Science-led. Tradition-rooted.
Uncompromisingly postbiotic.
AYA BIOME™ was founded on a single observation: the supplement industry has a persistent gap between promise and evidence. The science already existed to do better. The question was whether anyone would build around it.
A Kingdom That Never Forgot.
Bhutan does not do things the way the rest of the world does.
The last Himalayan Buddhist kingdom measures prosperity in Gross National Happiness, not GDP. It bans synthetic pesticides across its entire agricultural sector. It has pledged to remain carbon-negative in perpetuity. And for centuries, its farmers have grown a particular variety of turmeric — deep-rooted, rich in volatile oils, unhurried by industrial timelines — that the outside world largely passed by.
AYA BIOME™ was founded on the proposition that this oversight was a significant one.
Our founder, Alastair Jessel, came to postbiotics not through a laboratory, but through the intersection of clinical practice and an honest frustration with the supplement industry's persistent gap between promise and evidence. Working alongside the integrative practitioners at Battersea Park Clinic in London, he encountered patients who had tried everything — probiotics, curcumin extracts, digestive enzymes — and who kept returning with the same unresolved questions.
Why, if these ingredients were so well-studied, did so many people feel so little?
Part of the answer, it turned out, was in the fermentation.
Agricultural Policy
Constitutional commitment to remaining carbon-negative. Synthetic pesticides banned across the entire sector.
National Measure
Gross National Happiness — the only country in the world that measures prosperity this way rather than by GDP.
The Turmeric
Deep-rooted, grown at altitude without synthetic inputs. Phytochemical profile shaped by undisturbed soil and microbial ecosystems.
Why It Matters
Fermentation strain L. acidophilus IL-058 evolved in the same soil as the plant it ferments. The relationship is native — not engineered.
The Oversight
Bhutanese turmeric has largely been passed by by the global supplement industry. AYA BIOME™ was founded on the proposition that this was a significant mistake.
Alastair Jessel
Founder & CEO — The Postbiotic Company Ltd
Alastair is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Battersea Park Clinic in London — one of the UK's largest integrative wellness centres. His exposure to postbiotic science came through Japan, where he was among the first to recognise the application for European markets and built AYA BIOME™ around the ingredient that the evidence pointed to most clearly.
The postbiotic moment.
The supplement industry has a credibility problem. It is an industry that has consistently overpromised on the basis of in vitro data, cherry-picked trials, and regulatory arbitrage that allows health-adjacent language to substitute for health claims. Consumers are not naive — they have noticed the gap between what the packaging says and what they actually experience.
Postbiotics represent something genuinely different: a category defined not by marketing positioning but by a mechanistic advance in understanding how microbially-derived compounds interact with human physiology. The science is maturing rapidly. The regulatory frameworks are beginning to catch up. And the clinical evidence base — still modest in absolute terms, but growing with unusual speed — is pointing consistently in the same direction.
We are not here to sell supplements. We are here to demonstrate that the distinction between food, medicine, and supplementation is less stable than the regulatory architecture assumes.
AYA BIOME™ — The Postbiotic CompanyEvidence-literate without being evidence-paralysed.
We publish our science, explain our regulatory constraints, and resist the temptation to claim more than the evidence supports — while making clear that the evidence supports rather more than the industry has historically been willing to say.
Commercially serious without being clinically irresponsible.
We are a business. We operate in a market. But the commercial reality of supplement sales does not excuse clinical irresponsibility. Every claim on this site is traceable to a published study and reviewed against MHRA guidelines.
Rooted in traditional knowledge without being credulous about it.
Bhutan's agricultural practices and centuries of fermentation tradition are the starting point — not the proof. The proof is in the two human randomised controlled trials. Tradition identified the substrate. Science validated it.
That is the brand story. It is also, we think, the right story for this moment.
Read the evidence. Try the product.
The science is the story.
Two human RCTs. Eight published studies. One ingredient. Everything on this site is traceable to a published result.
