Probiotics are a growing health trend with a market value estimated at $35 billion and climbing, but just like the vitamins market, science has a strong view of the dubious claims made by companies marketing them.
This article will help you understand the limitations of probiotics and why the hype outweighs the benefits in most cases, but don’t worry, we will also tell you how to get your gut health in top condition.
What are probiotics?
Probiotics are products that contain live microorganisms like bacteria and yeast, most of which can already be found in your body. Some food products like yoghurt and kefir contain strains of bacteria that are considered good for gut health, but in reality, all foods contain microbes, so it’s more about achieving balance than eating a particular food product with a particular strain of bacteria.
The idea behind probiotics
The rationale of consuming probiotics is to introduce good bacteria into your microbiome or to increase their number, with the view that this will provide health benefits or at least maintain good health.
This is different from prebiotics which aims to feed and support the good bacteria in your gut, rather than introduce new ones or a greater quantity.
Do probiotics work?
There is much debate on the practical use and effectiveness of probiotics. Most research indicates that probiotics do not provide any health benefits to healthy people.
Some benefits were identified in people that suffer from chronic conditions like IBS or diarrhoea, but the scientists made it clear that they were unable to assign any changes in the condition to any specific strain of bacteria, or the precise amount required to balance the gut biome to alleviate the cause of symptoms.
In most studies, however, faecal (poo) samples did not identify an increase in the bacteria provided in the probiotics, except in one small study of 34 participants, however, those participants also had a deficit of those particular strains. Even then, the scientists did not identify a health benefit from the increase.
One of the issues with probiotic products is the inadequacy of the bacteria they contain. This may sound counterintuitive because the packaging boasts billions per capsule, but your gut contains tens of trillions of microbes in their various strains.
Let’s think about this for a second because the numbers can be overwhelming. We all know a billion is a big number (1,000 x 1 million), but a trillion is 1,000 x 1 billion, and each strain of bacteria likely has 10-30 trillion in its colony.
To compare directly, that’s 1 million x 1 million for a small colony.
It is important to remember that every time you eat you introduce more microbes into your gut and you also provide the food they eat, so the existing populations in your gut are growing or at the very least maintaining their size in relation to competing colonies.
Given that most probiotics contain less than 10 billion bacteria and that you will likely provide a similar or greater quantity of competing bacteria through your diet every day, it is hard to see how a probiotic containing just a few billion microbes will make a meaningful difference in such a vast and competitive environment.
There is also a lot of uncertainty with regard to how much of the bacteria found in probiotics survive the journey to the gut because they are not equipped to handle the hostile acidic environment of the human stomach.
According to professor John Hunter, emeritus Physician and Gastroenterologist at Addenbrooke's Hospital Cambridge, and co-founder of JUVIA, even if the bacteria survives your stomach acid, your immune system will likely attack it as if it were harmful bacteria.
That being the case, you will have to consume a very significant amount of probiotics over a long period of time for them to begin to have an effect, so unless you are willing to commit both financially and habitually, it will probably be a waste of time and money.
The untold story of probiotics
Unfortunately, the companies that market probiotics offer strains of bacteria that are the easiest to grow quickly, and not because those strains have been identified as being particularly beneficial to human health.
Your gut microbiome is highly complex and balance is the ultimate goal. It is therefore important to consider gut health from an ecosystem-wide point of view. In other words, there isn’t a super-strain that miraculously improves everyone’s health, but there may be strains useful for particular functions or conditions. Even so, it is necessary to understand the extent to which those microbes are present and flourishing in your gut flora, or absent, before committing to a course of probiotics.
In conclusion, the only time scientists agree that probiotics are consistently effective is during and immediately after a course of antibiotics, but even then, studies have shown that they prevent the gut flora from returning to its normal state for up to 6 months. Unfortunately, science regards probiotics as a fad, much like the marketing of vitamins.
The easy way to take care of your gut
JUVIA is an effective supplement to support your gut microbiome. That’s because JUVIA breaks down the starches found in carbohydrates before they get to your gut. The unfriendly bacteria in your gut rely on the nutrients and energy it receives from those starches to maintain their colonies, and without them, they die.
Having JUVIA with your meals on a regular basis encourages the friendly bacteria already in your gut to outgrow the unfriendly bacteria. This improves the balance of your gut microbiome without the need to introduce new bacteria (probiotics) or attempt to feed the friendly ones (prebiotics).
Instead, you can enjoy the foods you like without worry and still improve your gut health. So, why not give JUVIA a try and feel at your best?