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I want to mention that I am not a doctor, so go see your health professional for any health related issues. The following are just my personal experiences.
I have tried an excessive amount of probiotics to heal my gut!
Why so many?
Because not one has made enough of a significant positive change. That’s not to say they didn’t help at all. They probably all made positive changes in my gut along with diet and supplements. Because all probiotics aren’t created equal, I wanted to try different ones to see which ones my gut liked. I usually rotate which probiotics I try throughout the year to get a good diversity.
There’s one in particular that helped keep me regular. At least for the 3 months I took it in the summer of 2016 (I stopped after a while because bloating came back, probably diet related):
Unfortunately, I suspect that when I take probiotics for too long (like more than 1-3 months depending on my diet and stress levels) my IBS symptoms slowly come back. I’m not 100% sure it’s the probiotics, but I’m not convinced it wasn’t either. Considering probiotics can be controversial to use during the healing of SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) because when you’re trying to get rid of an unnatural overpopulation of bacteria in your small intestine, it could be counterintuitive to add even more bacteria to your gut. At least until you’ve successfully eradicated most of the bacteria in your small intestine and can begin repleneshing your large intestine with beneficial bacteria.
I haven’t formally been diagnosed with SIBO, but apparently most people with IBS also have SIBO. It makes sense since many of the symptoms are similar.
Anyway, from my experience, and per the advice of Integrative Medicine Practitioners like Grace Lui, Chris Kresser and Alison Siebecker, probiotics are an integral part of healing the gut as well as remaining healthy.
Here are some of the types of probiotics I’ve tried.
- Food and drink based probiotics like: Kombucha, Kefir (both milk kefir and water kefir), and sauerkraut.
- VSL #3 – Not convinced this did anything for me.
- Prescript Assist – One of the best ones I’ve tried. Really helped with improving my poops.
- Align
- Seeking Health Probiotics
- Primal Defense
- Elixa – This one is intriguing because it’s a 6 day intensive treatment. I’ve done it twice and after the 5th or 6th day, started to notice better formed poops that lasted for a while. I could also see part of the capsules in the poop, which means that their claim that these capsules release slower is correct!
- Klare Labs Ther-Biotic
- The Gut Institute BIFIDO/MAXIMUS – This one is interesting because it’s specially formulated for people with IBS and SIBO. I like it so far.
- General Biotics Equilibrium
Heal on, my friends, heal on.
