Topic: Probiotics May Make Things Worse- Study Results
Tincup
Honored Contributor (10K+ posts)
Member # 5829
posted
Interesting! Detailed and something to consider!
QUOTE- "People who took probiotic supplements to rally their microbiome after antibiotics didn’t regain their healthy communities for as long as five months afterward. People who didn’t take anything after their antibiotics did."
-------------------- --Lymetutu-- Opinions, not medical advice! Posts: 96238 | From Texas | Registered: Feb 2001
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Keebler
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- Variables. Consider Variables. Much depends upon study specifics (exactly which probiotics were used and under what conditions such as dose amount, timing, combinations),
study participants' full food / beverage intact, other behavior, etc. Various variables could skew the results.
There are a lot of bottles / brands of probiotics on the market that are not up to par at all. Others that are. Which did they use?
It might be like the Vitamin E study where the wrong kind was used but no mention in that by the study parties or the press so all Vitamin E supplements were then just painted as bad. Critical thinking is not a strong suit in press releases.
I could not easily find the specifics of the study. Others might, though. I prefer to get my pre-biotics and probiotics from food sources. Though if one is taking antibiotics, stepping up with a good quality probiotic that has science behind it would be a good idea, too. -
Posts: 48021 | From Tree House | Registered: Jul 2007
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klutzo
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
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posted
Hmmm....I wonder how many of these people still had an appendix, and how many had them removed?
The appendix is your natural probiotic reservoir, which should replenish your bacteria when they are killed off by Abx.
If you don't have one, I would think taking probiotics would be very necessary.
I took metronidazole for 3 weeks (a miracle!) and was tested a month after stopping it, after taking a very strong probiotic during that month. I had loads of the 2 types of bifidus tested, but ZERO acidophilus!
That explains my persistent depression, at least partly. My probiotic had loads of acidophilus, with many different strains in it, but I still had no growing colonies.
I also eat kefir daily, and sometimes Greek yogurt as well.
Also interestingly, I had none of my usual gut symptoms during the Abx. They all went away, despite metronidazole being the Abx that is supposed to debilitate probiotics the most, from what I've read.
I do have an appendix, so it should have restocked my gut. Seems like there is a lot we still don't know.....
Posts: 1269 | From Clearwater, Florida, USA | Registered: May 2004
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lightfoot
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posted
Confirms my experience over the years of taking hundreds of dollars worth pf probiotics with absolutely no benefits that I could detect!!
Thanks for the studies, Tincup!!!
-------------------- Healing Smiles.....lightfoot Posts: 7228 | From CO | Registered: May 2002
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Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
Member # 12673
posted
- As I suspected, not impressed with the study parameters here.
It's not that probiotics don't work but, perhaps, SOME BRANDS do not.
I lost the link, though, but the gist of it is that it appears to be a very poorly designed study that wrongly paints a broad stroke. A GENERIC product from the supermarket was used. For starters, they should have looked at that to document the quality of it, including its bio-availability in vivo.
It's also unclear what kind of diet / life-style regarding what all was going into the ONLY 25 people during the time of this study.
Is their water laced with chlorine, fluoride, etc? This might matter. Do they consume colas or fizzy drinks? That, too, can change the way the gut works? Etc.
They say they were "healthy" volunteers yet, did then have Gut Microbiome testing prior to this? They should have.
One experiment does not really constitute a proper study, especially since they may have used inferior product. One single product is absolutely not adequate to "rule" on this matter.
Excerpt from a news account (I lost the link):
. . . After 25 healthy volunteers ate a generic probiotic with 11 strains of “good” bacteria, they all had probiotic bacteria in their stool, which the research team expected.
But when doctors did the endoscopy to evaluate their intestines, they found that probiotics had only actually “stuck” and grown in a few people. . . . -
Posts: 48021 | From Tree House | Registered: Jul 2007
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"C.diff is a dreaded complication of antibiotic therapy. We like to think probiotics ward off the disease, but this is far from certain. Traditional probiotics may have some benefits, but limited."
" Florastor and Saccharomyces boulardi may be slightly beneficial."
