All of our raw materials are tested for purity prior to being used in our manufacturing. After manufacturing is complete, another round third-party testing occurs on the finished product before it is released for sale.

Targeted Supplementation for Gut Health

Your gut is home to roughly 100 trillion microorganisms — both good and bad. Collectively, they make up your gut microbiota. The health of your gut microbiota strongly determines your overall health as an imbalance in its composition, activities, or distribution can lead to heart disease, cancers, inflammatory bowel diseases, and other chronic health conditions (1).

While there are various ways by which you can nourish and maintain a healthy gut microbiota, targeted supplementation with certain nutrients is an effective approach. This article provides a complete overview of PEScience’s Complete-GI product, discussing how it’s designed for gut health support.

Product overview

Complete-GI is a supplement formulated with five key ingredients to support gut and digestive health.

These ingredients include:

• a clinically-studied, shelf-stable probiotic
• prebiotic fiber from oats
• digestive enzymes
• l-glutamine 
• a complex of zinc and l-carnosine

Here’s a closer look at each ingredient and the role it plays in keeping your gut microbiota happy:

Probiotics

Probiotics are living microorganisms that offer health benefits when consumed in adequate amounts. There are seven core genera of microbial organisms most commonly used in food products and supplements.

Complete-GI contains a patented and well-researched strain of one of these genera called Bacillus coagulans MTCC 5856 (commercially called LactoSpore). The spores of this probiotic are resistant to heat and stomach acid. This is key since many probiotics are destroyed by stomach acid and never reach the intestines where they settle and confer their benefits.

In one study, patients with excessive gas and bloating issues who supplemented with the same 2 billion colony forming units (CFUs) that Complete-GI contains per serving experienced significant improvements in their symptoms as well as bowel movements after four weeks of supplementation compared with placebo (2). 

LactoSpore has also been shown to alleviate digestive symptoms in people with irritable bowel disease and inflammatory bowel disease, including ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease (3, 4).

Prebiotic fiber

Prebiotics are a type of fiber that certain species of beneficial bacteria feed on, helping stimulate their growth and activity. Not all fiber is prebiotic, but all prebiotics are fiber.

Complete-GI provides a generous three-gram serving of oat fiber — equivalent to about one-half cup of oats — including some in the form of beta-glucan. This type of prebiotic fiber specifically has been shown to stimulate the growth and activity of good bacteria and crowd out bad bacteria.

Your gut bacteria also feed on beta-glucan to produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which are anti-inflammatory, support immune health, and protect against various diseases like diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. Beta-glucan is also effective for lowering total cholesterol and levels of LDL “bad” cholesterol (5, 6).

Digestive enzymes

Before you can absorb the nutrients from the food you eat, your body must digest or break it down into its smaller components. It does so in part by releasing specific digestive enzymes, each responsible for breaking down protein, fat, or a specific type of carbohydrate.

In many instances, digestive symptoms like bloating, indigestion, stomach pain, and diarrhea could be a consequence of lacking enough of these enzymes, causing food to go undigested, leading to these digestive issues.

Various health conditions that can cause an insufficiency in your body’s ability to produce these enzymes, such as cystic fibrosis, gastrointestinal surgeries, or conditions that affect the pancreas like diabetes. In other instances, people may not have an insufficiency but still have difficulties digesting certain foods. For example, the body doesn’t produce alpha-galactosides, which helps break down a type of fiber called galactooligosaccharides, which is mostly found in beans but also some root vegetables and dairy products.

Complete-GI provides a full spectrum of digestive enzyme support, including alpha-galactosidase and lactose to help digest lactose or milk sugar, making it useful for promoting healthy digestion and nutrient absorption. 

Glutamine

Glutamine is a nonessential amino acid, meaning your body can make it, even if you don’t get it from your diet, but it becomes essential in certain types of illness and stress. Glutamine remains a popular bodybuilding supplement for its purported recovery benefits, but where it really shines is its role in gut health. 

Glutamine supports the integrity of your intestinal barrier, helping to strengthen the cells that line the intestines to prevent inflammatory proteins, food antigens, and bacteria from passing to parts of the body where they can trigger an immune response and promote inflammation (7, 8).

When these harmful compounds cross the intestinal barrier or gut wall into your bloodstream, it’s known as intestinal permeability, sometimes referred to as leaky gut syndrome. Intestinal permeability is associated with gut dysbiosis — an unfavorable imbalance of the microorganisms in your gut.

To strengthen the integrity of your intestinal barrier and promote a healthy balance of microorganisms in your gut, Complete-GI provides five grams of glutamine per serving.

Zinc and carnosine complex

Zinc is an essential mineral that plays a role in immune function, wound healing, and growth and development. Carnosine is a compound made up of two amino acids and has antioxidant properties.

Complete-GI provides 16 mg of zinc-carnosine (commercially known as PepZin GI) per serving. The combination of zinc and carnosine is believed to have superior health benefits than either alone since carnosine enhances zinc absorption.