AYA BIOME™ is a trading name of The Postbiotic Company Ltd. Registered in England and Wales. 521–525 Battersea Park Road, London SW11 3BN. AYA BIOME™ products are food supplements, not medicines and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or medical condition. Food supplements should not be used as a substitute for a varied diet.
Built with practitioners.
AYA BIOME™ was not built in isolation from clinical reality. Its development has been shaped by ongoing practice at Battersea Park Clinic in London, where patients and practitioners engage daily with the questions that make nutraceutical rigour necessary rather than optional.
Founder & CEO
Alastair Jessel
The Postbiotic Company Ltd
Alastair spent a decade in the City of London specialising in Japanese equities, before becoming a serial entrepreneur and founding Battersea Park Clinic in London — one of the UK's largest integrative wellness centres. His discovery of postbiotic science came through Japan, where he recognised an opportunity that the European supplement market had largely overlooked. AYA BIOME™ is built on that recognition.
Co-Founder
Anna Benedicic
Strategic & Commercial Development
Anna brings over 30 years of international leadership experience spanning four continents. Her career began in IT and management consulting at EY, specialising in complex organisational transformations and growth initiatives. She has founded an alternative health start-up in central London and advised across the technology, logistics, and health sectors. At AYA BIOME™ she provides the commercial and strategic rigour behind the operational development of the business.
Nutrition Consultant
Kate Arnold
BA (Hons) · Dip ION · PG Cert · MBANT
Kate is a registered nutrition consultant with deep clinical expertise across gut health, hormonal health, and evidence-based supplementation. A member of BANT, she brings an evidence-literate, client-centred approach to formulation development and the scientific positioning of the human range. She advises on the evidence framework that underpins every claim the brand makes.
Veterinary Consultant
Dr Nick Thompson
BSc (Hons) Path Sci. · BVM&S · VetMFHom · MRCVS
One of the UK's foremost integrative veterinary practitioners, Dr Thompson provides scientific oversight across the animal range — from formulation and dosing to the interpretation of clinical trial data. He guided the development of the canine, equine, and small animal product lines, and brings rigorous, evidence-led veterinary thinking to every product decision in the AYA BIOME™ animal range.
Battersea Park Clinic — 521–525 Battersea Park Road, London SW11 3BN. The integrative wellness clinic where AYA BIOME™'s development has been informed by daily clinical practice. Patients and practitioners here engage with the same questions that make nutraceutical rigour necessary rather than optional.
AYA BIOME™ Fermented Turmeric. Genuine novelty.
Not a reformulation. Not a new delivery vehicle. A fundamentally different material.
Bhutanese turmeric begins with an advantage. Grown at altitude, without synthetic inputs, in one of the few agricultural systems on earth that has maintained its integrity through deliberate national policy, it arrives at fermentation with an unusually complex phytochemical profile.
The fermentation process — driven by our proprietary L. acidophilus strain — then works on this raw material across a carefully controlled cycle, producing metabolites that are not present in conventional turmeric and that exhibit distinct bioavailability characteristics. The result is a matrix of over 550 bioactive compounds per serving.
The HYDRA Delivery System®
Bioavailability has been the Achilles heel of curcumin supplementation for two decades. Conventional turmeric extracts — including heavily-marketed 95% curcuminoid preparations — are notoriously poorly absorbed. The industry response has been largely cosmetic: piperine combinations, phospholipid complexes, nanoparticle encapsulation. Each addresses the symptom rather than the cause.
HYDRA takes a different approach. By working with fermented material rather than crude extracts, the bioactive profile is already modified at source. The delivery system is designed around the postbiotic matrix, not bolted onto a problematic ingredient after the fact.
Fermentation Strain
Lactobacillus acidophilus IL-058 — registered at the Riken Institute, Japan
Patent
Production process covered by patent FR2201333
Delivery System
HYDRA Delivery System® — formulated around the postbiotic matrix, not adapted from conventional extract delivery
Bioactive Metabolites
550+ per serving. Heat-stable. No refrigeration required.