" The choice of antibiotics makes a HUGE difference. The most likely to cause C.diff (high risk) are ;
" Studies show Doxy is a low-risk drug. Doxy seems to reduce the incidence of acquiring C.diff when compared to a control group taking NO antibiotics ! Doxy may PROTECT against getting C.diff.! This is HUGE."
" Doxy has unique bioavailability, nearly 100% when taken orally. It is not metabolized by the liver or the kidneys. It has low toxicity and is well tolerated."
Wow and fascinating.
Posts: 3076 | From Florida | Registered: Nov 2016
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Tincup
Honored Contributor (10K+ posts)
Member # 5829
posted
Before you two poo-poo the results by stating that the probiotics were "generic" or "probably ineffective brands", or that the study was not proper because it used an inferior product, you might want to actually read the studies.
First... "According to ConsumerLab, a probiotic should provide at least 1 billion CFUs."
The one used in the studies (2 of them, not one) is this brand that appears to be well above the standard...
"During the probiotics phase participants consumed Supherb Bio-25 bi-daily, which is described by the manufacturer to contain at least 25 billion active bacteria of the following strains:
B. bifidum, L. rhamnosus, L. lactis, L. casei, B. breve, S. thermophilus, B. lon- gum sbsp. longum, L. paracasei, L. plantarum and B. longum sbsp. infantis.
According to the manufacturer, the pills underwent double coating to ensure their survival under stomach acidity and their proliferation in the intestines."
It also states this information was verified using several methods by an independent source...
"Validation of the aforementioned strains quantity and viability was performed as part of the study, see figure S4A-E.
Probiotics colonization in humans was cross-vaidated by four different methods, including genus-level determination by 16S rDNA analysis; phylogenetic analysis of shotgun metagenomic sequences based on bacterial marker genes (MetaPhlAn2);
amplification of the probiotics targets with qPCR; and strain-level analysis on shotgun metagenomic sequences based on unique genomic sequences (Sharon et al., 2015)."
Tincup
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Member # 5829
posted
Keebler- not sure what grocery store you think we could go to to get this probiotic- or where you got that information- because it is made overseas and not regularly sold (if at all from what I could tell) on sites such as Amazon or in commonly used vitamin stores in the USA.
(*I didn't do an exhaustive search, but I did try to find it locally with no luck.)
If you and TuTu can show me where it states in the studies what you all said... that this was a "GENERIC product from the supermarket" or "that probably ineffective brands were used" I'd appreciate it.
I just don't see that info at all and I don't feel it is fair to try to discount the study with comments that are questionable, or simply an opinion or not true.
Tincup
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posted
And can you support this comment Keebler? "One experiment does not really constitute a proper study, especially since they may have used inferior product. One single product is absolutely not adequate to "rule" on this matter."
What I saw was more than one study with multiple authors working independently together, with multiple study phases and multiple approaches, using high quality supplements- checked by 4 different methods to be sure the probiotics were live and active- and many results charted out in graphs so it wasn't just based on opinions.
Tincup
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posted
Keebler said.. "Much depends upon study specifics (exactly which probiotics were used and under what conditions such as dose amount, timing, combinations),
study participants' full food / beverage intact, other behavior, etc. Various variables could skew the results."
If you read the studies they provide a lot of that info for you.
Tincup
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posted
Here is the probiotic info...
BIO - 25 - TO PROMOTE GUT-HEALTH, OVERALL WELLBEING AND HELP RELIEVE SYMPTOMS OF IBD AND IBS An innovative formula containing over 25 billion active bacteria in each capsule. Price: €29.99 Your price: €23.99
I also found it for sale on a global company website, but the description and bottle wording isn't in English.
Tincup
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Member # 5829
posted
Just for example... here is some of the wording from one of the studies, so these aren't fly-by-night deals from what I can tell.
Both studies happen to be 17 pages long, so obviously this is only a tiny sampling.
