Enumeration during and after transit of the stomach and duodenal models showed that survival of all the bacteria in the product was best when given with a meal or 30 minutes before a meal (cooked oatmeal with milk). Probiotics given 30 minutes after the meal did not survive in high numbers. Survival in milk with 1% milk fat and oatmeal-milk gruel were significantly better than apple juice or spring water. S. boulardii was not affected by time of meal or the buffering capacity of the meal. The protein content of the meal was probably not as important for the survival of the bacteria as the fat content.
Bottom Line
Take probiotics before the meal, ideally with a little milk fat or oatmeal product.
A reader of my review on P3-OM probiotic, raised this one to be of concern due to the aggressive marketing on facebook with the prospect of fake testimonials being involved. Fake testimonials aka product reviews were something I know well from working at Amazon in the AI group detecting such. Unfortunately, I do not have access that the metadata on facebook to do such an evaluation. So it’s back to my pro-forma review of Elixa.
Contents
The following are listed without strains being specified usually a big warning flag!
The “three days” is questionable, because I have seen any of these species be detectable after 24 hrs in any of the literature.
” Countless probiotic supplements contain bacteria and yeasts that are not adapted to reside in the human gut ” implies human sourced. Without the strains being identified this cannot be evaluated. I did a search of their site and there was no claim of any being human sourced — so this appears to be marketing spin.
Karl Seddon Founder and director: ” I graduated with a Masters in Engineering from Oxford University where I studied Biomedical Engineering and Process Engineering during my Masters year. ”
For the academic spin literate, this translates to: I did ONE course on how to manufacture products like probiotcs. Well, I did one course on psychology doing my Master’s — so I guess that I should start charging for psychological advice!
Email from Founder on Strains
I wrote to get information about strains. The full response is below for readers to evaluate themselves. I find some of his logic ‘interesting‘
1. Regarding strain specification in the context of gut biofilms: This is actually an obsolete method of describing bacteria. The genetic material within microbes changes rapidly inter- and intra-generationally (horizontal transfer). Biofilm communities in the gut render even the concept of species as an inaccurate way of describing microbial genetic information (which is what matters).
You may have heard of ‘strain’ designations such as GG (etc.) but these are essentially branding and not even the (obsolete) ATCC reference. They have no purpose other than an attempt at patenting/trademarking a naturally occurring object which has been in the public domain for quite a while…. since mammals first appeared (and earlier)…. about 200 million years, haha! 😉
Species, on the other hand, is a slightly broader umbrella and thus can be meaningful insofar as describing general phenotype etc.
Other scientists are beginning to realise this: ”Although the health benefits of probiotics have been considered to be strain-specific for decades, scientists are now recognizing commonalities among members of taxonomic groups, which may be at the root of some beneficial effects.
For instance, the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics’ consensus document on the scope and use of the term ‘probiotic’ pointed out that some effects and mechanisms that support them are broadly distributed among species within a genus (colonization resistance and short-chain fatty acids production etc.), others are frequent among different strains of the same species (vitamin synthesis, gut barrier reinforcement, etc.) and, finally, others appear to be less widely distributed among probiotic strains (neurological effects or immunological effects, etc.).
Mary Ellen Sanders and colleagues recently published a review of the implications of the fact that probiotic benefits may derive from shared mechanisms within taxonomic groups that go beyond strain-specificity.”
2. Regarding the seed strains used to culture our batches: As for the SEED strains (which are ofc designated strains), these are proprietary. However, I can tell you that I’ve selected them with biogenic amine concerns in mind. I can also say that there are d-lactate producing species in Elixa, however, this has not produced any lactic acidosis symptoms in anyone yet (although I will be split-testing d-lactate vs none, prior to the upcoming Elixa V5 release).
3. Remember that an abundance of carbohydrate in the culture medium (or diet) will be preferentially fermented in place of amino acids (into histamine).
4. I do not personally view endogenous, microbial histamine production as problematic nor the cause of the various side-effects that can result from probiotic intake. (same for d-lactate, in most cases).
Thank you for your interest in Elixa!
Kind Regards,Karl Seddon Founder & Director
Costs
In my review on P3-OM probiotic I compared things to one of the more expensive probiotics from customprobiotics.com and came to 100g at 400BCFU/gram for $190. That computes to $0.00475 per BCFU. This product is offering 6 packages of 500BCFU (equivalent to 1 gram for $40 or $0.017, roughly 3.5 times more expensive per cfu.
To actually do a better match: CustomProbiotics offers an 11 strain mixture. 100 gm at 260 BCFU for $190 or $0.0073 per cfu — 2.3x as expensive. Of course, custom probiotics provides strain identification.And at least some of these strain are actually researched with articles on PubMed.
Similar to my comment on P3-OM probiotic , there is nothing technically wrong with this product. It is not the best bang for the euro. You are getting unknown strains (a major risk for those that are histamine sensitive) with out any published evidence on actual health benefits. This company has been selling for 15 years, I would expect some published articles by now.
