Dr. Fugate is correct when she says, in effect, we don't know exactly what happens or how things work when we add a probiotic supplement to our diet. What we do know is that effective probiotic supplements DO work to our benefit.
A big part of the problem in making an effective probiotic supplement is manufacturing commercially viable probiotic strains. It is one thing to have probiotic bugs to work with in the lab but altogether a different challenge to keep them alive on the shelf for the consumer. I know. It took us seven years to find a way to keep the Chr. Hansen strains we use alive on the shelf without refrigeration. And that seven years of research means about six years of failure before we got it right.
And the notion that if some is good then more must be better sure sounds reasonable and with butter pecan ice cream or Indian summer days that may be true. But we found in our research that combining lots of strains in a capsule or tablet doomed some strains because of competition and other adverse effects. Just as understanding gut ecology with its hundered of strains and trillions of bugs still eludes us, so to are the dynamics of probiotic bacteria in combination still a thing of mystery. We know that some "good" strains really don't "like" each other but we don't know why. So Dr. Fugate's decision to stick with L. acidopholus is a good one. It works and saves her some money.
And remember, You Are What You Absorb!
(Link to commercial website removed by EmpowHER moderator.)
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Dr. Fugate is correct when she says, in effect, we don't know exactly what happens or how things work when we add a probiotic supplement to our diet. What we do know is that effective probiotic supplements DO work to our benefit.
A big part of the problem in making an effective probiotic supplement is manufacturing commercially viable probiotic strains. It is one thing to have probiotic bugs to work with in the lab but altogether a different challenge to keep them alive on the shelf for the consumer. I know. It took us seven years to find a way to keep the Chr. Hansen strains we use alive on the shelf without refrigeration. And that seven years of research means about six years of failure before we got it right.
And the notion that if some is good then more must be better sure sounds reasonable and with butter pecan ice cream or Indian summer days that may be true. But we found in our research that combining lots of strains in a capsule or tablet doomed some strains because of competition and other adverse effects. Just as understanding gut ecology with its hundered of strains and trillions of bugs still eludes us, so to are the dynamics of probiotic bacteria in combination still a thing of mystery. We know that some "good" strains really don't "like" each other but we don't know why. So Dr. Fugate's decision to stick with L. acidopholus is a good one. It works and saves her some money.
And remember, You Are What You Absorb!
(Link to commercial website removed by EmpowHER moderator.)
September 16, 2010 - 5:05pmThis Comment
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