"We therefore sought to investigate the potential of stool samples as markers for the mucosal GI microbial community by directly sampling throughout the human GI tract. To account for mucosal microbiome-altering impacts of bowel prep- aration (Drago et al., 2016, O’Brien et al., 2013), we sampled the UGI and LGI tracts of two healthy participants (Table S1) in two consecutive colonoscopies. The first was performed in the absence of any form of bowel preparation, followed by a second procedure 3 weeks later performed using a routine Picolax bowel preparation protocol (Figure S2A, STAR Methods). The terminal ileum (TI) and LGI were affected by bowel preparation more than the UGI (Figure S2B), resulting in separation of the prepped and the non-prepped samples according to 16S rDNA (Unweighted UniFrac, Figure S2C), MetaPhLan2 (Figure S2D), KEGG ortholo- gous genes (KOs, Figure S2E), and pathways (Figures S2F and S2G), but no significant differences were noted in observed species (Figure S2H) or bacterial load (Figure S2I). These limita- tions notwithstanding, bowel preparation, greatly facilitating direct gut mucosal sampling at the entirety of the human GI tract, was uniformly applied to all intervention and control cases thereafter. We began by characterizing the gut microbiome in a cohort of healthy human adults at different bio-geographical regions and directly compared these to stool microbiome configuration of the same individuals."
Tincup
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posted
Klutzo- That's really interesting! I didn't know the appendix was involved!
The fact your gut symptoms went away with the antibiotics is good too! Thanks for sharing!
Lightfoot! HA! I guess both of us can use the money we spent on probiotics all these years to buy some ice cream!
Hiker... That's interesting. Sorry you now are dealing with it.
I am not smart enough to breakdown each piece of the study to relate it to your experiences, but perhaps the yeast is a different story?
The one study didn't mention the word "yeast" by that name (didn't check the other one- getting tired and already closed it down).
So, if you feel there is a benefit to using them and don't notice any harm like they mentioned, maybe consider still using them at least till the yeast is under control?
I really think, in my totally unprofessional opinion, that it is an individual thing. Some can do, some can't. We are all different.
I do think scientific studies are needed to properly understand and test theories
you guys are so educated, it is amazing, since you already realize the pitfalls of single studies, too - that is the flip side of the results from one study: the study could have had controls or inputs or assumptions or methods that do not warrent the conclusion
my 2 cents worth (my case): I took Renew Life for a long time and did not feel much - about 50 to 150 Billion organisms a day -
then I got (with one abx protocol) a lot of yeast problems, noteably bad gas from my stomach (lots of burping, even between meals) - it was very noticeable -
I took 10 to 15 capsules of probiotics one day (about 1200 Billion organisms) and the burping stopped - have repeated that experiment and it worked again at another time
800 to 1200 Billion organisms is what does it for me - very quickly, as a probios push - that costs about $25.- in capsules so I don't do that too often and certainly not every day
**Note: I do *not* get these from Amazon but from my local grocery store where they are properly refrigerated! The Amazon links are just to show the brand for you to see **
One day I got a batch that may have been contaminated with yeast, since I got *more gas* after taking it - I figured they got some yeast in the batch by accident and switched brands again for a while
so, yeah, the effect depends on what you take and how much
also, I think eating "right" is super-important to support the gut in growing the incoming organisms:
absolutely no sugar (or syrup, or honey, or anything like that), low starch (potatoes, etc.), no refined starch "white" foods, lots of fiber and vegetables!
plain yogurt, kefir, if you can have dairy
kombucha (watch the sugar! not too much, especially if not fermented properly - read the lable if you buy Kombucha! some are full of sugar)
Kimchi, sauerkraut (raw, fermented), miso soup, etc. (not sure about the miso, but it works for me with lots of veggies as a veggie soup with the miso stirred in at the end to keep the probiotics alive - not sure if they are the right kind, but again, it works for me to feel good)
-------------------- Persistence, persistence, persistence!!! "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence... Persistence and determination are omnipotent." attributed to Calvin Coolidge Posts: 599 | From USA | Registered: Jun 2011
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posted
Wow, so many flaws in all the studies noted on that original website. Yale and Harvard have an annual conference on probiotics that’s always very informative - http://www.lcgdbzz.org/UpFiles/Mag/2015/11/20151159355.pdfPosts: 23 | From Massachusetts | Registered: Jun 2018
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