BUSTED…
Who’s ready for some myth busting?! 🙋♀️🙋🏻♀️🙋🏽♀️🙋🏾♀️
Myth #1️⃣: You don’t need to take a probiotic if you eat fermented foods.
FALSE. Although fermented foods can be excellent prebiotics and can provide nutritious, predigested food that feeds your gut bacteria, they don’t create lasting ecological change in the gut and do not deliver living probiotic cells to the large intestine.
If you can tolerate fermented foods, they are a great source of nutrients and should be consumed, assuming they aren’t yogurts and drinks loaded with sugar. They do not however, replace an effective, gastric surviving, DNA verified probiotic.
Myth #2️⃣: A probiotic needs to be refrigerated to be a “good” probiotic.
FALSE. Though it’s common to find probiotics in the refrigerated section of the grocery store, refrigeration is not an indication of a good quality probiotic.
In fact, it’s actually a sign of a very weak probiotic. If your probiotic cannot survive at room temperature without falling to pieces, then how do you think it will survive in your 98-degree body, much less through your harsh, extremely acidic digestive tract?
Short answer: it WON’T. The first important feature of a probiotic is that it is proven to survive passage through the stomach acid and the small intestine to get to the site of action. If it arrives to the site of action dead, it’s not a true probiotic.
Myth #3️⃣: You should take your probiotic on an empty stomach.
FALSE. An effective probiotic will want to feed as soon as it arrives in the large intestine. Taking your probiotic with meals can provide immediate carbon sources (food) for your probiotics, allowing them to jump into action as soon as they arrive in the gut.
Many probiotic suggest taking it on an empty stomach so that the pH of the stomach is higher which would increase the likelihood of survival through the gastric system.
A probiotic with an endospore shell around it can survive the low pH and will then use the food to germinate throughout the intestines.
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