I am also opposed to most probiotic mixtures because each bacteria has plus and minus features. So there is bias in me against all mixtures.
PubMed reports: “Your search for Elixa probiotic retrieved no results. “
I expect that it is very true that many people react to taking it — it is such a high dosage that it will likely cause chaos / diarrhea in some and after this, people will likely feel better (the same way people feel better after a cleanse). If you want the same effect, my competition reference: customprobiotics.com offers it cheaper!
Epigenetics is turning DNA on and off. Another description is gene expression. A 2017 article ties this to CFS and there is a lot of other literature connecting epigenetic changes to other conditions and illnesses. This article not only tied it to CFS but with methylation issues seen with CFS/ME.
We detected 12,608 differentially methylated sites between ME/CFS patients and healthy controls predominantly localized to cellular metabolism genes, some of which were also related to self-reported quality of life health scores. Among ME/CFS patients, glucocorticoid sensitivity was associated with differential methylation at 13 loci.
A Feb, 2019 article in Cell, they found that bacteria influences it.
Thus, the microbiota can shape the post-translational landscape of the host proteome to regulate microRNA activity, gene expression, and host development. Our findings suggest a general mechanism by which the microbiota may control host cellular functions, as well as a new role for gasotransmitters.
While recent studies are showing more impact of the microbiome (gut bacteria) on health, it also impacts how DNA behaves. We know little of the connections (i.e. this strain of this bacteria will turn some specific DNA on or off is still an unknown), we can reasonably infer that you have a condition/illness and a shift in microbiome — that they are connected and further more,there is a reasonable chance that correcting these shifts will improve the illness or condition. With a 100% normalizationof the microbiome — there is a reasonable chance that the condition may go into remission.
There is a chart of relationship on my site. A listing also here. And suggestions (based on reports from the literature) of how to normalize for different conditions (when information has been published) here.
A reader asked me to review this heavily marketed on some channels.
In terms of marketing, their home page is thick like thieves with hype.
Just one single probiotic species in it. I must admit, I chuckled when I saw the distributor “Rush Order“
So it is a proprietary “super strain”: Lactobacillus Plantarum OM. Checking the patent application, we see it is “L. plantarum, OM ATCC 55981” and a patent was originally file in June, 1997, almost 20 years ago and the patent is expired. So, immediate RED FLAG, “patented proteolytic probiotic, P3-OM™. ” – it is no longer patented, a false claim.
Checking PubMed, there are ZERO hits for plantarum 55981; so no peer-reviewed studies.
Origin: Remember human source is your only hope of it taking up residence. The patent application states “L. plantarum, OM may be isolated from a fermented meat. “
Price Analysis
One bottle is $79.95 and contains 120 capsules with 2.5 billion CFU. or a total of 300 BCFU in a bottle or $0.27 per BCFU. Going to Custom Probiotics which also offers a one strain only version of Lactobacillus Plantarum we can get 100g at 400BCFU/gram for $190. That computes to $0.00475 per BCFU … or FIFTY-SEVEN (57x) better price. The custom probiotics strain is Lp-115 or SD-5209. And I found four pubmed citations for this!
Bottom Line
The firm “Rush Order” seems to be trying to get you to rush your money to them for an undocumented, out of patent strain originated from fermented meat at an unrealistic price. I would give it a wide pass.
To be clear, there is nothing known wrong with this product. If you are interested, I have this excellent product that I am selling for just $500 for 8 oz. It’s the very rare and extremely well documented for healthy living, hydroxylic acid . Just send me a certified check and an address!
What was done: “therapeutic shock of ozone autohemotherapy”
What was the result: “> 50% improvement in symptoms”
No one went into remission.
“symptoms” is way too subjective
“The practice of autohemotherapy carries significant risks without any health benefit. Patients have died. Plus, autohemotherapy has been an illegal practice in Germany since 1984, but you will find naturopaths advertising ozone therapy as “commonly used in Europe.” [www.naturopathicdiaries.com] – a very good read on legality in the US.
” The results of this study demonstrated that ozone autohemotherapy combined with pharmacological therapy was superior to isolated pharmacological therapy in patients with postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) and was an effective and safe way to relieve PHN “. [2018]
I would recommend a pass on this approach for three reasons:
No studies suggesting remission, just symptom improvement (whatever that means — especially given the placebo risk)
Real significant risks of adverse effects
Those offering it are likely violating laws or naive in understanding the full picture.
” Ozone as a medical therapy has been used in many medical conditions; unfortunately, however, like every other therapy, ozone therapy has side effects. The literature concerning ozone therapy supports possible strong vasoconstrictor and prothrombotic effects of ozone therapy, further supporting our suggestion that ozone can lead to acute coronary syndromes in human beings. In conclusion, to our knowledge, our case report reveals a possible complication of ozone therapy that has never been reported before. We think that this article will raise the awareness of the possibility of thrombotic complications after ozonated autohemotherapy. ” [2015]
CFS Remission 