Probiotics: Not So Fast

Our home-brew kefir collection

We have been adding probiotics to our diet in the furtherance of gut health. (For example, we've been drinking kefir for the past two months.)

As with any foods or treatments that have become popular due to purported health benefits, probiotics research has ramped up. One study by the University of Texas cautions that supplements may actually do more harm than good. Dr. Lorenzo Cohen: [bold added]

My personal results were mirrored by a study that our MD Anderson team had just presented at an international meeting. The provocative findings received a lot of publicity. The preliminary results showed that patients who reported taking an over-the-counter probiotic supplement had a lower probability of responding to immunotherapy as well as lower microbiome biodiversity. But those eating a high-fiber diet were about five times more likely to respond to immunotherapy and had high gut bacteria diversity, including bacteria previously linked to a strong immunotherapy response....

Yet I now believe that the cheapest and safest way to improve our microbiome and gut health is to make simple dietary changes to feed the development of good bacteria and crowd out the bad. There is no pill, special food, unique diet or quick fix for what ails our health and diet. The key is simply to focus on eating a diverse, whole-food, plant-centered, high-fiber diet.

Dr. Cohen seems to be saying that we shouldn't get our probiotics from a pill or a bottle but have to do it the hard way. How does he expect to get any grant money?

From the early 20th century: Swamp Root cures
"internal slime fever". At least it's plant-based.