Owing primarily to its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, zinc-carnosine supplementation has demonstrated efficacy in restoring the stomach lining, healing parts of the digestive tract, and alleviating the symptoms of certain digestive disorders (9). 

The form of zinc-carnosine present in Complete-GI is the only form that has been reviewed for safety and human use by the Food and Drug Administration.

How to take Complete-GI

It’s recommended to take one serving of Complete-GI daily. Each container provides 30 servings.

Complete-GI is in powder form so you can mix it with plain water or your favorite beverage. It comes in Unflavored and Raspberry flavor varieties. The Unflavored is better suited for your favorite beverage, including another supplement drink like protein or a pre-workout. Because the probiotics in Complete-GI are heat-stable you can also mix it in with a warm dish like oatmeal or in hot drinks like coffee or tea. It doesn’t matter whether you take it on an empty or full stomach, but it may be better to take it with food to benefit from its complex of digestive enzymes.

In either case, Complete-GI isn’t completely soluble in water since it contains some insoluble fiber, but using an electric powder mixer can help. 

Each container costs $39.99, putting each serving at $1.33 (not bad for getting five evidence-based ingredients for gut health in clinically effective doses), but you can save 10% if you subscribe to have it delivered based on your schedule.

Other strategies for a healthy gut

Supplementing with Complete-GI is a smart way to ensure a healthy diversity and population of the microbial species that inhabit your gut, but there are additional things you can do.

What you eat tends to have the greatest effect on the composition, diversity, and activities of your gut microbiota. For example, the Western or standard American diet, which is high in pre-packaged foods, refined grains, processed meats, and added sugar, and low in fruits and vegetables is known to cause dysbiosis and increase intestinal permeability, leading to the development of low-grade inflammation and chronic disease (10).

Conversely, diets rich in fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains, and fatty fish like the Mediterranean diet are known to positively alter the gut microbiota composition, increase the production of beneficial SCFAs, and crowd out the harmful bacteria (11).

The primary dietary components present in diets like the Mediterranean diet but that are lacking in Western diets are fiber, beneficial plant compounds called polyphenols, and omega-3 fatty acids.

Therefore, one of the best — non-groundbreaking — things you can do to keep your gut healthy is to prioritize fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, legumes, nuts, seeds, and lean, minimally processed proteins. 

Exercise has also been shown to enhance the number of beneficial microbial species, enrich their diversity, and promote the development of bacteria that prevent bad bacteria from invading and colonizing. The type of exercise probably doesn’t make much of a difference, so include both endurance-style training and weight lifting if possible (12).

Other factors such as chronic stress and sleep deprivation can also negatively affect gut health, increasing gut barrier permeability and promoting inflammation. While you can’t always prevent life’s stressors, you can choose how you react to them. And when it comes to sleep, stick to a sleep schedule — including on the weekends — limit caffeine and alcohol, and keep your room at a cool temperature. These are just a few simple things you can do to promote better sleep. Exercising can also help you sleep better — just another reason to consistently exercise if you aren’t currently (13, 14).

The bottom line

Complete-GI is a supplement designed to promote gut health through its inclusion of evidence-based ingredients, including pro- and prebiotics, digestive enzymes, glutamine, and zinc-carnosine.

It’s designed to be taken daily, which you can do by mixing it with water or adding it to your favorite beverage.

Complete-GI is a great foundation to support a healthy composition and diversity of your gut microbiota, as well as the actions they perform, but you should also aim to prioritize foods rich in fiber, polyphenols, and omega-3 fatty acids, such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and fatty fish. Exercising regularly, controlling your stressors, and getting good sleep are other evidence-based ways to keep your gut happy and your immune system robust.

Frequently asked questions

Is Complete-GI keto-friendly?

It provides three carbohydrates from fiber, which your body cannot digest and use for energy, making Complete-GI keto-friendly.

Is Complete-GI gluten-free?

Complete-GI provides oat fiber. Oats are naturally gluten-free but can be contaminated with gluten during storage or production. However, Complete-GI is gluten-free, making it safe for people with a gluten intolerance or allergy.

Is Complete-GI vegetarian or vegan-friendly?

Complete-GI uses all vegan-friendly ingredients.

How does Complete-GI differ from Symbiont-GI?

Complete-GI provides everything that Symbiont-GI does but with the addition of prebiotic fiber and glutamine.

Can Complete-GI be mixed in a hot beverage or food?

Complete-GI provides a heat-stable probiotic so mixing it with a hot item won’t destroy it before it has a chance to offer its benefits.

-

Gavin Van De Walle, MS, RD

Gavin Van De Walle holds a master’s degree in human nutrition and exercise physiology. He is also a registered dietitian. Gavin has a bias for the truth and aims to provide the public with the information they need to make educated and informed health decisions. His work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Healthline, Livestrong, the American Botanical Council, Underwriter Laboratories, Verywell Health, and many more.