As I was reading my e-mail this news clip from one of my news feeds caught my eye “Probiotic for babies may not fight allergies later“. I’ve learned that headlines do not always reflect the real story; most writers take a particular slant on a story, so now I read more carefully for the full picture. This story focuses on giving babies probiotics to see if they were less likely to suffer from allergies in later years. The study, done by the University of Western Australia, Perth, found the children were no less likely to suffer from allergies than other kids who were not supplemented as babies. This seem strange as we been following other research which contradicts this story and based on the story we have to wonder if all probiotics are the same.
As I have not read the paper I am a bit in the dark. One thing I know about gut flora is that it is a colony of live bacteria. And a thriving colony needs to be maintained. Our immune systems are dynamic – always changing in response to stimuli. So while the babies in the study were supplemented for 6 months – what happened to their gut after that? The Japanese do not immunise babies before the age 2 years because it is generally recognised as the age when the immune system matures. Personally I think 2 years is very conservative and I agree with those writers who think it is more likely 6 years – a topic for another post. The point being that 6 months worth of pro-biotic supplementation for an infant is 6 months worth of supplementation. Question: what happened after that??? Did the child get sick? Did they experience any trauma? How do they eat? In short, what is the state of their gut now??? I want to make an analogy of putting oil in the car once, ten years ago, and wondering why it stopped working….not a great analogy but you get the idea.
Our own experience the quality of the probiotics plays a significant role in determining the type of results; an observation we have made both in clinic and at home. Interesting Dr Sonia Michail a pediatric gastroenterologist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles also believes that certain probiotics are helpful for certain kids. Dr Michail said some studies found that probiotics may help curb certain kids’ long-term risk of the allergic skin condition eczema. But in those studies, the probiotics were different strains of friendly bacteria (L. rhamnosus GG in one study, and a probiotic mix in the other). Interesting – this concurs with our view that not all Probiotics are the same.
So what are probiotics and what are probiotics for? probiotics are a type of “good” bacteria which helps with digestion and offer protection from harmful bacteria, just as the existing “good” bacteria in your body already does. Probiotics are found in fermented foods such as yoghurt and fermented milk. This good bacteria is responsible of the breaks down of food, absorption of nutrients and provides the chemical processing for expelling the waste which feeds our body and brain.
When you go to supermarket or health food store you will see yoghurt/probiotic products which are labelled as healthy and with live cultures. Whilst these products have live cultures, many of these products will also include sugar which negates the benefits of the live cultures as the sugar promotes the “bad” bacteria in your gut. Which is one of the reason we no longer buy such products and we prefer to use our Progurt machine whenever we can. Progurt uses a unique formulation using multiple viable probiotic strains of Human Probiotic Isolate™ (HPI), combined with its potency and freshness in the form of a yoghurt. It does not contains any colour, flavours, stabilisers or preservatives, now does it contain sugar, gluten, gelatine or binders. We believe that Progurt is one of the best probiotic in the market today.
Just remember that not all probiotics are the same and you do need to find quality products to get the best health outcome otherwise you are just fooling yourself.
