Success from Probiotics

[Wishful]

About a year and a half ago, I developed intolerance to fermentable dietary fibre. It increased my brainfog, aches and overall malaise. Non-fermentable fibre (psyllium) was okay. I hoped this problem would simply pass, and just put up with avoiding fibre. Recently, I was thinking about it, and it occurred to me to give probiotics a try. It hadn't occurred to me earlier, because i had tried probiotics before, and they had no noticeable effect, so I suppose I put them in the category of "health scam". I had several brands of yoghurt during this period, and those had no effect on this problem. I didn't expect it to work, but <$20 was worth trying. I picked the highest number of strains (14) at the lowest price at Walmart (Jamieson brand).

To my surprise, it did work. I took two caps, morning and evening, rather than one a day, because overdosing didn't seem risky. I also added a tsp of oats with my meals, to give the bacteria something to work on. After a few days I increased the amount of oats, and didn't get the expected rise in symptoms. Even 5 tsps of oats didn't cause problems. I then tried other fibre foods (wheat flour, whole wheat flour, wheat bran, rice, potatoes), and had no problems. I stopped taking them to check whether the effect was long-term or whether I needed to continue supplementing with capsules. After two weeks without capsules, still no problems with fibre. So, it seems I managed to successfully restore a missing strain (or more).

Lessons learned:

1) It is possible to lose a strain, even a common and abundant strain, with no obvious cause.
2) It is possible to restore a strain with probiotics. Our guts hold around 1000 strains of bacteria, so a capsule with 14 strains has less than 1.4% chance of having the missing strain, so keep that in mind. An FMT would offer a better chance of having the missing strain. Furthermore, our microbiome also has fungi and viruses, which the probiotics capsules lack.
3) Being able to eat a variety of food again is really, really wonderful!


I don't know whether it's attributable to the probiotics, or to one of the food I've reintroduced to my diet, but 6 days ago, I walked to the end of my driveway ( 1.25 km walk), and instead of feeling achey as usual, I lacked those leg aches and felt energetic and for the first time in over a year, I felt like walking further. I continued hiking through the woods, up and down hills, for another km or more. I only turned around then because this was the first day of feeling that well and I didn't want to find myself hours out in the woods and suddenly returning to the weak/achey state. Since then I've enjoyed similarly long hikes each morning. I do feel worse sometime in the afternoon, and I'm trying to find out what factor is causing that. I'm also pleased that we're having a nice autumn here, with pleasant temperatures and only occasional patches of snow remaining in shady spots (we had about 6" earlier), so it's great for hiking in the woods. Yay probiotics!

 

[linusbert]

gz on the success.

always flirting with the idea of probiotics, but everytime i have bad memories.
the last time making me have uncontrollable green diarrhea and shitting my pants the first time since i can remember.
so i never tried again.

i was thinking now to try it with raw milk or raw milk cheese or butter. it also has a stronger effect on my guts lke a alien working through my belly, but no diarrhea. i could push through it.

 

[Husband of]

gz on the success.

always flirting with the idea of probiotics, but everytime i have bad memories.
the last time making me have uncontrollable green diarrhea and shitting my pants the first time since i can remember.
so i never tried again.

i was thinking now to try it with raw milk or raw milk cheese or butter. it also has a stronger effect on my guts lke a alien working through my belly, but no diarrhea. i could push through it.

All bacteria are different. Some strains cause me diarrhea, others the opposite. When I get home I'll take a look at the strains unique to the probiotic supplements that I'm helps me solidify (which is generally what I want.)

I think one is lactobacilkus plantarum. But I think there is another one starting with s

 

[Husband of]

All bacteria are different. Some strains cause me diarrhea, others the opposite. When I get home I'll take a look at the strains unique to the probiotic supplements that I'm helps me solidify (which is generally what I want.)

I think one is lactobacilkus plantarum. But I think there is another one starting with s

@linusbert lactobacillus Paracasei is actually the only bacteria unique to the probiotics that work for me. Plantarum is in it too.

But it also doesn't have some bacteria that the others have, which could be the cause of the issues for the other ones.

It's just nutralife brand.

 

[Husband of]

Both Paracasei and plantarum have been shown to help with diarrhoeia

 

[perchance dreamer]

I had chronic diarrhea for about 2 1/2 years, and one of the things that helped resolve it is a probiotic from Lane Innovative Flora3. It contains saccharomyces boulardii. My digestive problem is over, but I continue to take a lower maintenance dose.

https://www.laneinnovative.com/product/flora3-2/

 

[Husband of]

I would also say that sometimes your gut can get temporarily worse from taking probiotics but then get better. Usually for me this last only a few days

 

[ruben]

I had chronic diarrhea for about 2 1/2 years, and one of the things that helped resolve it is a probiotic from Lane Innovative Flora3. It contains saccharomyces boulardii. My digestive problem is over, but I continue to take a lower maintenance dose.

https://www.laneinnovative.com/product/flora3-2/

Just how does one decide which probiotic you actually need. My digestive symptoms are bloating and nausea. With also appetite often down.

 

[MaximilianKohler]

Just how does one decide which probiotic you actually need.

It's highly experimental.

