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Monday 9am - 5pm Tuesday 9am - 5pm Wednesday 9am - 5pm Thursday 9am - 5pm Friday 9am - 5pm

Zestt Wellness, 8 Stafford Street, Dunedin (2026)

02/09/2026

🎉 Zestt Oral+ is BACK! 🎉

😣 Strep throat. 🦷 Gingivitis. 😬 Halitosis.
✅ SOLVED.

Zestt Oral+ is the ONLY product on the market with BOTH proven oral probiotics – BLIS K12™ and BLIS M18™ – plus 🥝 kiwifruit as a prebiotic. These bioactives are clinically proven to reduce strep throat, gum disease and bad breath.

🔬 What does the science say about BLIS M18™?
A randomised, placebo-controlled trial showed significant improvements in plaque, bleeding gums and gum pocket depth. After just 12 weeks:
📉 15% reduction in deep periodontal pockets
🩸 14% reduction in bleeding on probing
🦠 16% reduction in plaque build-up
And the best part? Many of these improvements CONTINUED even after the probiotic was stopped – suggesting longer-term microbiome benefits. 💪

🔬 And BLIS K12™? The studies keep coming:
✨ 90% reduction in streptococcal throat infections vs the previous year
✨ >90% reduction in strep infections + 80% reduction in oral viral infections
✨ Two-thirds fewer throat infections (16.2% vs 48.6% in the control group)
✨ Group A Strep infections 6× lower over 12 months
✨ 90% fewer cases of pharyngotonsillitis vs the prior year
✨ Nearly 50% fewer inflammatory throat episodes (3.38% vs 6.66% control)

01/09/2026

Meet Ernie Schack, our 84-year-old delivery boy and Jack of many trades!

Here he is helping us load our new lozenges into Zestt HQ

AND ... The good news is, for those who have been waiting, Zestt Oral+ lozenges are back in stock 🥳
So if you struggle with recurring strep throat, gingivitis, halitosis, and want to improve your oral microbiome, get in now 😃

Order now at www.zesttwellness.com

31/08/2026

A new study has just been released that compares three diets. 🔬

Let's take a look.

The participants in the study consisted of 55 adults with obesity, prediabetes and fatty liver disease. Post menopausal women were ruled out of the study sadly 😞; it really is like we are invisible.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of three diets and kept on it until they'd lost ~10% of their body weight.

Here's what they ate, per 2,000 calories:

🥩 Keto: 20 g carbohydrate, 164 g fat, 112 g protein
🐟 Mediterranean: 254 g carbohydrate, 80 g fat, 83 g protein
🥬 Low-fat, plant-forward: 352 g carbohydrate, 35 g fat, 90 g protein

The results 📊

What was good across all groups:

✅ All groups lost weight
✅ Insulin sensitivity in muscle improved by about 50% in every group
✅ Blood pressure came down in every group
✅ The proportion of weight lost as fat rather than muscle was the same

Statistics across the groups (in the same order; the first number is keto, then Mediterranean, then low-fat).

⚖️ Weight lost: 11.9 kg / 11.4 kg / 11.5 kg
🫀 Liver fat: down 67% / down 45% / down 45%
💉 Insulin across 24 hours: down 74% / down 44% / down 27%
🔥 Glucagon (insulin's opposite number) across 24 hours: up 52% / down 32% / down 41%
🎯 Prediabetes reversed: 50% / 29% / 7%

Keto and insulin 🔄

The glucagon-to-insulin ratio more than tripled on keto (this is good) and didn't change in the other two groups. This is super important if you are older and overweight, as that is when insulin resistance can be a problem, and this ratio tells your liver whether to manufacture and store fat, or burn it off and make ketones.

The scientists also measured how much new fat each participant's liver was producing, and when they plotted that against the change in their 24-hour insulin, the two were highly correlated (0.725), so as insulin production dropped, so too did the manufacture of liver fat.

🩸 Another bonus for those participants in the keto group was that the inflammation dropped, as measured by two blood markers (there was no drop in the other two groups).

Summing up 📌

Losing weight helps, whatever way you get there in terms of your general health (if you are overweight in the first place). But the ratios of the macros you eat (carbohydrates, proteins and fats) alter what happens within your liver and your blood sugar levels. This is more important as you age (and are more prone to issues associated with insulin resistance).

