From the Pet Peeve Files: About them probiotics 😍

A decades long pet peeve

Humans have a thing for fantasy health products, treatments and whatnot. The market size of the vitamin & supplement industry alone is projected to be $39.8 billion in 2023. Vitamins are real, but grossly overused and oversold. Vitamin products like Airborne and Emergen-C are nonsense, but people buy the stuff anyway. Most nutritional supplements are also mostly fantasy unsupported by controlled, blinded clinical trial data. 

Vaporware

More vaporware

Probiotics

One class of untested and unproven fantasy health products that is carpet bombing society on TV is probiotics. These mirages are claimed to be designed by experts with decades of experience and/or other nonsense claims. Probiotics are live bacteria and/or yeast that people eat in the form of pills, gummies, yogurt-type goo and so on. A WaPo article comments: 

Probiotic supplements may do the opposite of boosting your gut health

Taking gummies, powders and capsules of live microorganisms can disrupt the balance of bacteria in the intestinal tract of healthy people and lead to less microbial diversity

Probiotic supplements have grown into a multibillion-dollar industry, spurred by claims that the products will populate your gut with bacteria that can boost your health in numerous ways.

But beware of the hype: In healthy people, probiotic supplements offer little benefit, and they can potentially do more harm than good.

Studies show that taking probiotic supplements — for overall health or to counter the effects of antibiotics — can alter the composition of your microbiome and reduce the levels of microbial diversity in your gut, which is linked to a number of health problems.  

But for most people, more reliable ways are available to nourish your gut microbiome.

First, eat a variety of vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans and whole grains, which provide gut microbes the fiber-rich fuel that they need to thrive. Researchers have found that eating fermented foods such as yogurt, sauerkraut, kimchi and kefir, which contain probiotics and other beneficial compounds, have positive effects on your health and gut microbiome.

A 2019 research paper, The Unregulated Probiotic Market, concludes with this: "Current regulation of probiotics is inadequate to protect consumers and doctors, especially when probiotics are aimed at the dietary management of serious conditions." 

Probiotics are not regulated much by the FDA because they are not drugs or treatments for any disease or condition. Anecdotal evidence of efficacy for treating X, Y or Z is not convincing evidence of efficacy for anything. That's just the reality of treating human diseases and symptoms. But, people being humans with the human condition, probiotics will continue to be sold as long as there is a market worth selling to.

100 billion CFU means enough bacteria or yeast

to grow 100 billion colonies on solid growth medium

Prebiotic stuff** is usually fiber that

probiotic gut bugs allegedly eat

** After searching the science literature, I cannot find solid evidence that gut bugs eat prebiotic stuff or it would have beneficial health effects even if it did happen. I keep finding incoherent blither like this from a 2022 paper:

Prebiotics and probiotics play a positive role in promoting human nutrition and health. Prebiotics are compounds that cannot be digested by the host, but can be used and fermented by probiotics, so as to promote the reproduction and metabolism of intestinal probiotics for the health of body.[1] It has been confirmed that probiotics have clinical or health care functions in preventing or controlling intestinal, respiratory, and urogenital infections, allergic reaction, inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome and other aspects.[2] However, there are few systematic summaries of these types, mechanisms of action and the promotion relationship between prebiotics and probiotic. Therefore, we summarized the various types of prebiotics and probiotics, their individual action mechanisms, and the mechanism of prebiotics promoting probiotics in the intestinal tract.[3] It is hoped this review can provide new ideas for the application of prebiotics and probiotics in the future.[4]

1. It's not clear to me why or how gut bugs eating prebiotics necessarily does anything "for the health of body." 

2. No, it has not been confirmed that probiotics have clinical or health care functions in preventing or controlling any disease or symptom. The evidence is all anecdotal as far as I can tell.

3. I checked. The paper cites claimed good effects from another paper, which cites claimed good effects from another paper, which cites claimed good effects from another paper, which cites claimed good effects from another paper, and so forth. I cannot find the original data source and therefore do not believe it exists. Everybody cites everyone else but there's little or no substance to any of it. And, BS artists citing other BS artists who cite other BS artists is a major part of why this kind of scam is a pet peeve. It degrades science into easy to criticize crap, while callous, immoral marketers exploit ignorant consumers claiming they are backed by science when they are not.

4. That's meaningless drivel.

By Germaine: Snarling consumer protection & information honey badger