foods, that's literally how it's working; you're feeding them when you eat them. 

Why is Pendulum different from other probiotics that use older, well-established strains (like Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium)?

I don't want to slam the probiotics that are out there, because they're different strains than what we have, and there's a lot of evidence behind them, but the fact is those strains were selected not based on microbiome science, that's a relatively new science, but really based on what was easy to culture and easy to grow. If you start to look at labels, you'll see Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium strains, and that's really 50-year-old science. 

Most of those strains were literally grandfathered in by the FDA because they've been on the shelves for so long and considered safe. So if those haven't worked for you, it's probably because you're depleted in other strains, not those. That's part of what we've been endeavoring to do here at Pendulum, bring those other strains to you. If other probiotics haven't worked for you, I'd say it's worth continuing your experiment and trying these different strains, based on new science and novel discovery from DNA sequencing technology and really understanding the microbiome.

Can I open the capsule and mix the contents into yogurt or a smoothie?

If you're eating fermented foods, kefir, kimchi, yogurt, kombucha, those are all wonderful sources of strains like Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, and they're important for gut health. What you won't find in any of those is Akkermansia and many of the other strains we have in these products, because these next-generation strains live deep in your distal colon, where there's no oxygen. So the issue with opening up the capsules and putting them into food or beverages is that it basically kills them. 

That doesn't mean you get no benefit. There's pasteurized Akkermansia out there, and you're basically doing the same thing. You get the benefits of the postbiotics and all the proteins in there, but you won't be able to colonize those strains. If you want some of the benefit — and I'm always a proponent of not letting perfect be the enemy of good — if you don't want to swallow pills and you're trying to get some of it in, go for it. I love that. That's better than doing nothing. But if you want the most potency out of it, you want to take them in the capsule, so it gets through the stomach acid and through that digestive tract.

What do you think about at-home microbiome testing?

Microbiome testing is definitely emerging as a pretty competitive marketplace right now. My personal opinion is I wouldn't do it unless I was doing it with a healthcare practitioner who really knew everything I was doing, all my medications, my nutrition, and was thinking about it holistically, because these microbiome tests are really hard to decipher. And if you've taken a microbiome test from a company that's also selling supplements, you're kind of getting a sales pitch through that test.

One of the challenges, but also the beauties, of the microbiome is that it's changing all the time. So if you just take one microbiome test, you're getting a snapshot, and you might actually be getting information that isn't accurate. If you're going to do microbiome testing, I'd do it with a healthcare practitioner, but you'll want to take multiple of them so you can get a real baseline of what your stable microbiome actually looks like, versus what happened because you just happened to eat Vietnamese food last night. Then you can use that to guide behavioral, probiotic, and supplement changes.

Specifically for Akkermansia, looking at which tests give you the most sensitivity and specificity, there are two: the Genova Diagnostics test and the DSL test. Those are the two that rose to the top when we looked at all the different tests out there. Since we did that, there are a lot more gut microbiome tests out there that we haven't fully evaluated. As a general rule of thumb, I'd be nervous about the consumer ones and would try to do one through my healthcare practitioner.

What should I expect during my first 30 days?

Depending on your starting microbiome state, you can expect to experience different things. For some people, they experience nothing, and later on they see their CGM data looks better. That was me, I didn't feel any difference, and then I realized my blood glucose spikes and crashes had improved, and a bit later I started to realize my workouts were stronger.

For other people, if your microbiome is depleted in these butyrate producers, you might feel something within hours or days. Most people actually experience GI improvements, better digestion, better bowel movements, more regularity. But for some people in the beginning, it can actually feel very disruptive, since you're changing your microbiome and introducing strains that are doing things it's not used to.

If you're starting a probiotic, one of ours or, honestly, this is probably true for any probiotic, and you're experiencing some GI distress, talk to your healthcare practitioner and say, this is what I'm experiencing, what should I do? But the main thing is, if you're feeling a difference, that's actually a good sign that you're changing your microbiome.

Does the microbiome help with skin issues like eczema or acne?

A lot of us, when we start having skin issues, acne, eczema, any unwanted blemishes, go straight to topicals, putting all kinds of things on our face to try to solve it. But in a lot of cases, it's actually what's under the hood, an undesired inflammatory response, that can really be solved through your gut microbiome. The theory is that when you have strong gut health, with these butyrate producers playing a key role, your inflammatory response is more tightly regulated, so you don't get those unwanted reactions showing up on your skin.

I always say, if you're putting topicals on and it's not solving your problem, it's sort of like your check engine light comes on in your car and you just put a piece of tape over it and call it solved, when you should really be checking your engine. If you're only putting topicals on, you might not be solving the underlying problem that would actually help your skin long term. Skin benefits are something we hear about all the time, and you'll hear this here first: coming out soon will be a press release about a clinical trial the Mayo Clinic is funding around skin, using one of our new formulations. Stay tuned for that.

Is it ever too late to improve your microbiome, for example, if I had a lot of childhood ear infections or antibiotics?

One of the most exciting things about the microbiome is that it's always changing, so the beauty of it is that it doesn't matter what happened to you before. It doesn't matter whether you were breastfed or formula-fed, delivered vaginally or by C-section, whether you've been a terrible eater your whole life and never exercised a day. Today, you can change your microbiome and change your future health state. It's all changeable. Sometimes we're doing it inadvertently, but you can take control through the food you eat and the supplements you give your body, all of these things can change your microbiome. The beauty of the microbiome is that you can refresh everything whenever you decide you want to.

What are you most excited about in the microbiome space heading into 2026 to 2027?

Selfishly, I'm always interested in products that I want. I want a better metabolism, so we started working on metabolic products. I wanted to close my fiber gap without having to eat bushels of cranberries and kale all day long, so we have our Gut Fuel product. And a few people asked about this earlier: menopause. That's what I'm really, really excited about. We're working our tails off over here to understand the science and see if we can build something that can help women as we go through perimenopause and menopause. Stay tuned for that. 

Content is for educational purposes only and has not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration. Statements and products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Have a question that wasn't covered here? Reach out to Pendulum's team at hello@pendulumlife.com.