🥦 So, eat the fibrous veges, but eat less bread and potatoes and enjoy some fats and protein instead, which will also keep you fuller for longer. If you are interested in eating more of a ketogenic diet, I have been enjoying cooking with the Keto Chef's Cookbooks (Nerys Whelan) The Keto Chef’s Kitchen

🥑 See you later; I am off to have my low-carb seed crackers with lemon ricotta and avocado for lunch!

27/08/2026

Feeling Sad 😞

I’ve always enjoyed learning and talking about biology. I am a trained scientist with over thirty years spent in scientific research. I have worked across biological fields, from viruses to liverworts, wheat, maize, pine, cannabis, sheep, goats and humans. I’ve never been a specialist, preferring a wide biological lens to spending my time burrowing down a single pathway, but I appreciate working with specialists and being wowed by their knowledge.

I have always said that science is a language, and it’s one you start learning in school; it is refined in university, but the way of thinking - forming a hypothesis and finding evidence - stays with you your whole career.

I am frustrated when people in the science community look down on people who haven’t learned this language and way of thinking; sometimes I have been witness to condescension and laughter. I have vowed at Zestt that we will never do that. Biology to me is a place for everyone, a place to be curious, ask questions and refine knowledge.

So I love questions from customers and people within the Zestt online community. Sometimes I know the answer; other times I have to go away and do more research, and other times I need to refer the question to someone with deep specialist knowledge.

Then I get feedback like this (to a post I made about the influenza outbreak):

“Please lady, educate yourself, viruses do not exist so let alone they can make you sick. Stop spreading this misinformation.”

I don’t know how to answer that, so I break my rule of answering every question or comment. I don’t laugh or shake my head, but I do feel sad.

I understand that corporations have been guilty of putting profits before people’s health; reading Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain showed me how deep-seated this issue is. I also understand that it can feel like science is always changing. It’s not the science that changes; it's our interpretation of the data and understanding of the biology that becomes more advanced.

What I grapple with is what to do when the distrust of the scientific community has become so entrenched within parts of society that no evidence is welcome. It feels like a door has closed. We have to find a way to wedge open the door. Maybe rather than talking with people, it's about letting people discover for themselves.

I first worked with viruses in my early twenties. I worked with a plant virus and tried to determine how it was spread from plant to plant. Every day I saw evidence of the impact of the virus on the plants - tangible, physical evidence I could not ignore. That informed me at a fundamental level about the biology of viruses.

Perhaps in society we need to do more showing and experimentation than simply telling people what we think they should know. Science in schools and beyond needs to be practical, accessible and hands-on (and well funded). That’s how the door stays open.

18/08/2026

Pharmaceuticals and gut health

I think of your intestines as a castle wall. The gut lining is the wall, the tight junctions are the mortar, and your gut microbes are the security team standing in front of it. When the security team is compromised, holes appear. Endotoxins, undigested food and bacteria leak into your bloodstream, your immune system goes into attack mode, and inflammation rises. That's an important periodic response, but if your gut wall stays leaky, the inflammation can become chronic. 🔥

💊 Some pharmaceuticals can influence your gut health: proton pump inhibitors (reflux), metformin (type 2 diabetes), some SSRIs (depression), ACE inhibitors (cardiovascular health), laxatives, and even paracetamol.
So what if you take pharmaceuticals daily?

None of this is a reason to stop taking the medications you need, but it is a reason to evaluate your gut health proactively. 👇

1️⃣ Noticed more gut issues (bloating, diarrhoea, constipation, reflux, pain)? Review your medications' known side effects and take your questions to your doctor. There may be gentler alternatives, or the dose could be adjusted.

2️⃣ Increase your fibre. Guidelines suggest 30 g a day; many gut researchers now say aim for 40–50 g. Build up gradually — your microbiome needs time to adapt.

3️⃣ Add fermented foods like unpasteurised sauerkraut. They seed your gut with new species. 🥬

4️⃣ On antibiotics? Take probiotics before, during and after the course, a few hours after each dose.

🥣 What 40 g actually looks like:
Cup of lentils 15 g · 2 tbsp chia 10 g · Avocado 10 g · Cup of chickpeas 12 g · Cup of raspberries 8 g · 2 slices wholegrain bread 6 g · Pear with skin 6 g · Cup of broccoli 5 g
Your gut is a dynamic environment, constantly in flux. Food, exercise, sleep, stress and the pharmaceuticals you take all influence it. The good news? Small steps daily shift your gut health over time. 🌱

13/08/2026

Don't pack away the tissues just yet 🤧

RNZ reports that while winter bugs are doing the rounds, flu rates in Aotearoa are still low — which modellers say could mean a late flu season rather than a mild one. Australia's numbers are already climbing, and there are early signs of an uptick here.

