Q. What is your advice on Probiotic supplements? For example: Culturelle products for adults and kids? -Jennifer

Dear Jennifer,

Probiotics are essential for life in this toxic world we live in. Sound bold? I put every patient that walks into my clinic on probiotics and I see amazed sparkling eyes when I chat with them one month later. If you have irritable bowel syndrome and your doctor has been unable to offer you relief then take some probiotics. If you have diarrhea or constipation for 10 or 20 years and nothing has helped then you need probiotics. I am not saying that probiotics are a panacea for every ailment known to man but they are a key element in your bowel function and every nutrient that makes your body function comes to you through the bowel.

Did you know that 70% of your immune function resides in the wall of the intestines? Your immune system is critically dependent upon good bacteria (probiotics) to keep the bowel wall healthy, to produce your B vitamins, folic acid and vitamin K, break down your food, reduce food allergies, fight off yeast and other invaders of the bowel.
Without a strong immune system you are more prone to infections, flu, allergies and cancer.

Culturelle is a probiotic that is available commercially and it contains one species of Lactobacillus which is a good probiotic. Probiotics are measured by CFU’s (colony-forming units) and Culturelle has 10 billion CFU’s which is a good amount. Compare that to another probiotic, Align, which is a Bifidobacterium, and it only contains one billion CFU’s. When you consider that the bowel contains approximately 100 trillion bacteria, these numbers seen less impressive. I think 10 billion CFU’s is a nice maintenance dose of probiotic, and if you have bowel problems like diarrhea or constipation then you may find you need higher doses around 40 to 50 billion CFU’s every day for a period of months to resolve the problem and rebalance the bowel flora (bacteria). I would recommend a probiotic that offers many different species of bacteria, some bifidobacterium as well as lactobacillus. There are many different species of each.

Be leery of cheap probiotics as they may not contain the number of live bacteria they claim. Reliable brands should be able to show survivability studies that demonstrate their probiotic can stay alive on the store shelf for months.

Companies like Wakunaga, Vinco, Pure Encapsulations, and Dr. Ohhira’s have shown themselves to be very reliable. Many good probiotics require refrigeration to keep their viability.

You asked a simple question and I tried to be brief but this is a huge topic. Hope some of this helps. I have not seen survivability studies on Culturelle to know how good it is but I would personally chose a probiotic that has more than one active species.

Sincerely,
Dr Gary Huber

Comments

1. Jennifer says:

   October 6, 2009 at 2:41 pm

   Dr. Huber,

   I appreciate your time and insight in answering my question. This definitely helps.

   Thank You,
   Jennifer

   Reply
2. Linda says:

   March 10, 2010 at 9:17 pm

   I have been diagnosed with c-diff and my pharmacist recommended Vinco’s ProBiotics with 25 Billion CFU. I am 43 years old and have had problems with allergic reactions to medicines so I hesitate taking anything new. I asked my doctor’s office and they said it would be fine for me to take this product. Do I have to worry about any serious side effects?

   Reply
   • Dr. Gary Huber says:

     March 12, 2010 at 8:02 am

     Hi Linda,
     No, I have “0″ reservation about this recommendation. Vinco Probiotics are a very good brand with good studies to show their efficacy. Probiotics are not medicines so the odds of them causing an allergic reaction is slim to none. They are natural components of your bowel. Probiotics will kill unwanted yeast in the bowel and help clear toxins so when first taken you may experience some symptoms such as malaise or headache but this will be transient and mild and is actually quite uncommon. Probiotics will help improve your immune response and decrease the odds of your having allergic reactions of any kind.
     Dr. Huber