Format — Human Range
Chewable tablets — 2 per day. Improves compliance. No water needed. Begins working in the oral environment.
Format — Animal Range
Sachets (dogs, cats) and tubs (horses) — adapted for palatability and species-appropriate dosing.
Manufacturer
Relina Ltd., Bulgaria — GMP · CFR21 · FSSC 22000 certified
Foundational daily postbiotic. 500mg AYA BIOME™ Fermented Turmeric. Chewable tablet. 30-day supply.
The core formulation. Daily postbiotic support without additional actives.
AYA BIOME™ Fermented Turmeric plus complementary postbiotic and micronutrient support. Chewable tablet.
For those seeking broader systemic support alongside the postbiotic foundation.
Formulated with women's hormonal and inflammatory health specifically in mind.
Adapted formulation for women's physiological priorities.
Addressing inflammatory, metabolic and recovery priorities for men. Chewable tablet.
Adapted formulation for men's physiological priorities.
Targeted gut health formulation for compromised microbiome function or ongoing digestive concerns.
For those with specific gut health priorities.
Fermented turmeric postbiotic in a daily sachet format. Formulated for palatability and canine physiology.
Supported by clinical trial data in dogs with osteoarthritis. Developed with Dr Nick Thompson MRCVS.
Postbiotic formulation adapted for feline physiology and palatability.
Reformulated for the specific nutritional and palatability requirements of cats.
Presented in a convenient tub for equine daily use. Supported by pilot RCT data in horses.
For performance and breeding populations. Developed alongside equine nutrition specialists.
What a probiotic leaves behind.
Probiotics arrived with enormous fanfare. The idea was elegant: reintroduce beneficial bacteria to the gut and let them colonise, compete, and restore balance. The reality proved more complicated.
The problem
The Colonisation Problem
Most probiotic strains are transient. They pass through without establishing residence. Survival through the hostile acid environment of the stomach is inconsistent at best. Effects are strain-specific and individual-specific — and cannot be generalised.
The regulatory picture
Zero Approved Claims
In the European Union, not a single health claim has ever been approved for a probiotic product. This is not a technicality — it reflects a genuine absence of the controlled, reproducible evidence required to support a legal claim.
The answer
The Postbiotic
Postbiotics are the distilled output of microbial metabolism: bioactive metabolites, short-chain fatty acids, cell wall fragments, and enzymatically transformed compounds. They do not need to be alive. They do not need to survive transit. They are stable, measurable, and clinically investigable.
The probiotic is a vehicle. The postbiotic is the destination. What your body actually uses is the fermentation output — not the bacteria that made it.
AYA BIOME™ — The Postbiotic CompanyWhat remains after fermentation.
AYA BIOME™ was built around this insight. Every product in our human and animal range is formulated around AYA BIOME™ Fermented Turmeric — our proprietary postbiotic ingredient produced through the fermentation of Bhutanese turmeric using Lactobacillus acidophilus IL-058, a strain registered at Japan's Riken Institute under patent FR2201333.
The ingredient at the heart of every AYA product represents something rare in modern supplementation: genuine novelty. Not a reformulation, not a rebranding, not a new delivery vehicle for an existing commodity extract — but a fundamentally different material, produced by a process that transforms the underlying chemistry of the plant.
What postbiotics are
Bioactive metabolites, SCFAs, cell wall fragments, and enzymatically transformed plant compounds
Why they work
Stable, heat-resistant, measurable compounds — no live bacteria required, no survival through stomach acid
Why they can be studied
Defined chemistry allows rigorous double-blind RCTs with active comparators — the same evidence standard as pharmaceuticals
ISAPP Definition · 2021
"A preparation of inanimate microorganisms and/or their components that confers a health benefit on the host."