Translation: your lungs have a few more weeks of work ahead of them!

It's a good moment to look after your respiratory health 💜.
Support your immune system and lung health with Zestt Breathe+. The Zestt Breathe+ formula combines anthocyanins from NZ-grown blackcurrants with quercetin, chelated zinc and NZ honey. Made right here in New Zealand 🇳🇿

🔗 zesttwellness.com

12/08/2026

Plantain, Peas 🫛 and a Dunedin Coffee Factory

My business partner, Darcy, has been travelling in West Africa and sending back colourful, warm photos, which make holding the fort here, in the depths of a Dunedin winter, a little challenging!

I am a foodie, so when I travel, I always come back with a ridiculous number of food shots. I have been eating vicariously through his food photos from the Ivory Coast. Below is fried plantain, a kind of savoury banana that’s a staple food in that region.

Traditional West African diets are rich in whole grains, legumes, vegetables, and fermented foods, offering high nutritional value and health benefits. However, as the global food chain shrinks to a few major players, West Africans are now eating more Western ultra-processed food. Sadly, this is accompanied by rising rates of obesity and chronic disease.

This year in New Zealand, I have been saddened to witness the demise of major horticultural and local food-producing companies. Some of it has happened here in Dunedin: the Gregg's factory on Forth St finished its last run of coffee a couple of weeks ago, closing a business that started in 1862. Its owner, Heinz Wattie's, is also shutting sites in Christchurch and Auckland and the frozen-packing lines in Hastings. The Christchurch closure leaves around 220 vegetable growers looking for a buyer. Hawke's Bay growers have had their own version: Wattie's cut contracts with about 20 peach suppliers last year, and McCain is closing its Hastings plant by January 2027, taking more than 100 growers' contracts with it.

It’s hard to know what the answers are; there are so many factors at play, including:

👉🏼 Australian bank ownership driving up land values, putting pressure on farmers to increase return on their investments (and lower land diversification)
👉🏼 International corporate ownership of our food factories, who then choose to buy cheaper imports instead of home-grown
👉🏼 Duopolistic supermarket systems putting further pressure on growers by driving down prices
👉🏼 More volatile weather events for growers to recover from
👉🏼 Challenges of supply chain integrity.

These challenges are greater than one government can overcome and require a cross-party strategy. The fact that Darcy is seeing the same challenges hindering the West African food supply systems is a good reminder that these challenges are truly global.

So, it’s easy to feel a little hopeless; what we can do is support local. I do that by buying food from the Dunedin Farmers’ Market every week; telling people what I bought and why (word of mouth is gold); and at Zestt Wellness, we use New Zealand ingredients and companies wherever possible.

The challenge, of course, is that New Zealand products are more expensive (partly because of the land-value issues identified above). But the counter to not doing this is loss of locally grown and produced food and products. That’s a high price to pay for our health as a community.

So, to you, as a Zestt customer, thank you. We notice every single order, and no customer is taken for granted. And I look forward to Darcy’s return; it will certainly make things noisier around here!

11/08/2026

He went from 26 pharmaceuticals to three.

Darcy Schack co-founded Zestt Wellness because he lives with sarcoidosis and COPD — and wanted something better for his own lungs.

Zestt Breathe+ is a plant-based lozenge made in Dunedin. One a day, after food. Anthocyanins from New Zealand boysenberry and blackcurrant, quercetin, chelated zinc, BLIS K12™ oral probiotic and New Zealand Rātā honey.

What people are telling us:

"My husband has Stage 4 COPD. I watched him bend down to the oven without his usual huffing and puffing." — Gaynor

"Coughing for 7 weeks, two doctor visits. Within 4 days my cough has nearly gone." — Denise

In our pilot clinical trial we measured higher VO₂ max, better muscle oxygenation and lower inflammation. A full trial is now underway with the University of Otago and Dunedin Hospital.

Award-winning, independently science-reviewed, made in New Zealand under strict standards. 30-day money-back guarantee.

