Probiotic supplements have been surging in popularity all over social media. But what do they really do? Join me as we dive into the science and the marketing of probiotic supplements and how you can support a healthy gut.
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Transcript
Solana Cheng 0:00
Hi, my name is Solana and today we’re pitting science against marketing as we investigate if probiotics can really match up to their hype.
Over the last few years, more and more young adults have become health conscious. It’s to the point now that whenever I look on my phone, I’ll see ads for probiotics like these.
Other 0:18
Wow, right probiotics and antioxidants in one single daily supplement, visit thriveprobiotic.com today and start living the thriving lifestyle you’ve always wanted.
Solana Cheng 0:32
Even as a microbiologist, and seeing these ads integrated all over the internet, I was still pretty confused on what they did. It seemed pretty intuitive. You have bacteria in your gut, which are good. And taking probiotics as a pill would also be good, right? Well, I was skeptical of these ads. So I took off to the virtual streets to ask if anyone else knew what they did.
Unknown Speaker 0:52 Um x4
Anna 0:54
I think probiotics are just a combination of bacteria that help restore the natural balance of your gut microbiota.
Other 1:02
Mm my mom’s always told me to take them but uh she she keeps saying that, you know, they’re good for gut health and all that and like better digestive tract or something.
Unknown Speaker 1:10
bowel movements and digestion
Unknown Speaker 1:12
I think they are meant to improve the immune system
Anna 1:16
it like helps you break down the food better. So your digestion, okay, so I think they’re good bacteria, maybe.
Solana Cheng 1:22
So there’s a mixed bag of a capsule of bacteria, helping your gut digestion and maybe even your immune system. But there was one person that stood out.
Anna 1:28
It can help with either more clean energy, appetite control, mental focus, and like, even like mental health.
Solana Cheng | 21644166 | April 14, 2021
Solana Cheng 1:37
that’s Anna, she’s a wellness advocate, and has been taking a probiotic vitamin supplement called Thrive over the last six months, and has seen really great improvements.
Anna 1:45
And so I do nails on the side as well. And like, I used to get so tired. But then like, when I was starting to Thrive, I actually was able to power through, there’s also just being able to focus on what you need to do or like, remembering things. I feel like I used to have short term memory, like I’m 22, I shouldn’t be forgetting things. That’s how it’s helped me in that sense, I was able to be more like mentally focused. It’s just, it’s all revolved around gut health.
Solana Cheng 2:09
We’ve heard gut health a couple times now. And we still don’t really know what it is. gut health is a balance of microorganisms in your gut. It’s also called your microbiome. And it’s made up of a whole bunch of bacteria, viruses and fungi.
Carolina 2:20
And these are very important for health because they’re a little bit, I like to think of them as our personalized pharmacy that lives within our gut. Meaning that anything that they secrete makes it into our blood system, the same way that if we take a Tylenol can affect your entire body.
Solana Cheng 2:35
That’s Dr. Carolina Tropini, she’s an associate professor in microbiology and immunology and biomedical engineering here at UBC. She’s currently studying how changes in the gut microbiome can affect your health. So the bacteria running this pharmacy inside your gut does four major things. One, they help make vitamins you can’t make yourself including vitamin B and vitamin K. Two, they help break down fiber, you can’t digest yourself, not only to feed themselves, but to help you extract the most out of your food. Three, by living in your gut, your bacteria helped make anti inflammatory chemicals to your body to help balance out your immune system. And four, the good bacteria in your gut take up space so that the bad bacteria can come in and infect you.
Carolina 3:12
Our microbiota is not doing this at of, you know, any generosity but likes to keep this ecosystem very stable and maintained. If you have a very resilient and diverse microbiota, it’s less likely the that an invader is going to be able to take hold and disrupt everything.
Solana Cheng 3:29
So if the gut microbiome can do so much for you, what do probiotics do?
Carolina 3:33
probiotic supplements are a way to get certain types of microbes into your intestinal tract. And this is something that people have been really excited about over the past five to 10 years, as the public has become more aware of all the microbes that are teeming in our gut. And from the scientific perspective, they’ve been a little bit controversial.
Solana Cheng 3:57
So on one hand, we have real science backing up the fantastic benefits of the gut microbiome. There have been studies that find that controlling and maintaining a healthy gut microbiome can relieve
Solana Cheng | 21644166 | April 14, 2021
depression symptoms, or even cystic fibrosis. But on the other hand, there’s a lack of quality research and data that supports if these probiotic supplements really work the way they’re being marketed as
Carolina 4:14
and one of the things that I think has been discouraging is that a lot of these pills there, they don’t have to have any particular FDA clearance. And their regulation as a supplement is very loose. Some labs have gone through the process of actually sequencing to see if this bacteria were who they claimed they were. They’re often not whether they were alive, they’re often not. And so then is it actually beneficial to be flooding your system with this one specific bacterium that you’re that you’re taking.
Solana Cheng 4:45
Oftentimes, these probiotics only contain one or a few types of bacteria, but in huge numbers. For example, most supplements contain a type of bacteria called lactobacillus acidophilus. Why that one, not because it’s particularly helpful but mostly because it’s been found in naturally probiotic foods like yogurt. And it’s also known to not be harmful.
