One of Bravo’s strengths, a feature unique among probiotics, is the natural presence of phages:
viruses that infect bacteria, not humans. They are not “bad viruses”; on the contrary, they are the
most numerous living entities on the planet and have always lived with us in fermented food, in
milk, in colostrum, and in the intestine. Their job is to keep excess bacteria under control,
including those that, with age or imbalance, can cause problems.
A recent post by Sterling Cooley, an expert in medical communication, clearly summarizes
research published in the prestigious journal Nature: memory decline in aging is not only a
“brain that wears out.” It is often a failure of the gut–brain axis. With the years, an intestinal
bacterium, Parabacteroides goldsteinii, may increase. This bacterium produces medium-chain
fatty acids that, through a receptor (GPR84), cause chronic local inflammation. That
inflammation shuts down the signals of the vagus nerve, the nerve that carries information from
the intestine to the hippocampus, the area of the brain where memories are “written.” Result: less
activation of the hippocampus and memory and learning drastically reduced.
The same line of research points to concrete avenues: inhibit that receptor, stimulate the vagus …
and use phages to selectively reduce the bacteria that disturb communication. Not an antibiotic
that destroys everything, but a more precise intervention. It is the same principle that Cooley also
links to neuromodulation: if the microbe shuts down the vagus, one can try to turn the signal
back on by eliminating that microbe.
This reinforces what we have been observing for years with Bravo and what we described in
2020 in an article in the Journal of Neurology and Stroke. We analyzed Freeze-Dried Bravo with
a DNA assay that identifies thousands of species. No pathogens emerged. What did emerge,
instead, were dozens of phages of the Siphoviridae family — the typical phages of the lactic acid
bacteria that ferment Bravo. Twenty-seven distinct “signatures,” with different abundances. This
is no surprise: phages are everywhere in fermented foods. The difference is that in Bravo they
remain in their natural environment: together with the host bacteria, the peptides of fermentation,
and the molecules of milk and colostrum.
Why does it matter? Because an ordinary probiotic in a capsule is often only a few bacterial
strains, perhaps in billions of copies, but without biodiversity and, above all, without phages.
Bravo, instead, is an ecosystem: bacteria, hundreds of different strains + products of fermentation
+ phages. Previous studies had already shown that fermented yogurt worked better than the same
strains taken individually, without their ecosystem. Phages are part of that “difference.”
In our work we also observed what some genes of these phages do, beyond eliminating the
“wrong” bacteria, and we found several things that are interesting and potentially very useful for
our health:
- a protein (Sak) similar to a human protein, involved in DNA repair and in genome stability;
- “holin”-type proteins, which in bacteria open holes in the membrane and, by analogy, recall
mechanisms used by our cells to regulate their own survival; - superinfection exclusion systems, that is, “blocks” to the entry of other viruses;
- possible interactions with macrophage activation and stimulation of the immune system.
These are rigorous laboratory observations consistent with another finding from the same study:
Bravo, in vitro, binds human nagalase with activity that is much more persistent and more
intense than that of purified GcMAF alone. Elevated nagalase has been associated, in the
literature, with neurodevelopmental contexts; binding or modulating it is one of the threads that
connect fermentation, immunity, and the brain.
Putting Cooley’s post and our work together, it becomes clearer why so many people who take
Bravo regularly report “multifaceted” effects: greater mental clarity, more stable sleep and mood,
more orderly digestion, a feeling that the “immune system is working better.” This is because a
fermented food rich in phages, in hundreds of different strains, and in molecules with antiinflammatory
and immunostimulating properties acts on several levels of the same axis:
microbial balance, chronic inflammation, the immune system, signals that rise from the digestive
tract toward the brain.
Phages, used in therapy for more than a century in some countries and also evaluated in Western
safety studies on Siphoviridae mixtures, do not replace the physician. Bravo is not a drug. It is a
complex fermented food. Recent science on the vagus, on bacterial metabolites, and on phages as
“precision tools” does, however, help give a more concrete face to what many users have long
described: not a single effect, but a network of effects that starts from the intestine.
Anyone who wants to go deeper can read Cooley’s post and our 2020 article.
- Dr Marco Ruggiero
As always: information, not a substitute for diagnosis or treatment.