Order at zesttwellness.com

10/08/2026

Your Gut Changes at Menopause Too

Scientists are great at coming up with new words, and I learned one recently: "estrobolome!" 🤓 Your estrobolome is a group of gut bacteria that determine whether your oestrogen gets excreted or recycled.

When oestrogen is made in your body, or enters it, your liver tags it with a glucuronide molecule 🏷️, which marks it for disposal, shipping it into the gut in bile. But some specific gut bacteria (your estrobolome) produce an enzyme called β-glucuronidase, which snips that tag off ✂️ to reactivate the oestrogen, and a portion is reabsorbed into your blood.

Your gut can recycle oestrogen back into circulation ♻️ rather than letting it go, and when oestrogen is plentiful it does less of this — β-glucuronidase activity falls, and more gets excreted instead. After menopause, the abundance of β-glucuronidase drops as well, so that you lose the ovarian supply and some of the recycling system with it. 📉

🔄 What changes at menopause

Postmenopausal women have lower microbial diversity (than premenopausal women) and a species pattern which is more like men. These shifts travel alongside cardiometabolic markers ❤️ and loss of bone density. 🦴

💡 What it means, and what to do

🥦 Eat for microbial diversity. Aiming for 30 different plants a week as well as fermented food (see last week's blog) increases your microbiome diversity, which includes your estrobolome species.

🧐 Be sceptical of "menopause microbiome" test kits. There's no validated target species ratio to aim at yet.

💊 If you take hormone replacement therapy (HRT), keep doing it. The early data shows HRT shifts the gut back towards a premenopausal pattern in terms of microbial diversity and species.

06/08/2026

🌱 Seed and Feed 🌱 Why Gut Health Needs Both

You might know by now that I am a big advocate for eating fibre in its many shapes and forms. 🥦 The way you get that fibre is by eating a variety of plants. The fibre feeds your microbiome, which is hopefully full of suitable microbes to feed on the fibre and multiply.

But what happens if your gut microbiome is not varied and doesn't have lots of different microbial species to break down the fibre? 🤔 Sometimes that means the fibre gets passed through, so it's no use to you or your microbiome.

So what's Plan B?

🔬 Researchers at Stanford put healthy adults on one of two diets for ten weeks. One group ate high fibre. The other ate high fermented food — yoghurt, kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha.

I expected the fibre group to win, but they didn't: ✅ The fermented food group showed an increase in microbiome diversity and a drop in inflammatory markers.
The high-fibre group didn't gain microbial diversity over the same ten weeks. 👉 The people who did see less inflammation were the ones who already had a diverse microbiome when they started.

The distinction is that fermented foods seed your microbiome with new microbes. Fibre feeds whatever microbes are already there.

Which means if the microbes you need aren't present, feeding harder doesn't help. You're fertilising barren soil. 🌾

⚠️ But don't drop the fibre It would be easy to read that study and conclude that fermented food beats fibre, but that's not the case. Seeding without feeding doesn't work either because new microbes arriving in a gut with nothing to eat won't stick around!

So, in practice:

🍽️ Feed. Aim to eat thirty different plant species a week. It sounds challenging until you remember nuts, seeds, beans, lentils, herbs and spices all count. Build up gradually; a sudden jump to a plate of beans without the microbes can leave you bloated and farting like a trooper! 💨

🫙 Seed. Eat fermented foods regularly: raw sauerkraut and kimchi (fridge versions, as often shelf versions have been heat treated, which kills the microbes), unsweetened yoghurt and kefir, fermented cottage cheese and cheeses like cheddar, gruyère, camembert and brie. 🧀

Where Zestt Gut+ Lozenges fit? "Eat more fermented food and hit 30 plants a week" is hard to sustain, especially when you're travelling, unwell, or have just had a course of antibiotics (or other medications). ✈️

Each Zestt Gut+ lozenge contains seed and feed:

The feed: 🌿 Yacon (600mg), high in fructooligosaccharides 🥝 New Zealand gold kiwifruit (600mg), which brings prebiotic fibre plus actinidin, an enzyme that helps break down protein.

The seed: 🦠 Three proven probiotic strains at 2.5 billion CFU each: HN019 (Bifidobacterium lactis), LA-14 (Lactobacillus acidophilus), and BLIS K12™ (Streptococcus salivarius), which work at the very start of your digestive tract, your mouth.

Take one to two lozenges daily to ensure a healthy microbiome and support your digestion and immunity ✨

Zestt Wellness

02/09/2026

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31/08/2026

27/08/2026

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