Carolina 5:05
If you think about it from an ecological perspective, the question of, should I flood this regional park with a lot of antelopes? Is it a good idea?
Solana Cheng 5:19
So we don’t know if antelopes coming into a regional park is a good idea. But also research has found that for probiotics to really help the bacteria coming in the capsules have to be able to find space in your gut to make a home. To make this even more complicated, every microbiome is unique to you, it depends on the foods you eat, where you live, what you’ve gone sick with just to name a few factors. And this changes your gut environment.
Carolina 5:40
you may have an ecosystem in your gut that has a lot of grasses that the antelopes can feed upon, and they can settle in, or your environment may be more similar to a desert or your environment, maybe we’re similar to a tundra. So then there’s going to be a mismatch. And this one allowed this specific probiotic to be able to grow and produce what it may be supposed to be producing.
Solana Cheng 6:03
So if we all have a unique little environment in our gut, and the research doesn’t actually support throwing a bunch of antelopes into our ecosystem, why do we fall for this type of marketing, even if we know the claims are too good to be true? For that, I went to Desiree Nielsen, a registered dietitian with a background in marketing.
Desiree 6:19
The wellness like sort of, you know, like that wellness industrial complex, if you want to, has sort of like grown up in the shadow of diet culture. So our ideas of wellness are really informed by this inherent diet culture that we’re living in that wellness is one thing, that wellness is affluence, that wellness has nothing but green juice, and really expensive yoga classes and crystals. And that’s not the case. So the problem is, is we’re just swimming in this like sea of diet culture, which is also wellness culture, and not realizing that so much of what we think is wellness is actually marketing. And so buying stuff fits into that, right? Like, we are somehow not good enough. And if we buy more stuff, maybe we’ll get closer to better.
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Solana Cheng 7:09 so it’s capitalism.
Desiree 7:12
It is it is absolutely capitalism, you know, like, you know, there’s there’s not much money to be made off of like bowing out of society and going to live in the forest. But there’s lots of money to be made in selling supplements, we do sort of trick ourselves into believing that wellness is something that we can buy.
Solana Cheng 7:30
But if it’s all marketing, what about the people who have seen real benefits from probiotics? Do you think it’s worth giving probiotic supplements to try?
Desiree 7:36
Why don’t we give it a try? Why don’t we be systematic? Why don’t we give it 12 weeks, see, see if it actually brings you these benefits that you’re looking for? And if it does, wonderful. But then there are other people for whom I’m like. No, this is not your first line of defense. And it’s, it’s almost going to never be my first line of defense. So when I’m looking at someone who needs to build a healthier gut, I’m 100%, looking at their diet, and at their stress levels. Maybe you should eat more fiber, like if you really want to stick with what the evidence shows, in terms of supporting a healthier gut and a healthier body and like lowered risk of chronic disease, you’d be far better suited to invest your wellness dollar and like healthy whole plant foods, then you would probiotics. And I think we want to optimize everything, right? Like it’s not good enough to just be like, healthy, we have to be like the most mentally focused the fittest, you know, everything else that we can. Life is hard. We want it not to be so hard. And so if we can take shortcuts to anything, including our health, like, we’re going to take it.
Solana Cheng 8:43
But most of the time, these probiotic supplements will not drastically improve your health. The industry has jumped in to fill the gap between the real science of the microbiome and the lack of data supporting the potential of supplements. So then the real question becomes how do we support a healthy microbiome? Well, one of the first things that you can do is actually free!
Desiree 9:01
We greatly underestimate the impact of psychological health and our digestive function. Our psychological health can even impact our microbiome. So if you want an excellent inherent probiotic, it’s distressing.
Solana Cheng 9:16
And the rest of it will not be a surprise to you. The best way to keep up a healthy gut microbiome is take your time and need lots of diverse foods.
Anna 9:23
thing worth having is worth working hard for. And I think, whether it’s weight loss, or whether it’s like mental health, or whether it’s like, yeah, your gut health, it takes time. It takes time and you have to put an effort to take care of yourself. In that sense, you can’t just expect things to happen fast.
Desiree 9:38
Solana Cheng | 21644166 | April 14, 2021
One of the strongest associations with a diverse and healthy gut microbiome was the diversity of plant foods in the diet.
Carolina 9:45
So what I do for myself is that I like eating fermented foods. I like eating yogurt, I like eating things that give me some exposure to bacteria. And one way to feed your microbiota is of course eating more of these things that you can’t consume and that the microbiota can. The best way is eating a diet that has a lot of different types of fiber. And fiber comes in really non obvious ways. Like for example, avocados have a ton of fiber. But other foods don’t actually have very much fiber like for example salad, and not so much. It’s mostly water.
Solana Cheng 10:21
And if you still want to try probiotics Desiree has a perfect tool for you called the probiotic chart where experts have evaluated different probiotics for their effectiveness.
Desiree 10:28
Go to this chart to look for a probiotic that has level one evidence meaning it has at least one randomized clinical controlled trial to support its efficacy. If you’re gonna try it, you try the creme de la creme, because of those won’t work for you. It’s very likely anything else will.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai