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GI doctor’s honest take on probiotics will make you think twice about spending money
There’s so much dialogue around the importance of gut health that people restock their refrigerators with probiotics without giving it a second thought.
Although gut health determines your overall well-being, should you regularly feed your body probiotics? A gastroenterologist doctor offers more insight into the fad that no one really questions.
Doctor’s honest take on probiotics
Whether it’s gas, bloating, or constipation, probiotics are recommended as the primary solution. But a doctor feels differently about it.
Probiotics are live microorganisms that are beneficial for the body and mind. In fact, disruption in the gut bacteria can alter brain functions, thus causing imbalances in mood.
Similarly, a healthy gut also determines physical fitness and any changes in your stool should be taken as a warning sign of underlying health conditions.
However, Dr. Robynne Chutkan argues that “probiotics are like multivitamins”, whose efficiency isn’t fully researched, understood, or even backed by evidence.
While appearing on author Mel Robbins’ podcast, the doctor explains that the live bacteria from probiotics only live for about 30 minutes to an hour in our body, which isn’t sufficient for their “colonization and repopulation.”
In order for that to happen, you need to “feed them. So, the food is ultimately more important,” she says, before adding: “The truth is, it’s not that you don’t have any healthy bacteria in your gut. The population is low.”
She recommends feeding the “healthy species” to enable their growth instead of bringing in more species through probiotics.
Three tips for a healthy gut
Dr. Robynne says there are several ways to repopulate and recolonize the live microorganisms in your gut, including the below:
- Hydration
- Movement
- Fiber
The doctor warns that inactivity is one of the biggest culprits of poor GI health, therefore she recommends regular body movements for a better gut. She then compares hydration to “plumbing” which is important to “unclog the pipes”.
Whereas, fiber from the food we eat is what feeds the microbiome in our digestive system. “They ferment the fiber and create all the healthy metabolites.”
Dr. Robynne Chutkan is a gastroenterologist and author of four bestselling books on digestive health. Having been educated at Yale and Columbia, she’s a a practicing gastroenterologist on the faculty at Georgetown University Hospital for over 25 years.
