Probiotics are friendly bacteria that play an instrumental role in our digestive and immune health.
As with most natural products, there are many types and thousands of brands. How do you choose the right probiotic for you?
In our practice, we find that stool testing for bacteria can identify the exactly strains of bacteria that is right for every person, however if your digestive issue is not severe or testing is not something that is in your budget, going for something general is also ok.
The thing to remember is that the word probiotic is sort of like saying the word dog. As with dogs where there are various breeds, probiotics are made of various strains. If you need to protect your house, you will go with a Rottweiler where as if you need a cute dog to play with, you may go with a Chihuahua. The same goes for probiotics. Different stains have their own individual benefits and can help you with anything from diarrhea to constipation, gas to indigestion and much more. With this in mind, if you have a problem with constipation, you would benefit most from strains geared towards that issue, where is if you have colits, crohn’s disease or other inflammatory bowel diseases that tend to cause looser bowels, you will need strains formulated for diarrhea. If you don’t have any specific digestive issues but want to maintain good health and immunity, more general combination of strains would be recommended.
For this reason, we carry various probiotics so that we can support these different complains. Our Recolonize 1 probiotic contains 25 billion organisms with 5 billion of them coming from a strain called Saccharomyces Boulardii in just one small capsule. This combination works exceptionally well for anyone experiencing diarrhea from a digestive disorder or loose bowels from antibiotic use. 1-2 pills per day can correct symptoms in as little as 2 days. Recolonize 1 uses room temperature stable stains that do not have to be refrigerated and are guaranteed stable through their expiration which makes it a great product for travel.
Our Probiotic Synergy powdered probiotic from Designs for Health contains a combination of strains specifically used to move bowels and is excellent for constipation, hard stools and “pellet” stools. It also contains inulin which is a prebiotic that is used as food to feed the probiotics and help them colonize in the intestines. Probiotic Synergy contains 20 billion organisms in ½ of a teaspoon and can be titrated up to achieve as high of a dose as needed. It is best when refrigerated.
Orthobiotic plus from Ortho Molecular is our more general probiotic with 6 different potent strains. It comes in pill form, does not need to be refrigerated and is guaranteed to contain 20 billion organisms at its expiration.If you are looking to correct a digestive issue or just want to improve immunity and overall health, give probiotics a try, your body will thank you.