What Are The Best Probiotics For Older People?

Mostly probiotics are taken for gut and vaginal health. We have trillions of microorganisms living in our digestive tracts. Microorganisms are a more excellent word for bacteria. It can be frightening but think of these as good bacteria. These bacteria help to keep our gut and immune system healthy. Many things can disrupt the excellent function of our gut health, like medications, poor diet, or even stress. Studies show that our gut health can directly relate to our mental health.

What Is The Best Probiotic?

Probiotics are commonly found in food. They are also available in dietary supplements. ‌Whether a food truly has beneficial probiotics depends on three things: the levels of good bacteria contained when eaten, whether the good bacteria can survive passage through the stomach, and whether those strains of bacteria can support your health.‌

These are a few foods that provide a good source of probiotics:

• Dried beans and other legumes
• Garlic
• Asparagus
• Onions
• Leeks
• Certain artichokes
• Green bananas
• Wheat

Some of the best probiotic strains for health include:

• Lactobacillus acidophilus
• Lactobacillus fermentum
• Lactobacillus casei/paracasei
• Lactobacillus plantarum
• Lactobacillus reuteri
• Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. Bulgaricus
• Lactobacillus rhamnosus
• Bifidobacterium longum ssp. Longum
• Bifidobacterium longum ssp. Infantis
• Bifidobacterium bifidum
• Bifidobacterium animalis ssp. Lactis

What Is The Recommended Daily Dose Of Probiotics Daily?

Probiotics are supplements, not food or medication. The dosage ranges from brand to brand. Probiotic supplement dosage is measured in colony-forming units or CFUs.

Colony-forming units indicate the number of live and viable bacteria in a product. A probiotic supplement should offer at least 1 billion CFUs per dose for adults. That sounds like a lot of bacteria, but it is at the low end of the spectrum. Many probiotic supplements contain up to 10 billion CFUs per dose. There are even supplements with 100 billion CFUs per dose for adults and as low as 1 billion CFUs per dose for children. 

Your physician, gastroenterologist or nutritionist can help determine which probiotic supplement and dosage are right for you. They may suggest a supplement that contains just one type of bacteria. They may recommend a single supplement that contains a multispecies probiotic blend. They may also ask you to combine multiple probiotic supplements to give you the right combination of good bacteria your intestines need to get back on balance. What they recommend and the dosage will likely depend on why your digestive system is off-balance.

Can Probiotics Damage Your Health?

While many health benefits are linked to probiotics, there can also be side effects. Most of these are minor and only affect a small percentage of the population. However, some people with serious illnesses or compromised immune systems may experience more severe complications.

• They may cause unpleasant digestive symptoms

• Amines in probiotic foods may trigger headaches
• Some strains can increase histamine levels
• Some ingredients may cause adverse reactions
• They can increase infection risk for some

When it comes to people with serious medical illnesses, those who are very weak or have overwhelming infections, probiotics may harm them. Their use has been reported in numerous case reports to lead to sepsis in such situations, including in critically sick patients, post-operative patients, infants with serious illness, the elderly and immunocompromised patients. Probiotic safety in infants, especially preterm babies, is also not established because their immune systems are still developing.

Probiotics have been used for several health conditions, such as:

• Digestive disorders like infectious diarrhoea, antibiotic-associated diarrhoea, and functional bowel disorders
• Allergic conditions like atopic dermatitis and hay fever
• Dental and periodontal disease

However, the evidence supporting their use is limited to functional disturbances of the gut. We still don’t know much about which type of microbes to use, the best dosage, or the target population. The FDA has not approved any probiotics for any health so far because of the absence of any experimental proof of their benefits. Probiotics are thus entirely unregulated.