I have yet to find the magical ideal — I do know the characteristics that it should have.
- Human sourced with evidence of taking up residency.
- Best documented to date is Symbioflor-2
- Does not produce histamine (implicated in a subset of CFS), ideally converts histamine to other chemicals
- Does not produce d-lactic acid (implicated in a subset of CFS), ideally converts d-lactic acid aggressively
- Best documented to date is Miyarisan
- Resistant to many antibiotics
- Best documented is Lactobacillus Fermentum ME3
- Effective against Candida
- Best documented is Lactobacillus Fermentum ME3
- Encourages microbiome diversity
- Create toxins against bad bacteria strains but not their good cousins
- Best documented is Lactobacillus Fermentum ME3
- Produces B12
- Best documented is L.Reuteri — but human strains produce histamines and lactic acid also!
- Produces chemicals that are anticoagulants
- “Strong acidification and coagulation activities of Lactic acid bacteria strains were recorded.” [2009] i.e. Lactobacillus in general encourages coagulation! There are exceptions
Problem with most commercial probiotics
- The source is never identified (i.e. a chicken strain is very unlikely to take up residency)
- The strain is rarely identified, i.e.
- Lactobacillus Casei — is a family
- Lactobacillus Casei Shirota — is the strain
- Often the family is incorrect (especially for Bifidobacteria) if no strain is given
- There is no independent certification agency for the content of probiotics
- Even with strains that have PubMed studies published, only a few answers to the above questions are found. The rest is guessing!
- Often health professional will make up answers about it being “high quality” etc and there is zero evidence based research supporting the benefits they claim.