Probiotics are often controversial but are becoming more and more accepted by the mainstream medical establishment every day. In my personal experience, I’ve found probiotics to be almost “lifesaving” I can’t say too many good things about how helpful they are. Their major function is to keep yeast in check in your body by preventing harmful bacterial growth and promoting a natural balance. Without the proper probiotics, organisms like yeast will run rampant causing Thrush, and other yeast (candida) related problems. Probiotics have been found helpful in treating irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn’s disease. Studies have demonstrated that probiotics have been found helpful in managing lactose intolerance and for things as diverse as lowering blood pressure, improving mineral absorption and even improving immune function.
Probiotics are defined as “Live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host”. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) such as Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus salivarius, and Lactobacillus reuteri are three of the common forms of this type of bacteria that ferment milk products into useful foods like yogurt and kefir. Another common microbes used as a probiotic is bifidobacteria. Today we have an article by David Oromaner. David is a vitamin, herb, and nutritional supplement specialist with over 25 years experience in the health and wellness industry.
What is the Right Probiotic Dosage?
Probiotics are the friendly bacteria that live in our digestive tract and they are getting more respected and more widely used everyday. In years past it was mainly natural health practitioners that would regularly recommend them to treat and prevent various conditions. Nowadays I see doctor’s notes almost daily recommending probiotics to their patients for many different reasons. Very commonly they are being prescribed for gastrointestinal disorders such as diverticulitis, diarrhea, and food poisoning. It is also very common to see them prescribed for use during and after antibiotic therapy, because it is know well known that antibiotics kill off the good bacteria along with the bad bacteria in the body. The question most of my clients have is how much should I take? This will be the focus of this article.Probiotics potency is measured in CFU (Colony Forming Units). Simply stated, how many good bacteria are you getting per dosage? They can be purchased in a wide and often confusing array of dosages ranging for one billion CFU to two hundred billion CFU. From 1 to 200 billion, that is a very wide dosage range. It is no wonder people do not know what they should do. Here is my take on the dosage.
First, are you using them for daily maintenance? I describe maintenance as “I generally feel pretty good and just want to stay that way”, if this statement describes you than I have found between 1 billion and 15 billion each day to be an adequate dosage. Most experts believe that around 2 billion of total consumption daily is perfect for optimum health benefits.
Second, are you currently having gastrointestinal issues or you currently using or coming off of an antibiotic regimen? If this is the case I would recommend a considerably higher dosage. Usually between 15 billion and 50 billion each day until you feel back to normal. At that point it is suggested to stay on a lower maintenance dose of between 1 billion and 15 billion for a few months until you have built up your active colonies sufficiently to assure good health and digestion into the future.
Third, do you have continuous and severe gastrointestinal issues? If this is your situation than you should opt for a very high dosage probiotics that contains between 50 and 200 billion colony forming units per dose. I would suggest continuing with this high dose for a couple of weeks or until an improvement is noticed. After this stage I would continue on a moderate dose pretty much forever. A moderate dosage would be between 15 billion and 50 billion CFU daily.
The final question is will I you have to take probiotics forever? This answer is not simple. It depends on you. Most people seem to do well once thy have established active colonies within their digestive tracts, meaning that the probiotics that you have taken have established themselves and are now regenerating inside the intestines. This is the best scenario, but for some people it seems that that the probiotics are not able to reproduce in enough numbers to alleviate the need to replenish this supply through dietary supplementation.
David Oromaner is a nutritional supplement specialist. He owns Guaranteed Supplement Designs that develops and distributes cutting edge natural products such as the natural sleep aid GuaranteedToSleep. It is considered to be the best alternative to traditional sleeping aids.
