Colony-forming unit

The intervention group received a visually identical capsule that also contained magnesium stearate, but was packed with a multispecies probiotic blend.

Five billion colony-forming units, or CFUs, per capsule, which in the vast universe of the microbiome, which contains trillions of organisms, five billion sounds like a drop in the ocean.

It does sound small, but it is actually a highly concentrated targeted dose.

And they didn't just use a random assortment of bacteria.

We started by examining the heavy, often dismissed burden of irritable bowel syndrome, recognizing not as simple tummy trouble, but as a highly complex disorder of gut-brain interaction governed by the strict symptom-based Rome fear criteria.

We examined the controversy and hidden dangers of mainstream dietary restrictions like the low FODMF diet, exploring how long-term starvation of the microbiome has led researchers to seek additive, restorative solutions rather than restrictive ones.

We looked closely at a rigorous, double-blind Iranian clinical trial that took 46 severe IBS patients and gave half of them a daily capsule containing 5 billion CFUs of three specific, highly targeted lactobacillus strains for eight weeks.

And we analyzed the clinical results.

Mostly it's about, um, of course, it's about hygiene, right? The bacteria levels, 10 times tighter bacteria limits specifically for kids.

And general cosmetics are capped at 1,000 colony-forming units, or CFU, per gram or milliliter, a measure of how many living microorganisms that are present in a sample.

So products for children are capped at just 100 CFU and 10 times stricter than before.

So of course, we, what we are seeing is a lot of these products, new products, are released in the market.

Of course, the new standard is coming up to follow this kind of new trend in the, a current market right now.

And other things like protection extend to age 12, not just toddlers.

Most international standards only apply that strict, uh, CFU ceiling to products made for children under three.

And now this new standard applies to every day products like cleansers, moisturizers, powders, scr- sunscreens, lip and eye makeup for children up to age 12.

I need to put this out first.

That bottle of 50 billion, which sounds like a lot, CFU, 10-strain probiotic, that looks impressive and it's really expensive.

But most of those bacteria are unfortunately fragile.

They actually die on the shelf, and if they don't, they die in your stomach acid.

And the label counts them at the time of manufacturing, not the time that you swallow them.

So you're not getting those 50 billion CFUs.

You may be paying for a probiotic graveyard and swallowing just white dust.

And if you've been buying these for years, that's real money that you could have invested in many other things in your life that you're flushing down the toilet.

And a lot of times it's based on the foods that we're eating.

So what I tell people is if you can get a good quality probiotic, about 20 billion-ish in regards to the CFUs or the colony forming units, that says right on there.

and it goes away, then you're balancing out that good and bad bacteria.

But if it still stays and you still have bloating, then you really need to look at the foods that you're eating that might be contributing to that, or if you're not digesting those foods the way that you should.

The specifics there don't really matter Second type, the Saccharomyces.

This will either come as Saccharomyces boulardii or Saccharomyces cerevisiae And thirdly, a soil-based probiotic, and this will contain one or a few Bacillus species, again, when checking the labels So what are the dosages they're in? For the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium blend probiotics, the majority of the research here is clocking in that's showing benefit between a dose of one to 50 billion CFU per day Now, higher is okay, and some studies have used dosages that are quite higher.

But if you're looking to steer into the bell curve of the ranges shown effective in the research, anywhere between one to 50 billion.

So there's a pretty broad range here to target For Saccharomyces, this is the healthy fungus.

This is the second type of probiotic We've recently updated the upper limit due to recent research.

Anywhere here between five to 20 billion CFU per day And third and finally, the soil-based probiotic targeting a daily dose of between two and six billion CFU per day Important caveat here.

Not all formulas are going to provide a clinical dose, so you have to check your labels.

There's also sneaky tricks that some manufacturers do, which is they tell you that there's a high dose, but you actually have to take something like four, five, or six capsules to hit that dose So just make sure you check the capsules per serving so that you don't get, uh, misled We use in the clinic an all-in-one formula that we've developed and we're very proud of called Triple Therapy Probiotic.

You know, and not all of them are going to be alive.

And this also comes with the controversy of like, how are these things tested? And a lot of them have CFU, which is on the label, which stands for colony forming units, which means if you were to take this capsule and, you know, you run a plate of this stuff that you should have that amount of colonies that are there.

And usually we're talking like these, these are like hundreds of billions of colonies.

So you don't have, you know, Billy Bob in the lab, you know, counting each one of these things.

So instead of looking at the colony-forming units, you're literally counting the number of cells.

And this is what IMUSE does, the postbiotic from Kiowa, or was from Kiowa, now from Alamand.

AFU is active fluorescent units, whereas CFU is colony-forming units.

Gracias.

Now, in terms of treatment, this is interesting.

Unlike UTI, there's no specific cutoff, like a CFU threshold, right? Where in UTIs, we say, okay, you're under over 100,000 for this specific bacteria that we know causes UTIs.

Unfortunately, we don't really have that data or those guidance with vulvar and vaginal care.

That being said, I think it's a combination of a couple things.