An R.D. clears up the confusion.
When considering a probiotic
supplement, it’s always important to know your purpose for taking it.
Certain probiotics are effective at treating certain issues. For
example, acidophilus is efficacious for antibiotic-induced diarrhea. This is a great chart
that lists some of the popular commercially available probiotic
supplements, dosage recommendations, and what they’re best at treating.
More:
By Abby Langer, R.D., Self
I know you’ve heard of probiotics—those
microorganisms that add to or restore beneficial bacteria to your
digestive tract. Lots of people take them to alleviate the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), including constipation and diarrhea.
But choosing a probiotic supplement can be confusing, and some of the supplements might not even be
what they say they are! With so many probiotic-fortified foods on the
market, like juices and chips, the situation gets even more confusing.
When it comes to probiotics, what’s worth trying, and what should you
take a pass on?
Why do you need good bugs in your gut, anyway?
[post_ads]Gut bacteria and the environment they live in are known as your “microbiome.”
If you’ve ever taken antibiotics and got diarrhea from them, you know
firsthand how important a healthy microbiome is: The diarrhea is the
result of those good little bugs in your intestine being killed off by
the antibiotics. You may have taken probiotics to make things right
again in your gut, as is usually recommended.
Anything
from medications to diet to stress can knock your microbiome out of
whack, throwing off the ratio of bad gut bacteria to good gut bacteria.
When this happens, you might have diarrhea, bloating, or constipation,
among other symptoms.
It’s pretty
clear that probiotics can improve gut health. Research shows that
probiotics can be helpful in relieving the symptoms of irritable bowel
syndrome, such as constipation and diarrhea, according to a review
published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology.
Aside from GI issues, however, the research is still in its early
stages. The latest science suggests that having a healthy microbiome may
be linked to mood, weight, and immunity—but the findings are far from
conclusive, especially regarding the effect of probiotic supplements.
To
get a healthy gut, you need to feed your microbiome and add more good
bacteria to the mix! To do that, lots of people rely on probiotic
supplements or probiotic foods. If you have a poor diet—as in, lots of sugar, meat, and saturated fats, and too little fiber and plants—your eating patterns can negatively affect your microbiota.
Yogurt is a popular probiotic food—but be careful about which type you buy. Some types don’t have any probiotics in them at all!
Now more than ever, people are taking probiotic supplements and adding probiotic foods to their diets to help with symptoms of IBS and improve gut health.
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Yogurt is probably the most well-recognized probiotic foods, but a recent University of Toronto study
shows that different brands of yogurt vary tremendously in their
probiotic content—and some don’t even contain probiotic cultures at all!
This chart from that study
shows how much of each brand of yogurt and kefir you'd have to eat in
one day to get the health benefits that the manufacturers promise, based
on the dose used in studies that show those benefits. You can see that
for some brands, just half of a serving of yogurt is enough to get a
good dose of probiotics. But other brands require eight to 20 servings!
So
just because it’s yogurt, doesn’t mean it’s probiotic, and if it is, it
may not contain enough probiotics to do what the manufacturer promises
it will. Also, most fruit-flavored yogurts are full of sugar, basically
rendering them comparable to a glass of juice or soda in terms of sugar
content.
Foods with added probiotics probably
aren’t worth your money. There’s no research on whether or not they can
do anything for you.
Fermented foods
like kimchi, kombucha, and sauerkraut are probiotic and may increase our
good gut bacteria when eaten regularly. But what about the
non-fermented, probiotic-fortified tortilla chips, bread, and juice
you’re seeing at the grocery store?
To answer this question, I reached out to my colleague Desiree Nielsen, the author of Un-Junk Your Diet
and a registered dietitian who specializes in gut health and
inflammation. “Many probiotic-fortified foods use a unique species
called bacillus coagulans, which forms a
spore to help it stay dormant until you take it. This allows it to be
added to a variety of different foods and still become active in
humans,” she explains to me. “The question mark on these types of foods
is whether they use a strain of bacillus coagulans that has actual human health benefits and whether they provide adequate dosage for benefit,” she adds.
In
order to demonstrate benefits, companies should research the effects,
which isn’t happening—or, if any studies are in process, the results
haven't been published. “It’s truly impossible to know if you will see a
benefit from a specific food because none of these food companies are
researching the effects,” Nielsen says.
[post_ads]Jack
Gilbert, Ph.D., faculty director of the Microbiome Center at the
University of Chicago, adds that there may be some benefits to the
probiotics added to foods—but it's really an unknown at this point. "It
is doubtful they reach the gut fully, but they can stimulate the immune
system on the way down," he tells me. "The issue is—does that do
anything beneficial? As far as I am aware there are no properly
controlled studies that demonstrate their effectiveness."
If you want to improve your gut health, consider limiting sugar
and saturated fats, eating foods that naturally contain probiotics
(such as kimchi, kefir, and kombucha), and possibly taking probiotic
supplements.
Check out this list of foods rich in probiotics.
Always remember, if you heat probiotic food, it kills the active
cultures, rendering them useless. So keep this in mind when you’re cooking with probiotic foods or choosing a probiotic-fortified food.
Probiotic supplements may be helpful—especially if you have GI issues—but choose them wisely.
The research into probiotic supplements is still very limited. According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine
(NCCAM), part of the National Institutes of Health: "Some probiotics
may help to prevent diarrhea that's caused by infections or antibiotics.
They may also help with symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. However,
benefits have not been conclusively demonstrated, and not all probiotics
have the same effects."
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If you’d like
to try taking a probiotic supplement, it probably won’t hurt you. The
NCCAM says that probiotics are generally safe for healthy people. Side
effects are rare, and are usually limited to mild problems such as gas.
(If you have a compromised immune system, a recent surgery, or another
serious health condition, or if you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, check
with your doctor before taking probiotic supplements, the NCCAM
advises.)