 

[Husband of]

Just how does one decide which probiotic you actually need. My digestive symptoms are bloating and nausea. With also appetite often down.

First step is understanding that not all probiotics will affect you the same way. Most people buying probiotics don't really appreciate that, so at least you are one step ahead of them.

 

[Husband of]

It's highly experimental. https://humanmicrobiome.info/probiotic-guide

That looks useful but also too intense for most people diagnosed with MECFS.

It would be good if there was a simple chart of strains and what that strain is generally good for, noting different poeple will react differently. Or, even better, a list of products and how they generally affect peoples gut symptoms (easier to tell than downstream effects) such as constipation, diarrhoeaia, bloating, reflux.

 

[JES]

Just how does one decide which probiotic you actually need. My digestive symptoms are bloating and nausea. With also appetite often down.

Unless you want to dive deep into it, just buy a probiotic from the market shelf and see how it works like OP did. The thing is that 99% of probiotics that you find in most stores contain more or less the same mixture of lactobacillus (lactic acid) strains with a few bifidobacterium strains added.

If you really want to know the effective ingredient you need to buy single strain probiotics, but as mentioned these are harder to find and will take you a long time to go through all.

 

[perchance dreamer]

Just how does one decide which probiotic you actually need. My digestive symptoms are bloating and nausea. With also appetite often down.

My doctor recommended the Flora 3.

 

[Wishful]

The thing is that 99% of probiotics that you find in most stores contain more or less the same mixture of lactobacillus (lactic acid) strains with a few bifidobacterium strains added.

That's what I found. If you're really convinced that you need to restore some missing strain to your microbiome, FMTs might be the better route (at least for the colon), since you'd get ~1000 species at once. I feel I got amazingly lucky that one of the 14 strains in my experiment proved to be the right one.

 

[MaximilianKohler]

It would be good if there was a simple chart of strains and what that strain is generally good for, noting different poeple will react differently. Or, even better, a list of products and how they generally affect peoples gut symptoms (easier to tell than downstream effects) such as constipation, diarrhoeaia, bloating, reflux.

For most of that, there is no such thing. But the link does have specific probiotics that are supported for certain conditions like IBS-D for example.

 

[ruben]

I will just add that I did have FMT in around 2015 and didn't notice any improvement. And it is quite expensive.

 

[MaximilianKohler]

I will just add that I did have FMT in around 2015 and didn't notice any improvement. And it is quite expensive.

I've done FMTs from 13+ different donors and very few of them were highly effective. I have yet to find a "super-donor" though.

 

[Wishful]

I will just add that I did have FMT in around 2015 and didn't notice any improvement.

Yes, in order for it to work, you have to have the problem that it can fix. It would be so much easier if our bodies provided a error code (kxvb178 = missing lactosomething strain).

 

[Rufous McKinney]

the last time making me have uncontrollable green diarrhea and shitting my pants the first time since i can remember.
so i never tried again.

my Chinese herbalist is very down on probiotics. It may be tied to the general issue, that from his experience, you have no idea what you're throwing down. Chinese herbs we use are extensively tested. He knows what he is doing.

What critter might have gotten in there? So I"ve had somewhat negative past experiences with probiotics and dont take them. I might eat something fermented now and then.

But then I got Mood Probiotic from Innovix Labs. I think they have helped.

An issue that I am curious about is: where do natural probiotics actually come from?

Sure, something blows in, and now its saurkrat (they make that in the microbiology labs, in the second week)

When I query the lap top, I don't get far with anything explaining where do these probiotics actually come from.

From Lucy? the First Mother? (who clearly, also had a mother)

My mom gave me a mess. I forgive her, but I was messed up by age ONE.

Garden of Life: that young man who cured his Crohn's, they describe the probiotics they use as having been found in a localized area in the soil somewhere in Tropical Rainforest Brazil.

When the Romaine gets recalled, because "E. coli" contamination- it's inside the lettuce itself. You cannot wash it off. Sure, it could be on the outside, but my understanding is the lettuce took up the E. coli an dits in the tissue.

so much of our food is grown on dead soil.

 

[Wishful]

I recently read something about how fruits and vegetables can add new bacterial strains to our microbiome. It's probably difficult for a strain that prefers the colon to survive our digestive system to reach that far. Small intestines probably get more newcomers.

Our microbiomes probably started when Earth's population was single-celled and cells engulfed others. Gut microbiomes started as soon as basic guts evolved, and we've been sharing those strains ever since. Humans pass some strains on through breast milk, and others through skin licking, kissing, etc. We get more by eating, breathing, etc. Do any of our gut strains come from the hundreds of spiders the average person eats while asleep? We probably eat other bugs in our sleep too. If we swallow a parasite in our food, we also swallow their microbiomes. We're constantly getting immigrants. Some get killed by our border patrols; some slip by and squat or homestead.

Given commercial farming and produce handling, I don't recommend not washing your salad greens. Home-grown organic produce, maybe skip the washing? With carrots from my garden, I often just pull one up and wipe (most of) the soil off and just munch. I'll tear off a few lettuce leaves to eat without washing (and not even checking closely for bugs). Berries in the woods? I'm not going to wash those.