In just a few short minutes on the Eudēmonia stage, Halle Berry got honest and vulnerable fast about the invisible battle she’s been fighting since she was 19.
What began as a young woman trying to survive a confusing type 2 diabetes diagnosis spiraled into decades of trial-and-error. From insulin, metformin, and a long list of probiotics, she’s tried everything to manage her blood sugar. She wasn’t exaggerating. “Hear me,” she told the room, leaning into the microphone, “I tried all the probiotics on the market, and nothing happened.”
Until one day a conversation back home in Cleveland changed everything. Someone told her about Pendulum, a company the Cleveland Clinic had invested in. It was using a live probiotic strain called Akkermansia muciniphila (Akkermansia) that no one else had at the time.
She tried it and six months later, her A1C biomarker had dropped one point. By a year and a half, she was down two points.
A1C is a clinical marker that reflects your average blood sugar over the previous three months. A healthy A1C is considered below 5.7%, prediabetes begins at 5.7–6.4%, and anything 6.5% or higher falls into the diabetic range. Many people with diabetes struggle for years to shave off even 0.3 or 0.4 points, despite medication, diet changes, and exercise.
For Berry, after 15 years at a metabolic standstill, this was “revolutionary.”
We sat down with the scientist behind the company, Colleen Cutcliffe Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Pendulum, to get the lowdown on why this probiotic strain is so powerful.
With a background in biochemistry and microbiology, Cutcliffe pointed out that Akkermansia is its own category. “There are a ton of strains out there,” she told Muscle & Fitness. “But Akkermansia is totally different.”
Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium are the popular ones on the shelves right now. But Dr. Cutcliffe says there are a few things “that we know that Akkermansia does that’s really unique from all the other ones on the market today.”
The ‘Keystone Strain’ Supporting Gut Lining
Akkermansia’s superpower comes from directly interacting with your gut lining. According to Cutcliffe, this strain of bacteria lives in the mucus layer, or the “glue,” that holds your gut lining together.
“Akkermansia is the only strain we know that can strip away the glue and replenish new glue,” she explained. “It’s a regulator of the structure of your gut lining.”
That might sound like a nerdy detail until you remember what happens when that lining begins to break down: permeability (“leaky gut”), unpredictable digestion, bloating, weird immune flares, skin issues, and low-grade inflammation that makes recovery harder and fat loss slower.
This is why researchers and clinicians have started calling Akkermansia a “keystone strain.” Studies have shown that healthy levels of Akkermansia may improve gut barrier function, enhance metabolic health, and modulate the immune system.
This probiotic has an outsized impact on everything else. “I think a lot of it is because of that structure of the gut lining, because it’s so fundamental,” Cutcliffe shared. “When
you’re low or missing Akkermansia, it’s correlated with so many diseases beyond just GI, but into metabolism and skin and even brain issues.”
Lower Appetite and Boost GLP-1
The next layer is hormonal. “Akkermansia can stimulate your own GLP-1 production,” Cutcliffe shared. “That’s phenomenal because there are so many things we’re trying to do to increase GLP-1.”
GLP-1 is the hormone that regulates appetite, satiety, and post-meal blood sugar stabilization. The same pathway targeted by modern weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. But Akkermansia supports it naturally, not pharmacologically.
Most people describe a shift such as less cravings, earlier fullness, a more balanced relationship with food. I shared my own experience with Cutcliffe, how within three months of taking Akkermansia, halfway through meals, I was simply done, and how long-stubborn belly fat finally started budging.
She just nodded. “That’s exactly what we see. It really is an important part of metabolic health because it can stimulate your gut lining as well as GLP-1.”
Cutcliffe has seen patients lower their A1C (like Berry) and lower blood glucose spikes through stimulating your body’s natural mechanisms to metabolize sugars.
Why You Can’t “Just Eat More Fermented Foods
To diversify your microbiome, experts often point toward eating more yogurt, kimchi or other probiotic-rich foods. However, Akkermansia hasn’t been found in any of those.
“No one has found Akkermansia in any food or beverage,” Cutcliffe said. “You can feed it with fiber and polyphenols, but you cannot get it from food.”
The only natural source scientists have documented is human breast milk. “Your mom gives it to you at birth, and you spend the rest of your life trying not to lose it,” she explained, noting, however, if your diet is high in ultra-processed foods or you’ve taken antibiotics at any point, you may be missing this “keystone” bacteria. There’s good news. Cutcliffe points out that since your microbiome constantly changes, you can replenish it and get back to a healthy state with just a few tweaks.
Your gut microbiome, however, doesn’t change overnight. Cutcliffe explained that one of the best models we have is diet-shift studies. Meaning if you take an omnivore and make them vegetarian, it takes about eight weeks for the microbiome to stabilize into a new state. That’s why she tells people to expect meaningful change around 90 days.
Live vs. Pasteurized
Akkermansia supplements come in two forms: live or pasteurized (heat-killed). Cutcliffe didn’t mince words here. “Pasteurized Akkermansia can never colonize,” she said. “Because it’s dead, it can’t respond to your diet. It can’t eat fiber. It can’t populate in your gut.”
She explains that through the pasteurization process, while the bacteria dies, it’s not completely useless, but hardly enough for meaningful improvement. “You do still get some of those health benefits, but if you’re really trying to improve your gut health and you don’t want to be on a pill for the rest of your life and you’re going to do dietary changes, you should go for the live strain.”
A Company Built on Science
The story of Pendulum is not common in the supplement world. Cutcliffe told me that it took almost 10 years of research before they sold a single product. “We did pre-clinical and clinical trials first and didn’t bring anything to market until we already had clinical trial data.”
Backed by the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic, Pendulum’s science team continues to run several clinical trials to further uncover what conditions Akkermansia may help improve.
That explains why Berry trusted them. After Berry saw her A1C drop, she reached out to Pendulum to connect with Cutcliffe. She told her “This really changed my life. How can I help you get the word out? People need to know about this.” Berry wanted to translate the science so real people could understand it.
Today, Berry is Pendulum’s Chief Communications Officer, a title that reflects the kind of lived experience that easily resonates with audiences nationwide. It’s common to see Berry share over social media that Pendulum is one of her daily non-negotiables no matter where she is in the world.
