A new study published in the online journal mbio® found differences between the gut bacteria of autistic children compared to non-autistic children. This comes as no surprise to me. Children with autism commonly have digestive issues. Dr. Smith has blogged about this, and we’ve written about it in my book, The Road To Perfect Health.

In the study, actual tissue samples taken from the guts of 23 autistic children were used to determine gut bacterial balance. Not widely used due to its invasive nature, taking actual gut samples (as opposed to stool samples) is considered the best method for determining the “actual” gut bacterial contents. In 12 of the 23 samples from autistic children, the bacteria Sutterella was isolated in relatively large proportions yet not at all detected in the samples from non-autistic children.

“Sutterella has been associated with gastrointestinal diseases below the diaphragm, and whether it is a pathogen or not is still not clear,” says Jorge Benach, a reviewer of the study. “It’s an observation that needs to be followed through.”

Autism is a condition that demands attention. Its prevalence has increased so rapidly it cannot be simply attributed to genetic causes. Something, probably a combination of many things, is triggering this condition. Gut health is an important piece of the autism puzzle.

Like other studies on gut bacterial balance, we are only just beginning to scratch the surface of the deep-reaching connections between the gut and total-body health. Truly, our guts are in control here. This is why supporting healthy digestion and gut balance is so important.

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Probiotic use for digestive conditions has seen a gradual increase in dosage over the past couple decades. Doses of 7 billion were thought to be very high just ten years ago, while average doses were about 250 million. Today, an average probiotic dose is around 1–5 billion with high-dose probiotics ranging from 30 to 450 billion or more. This increase comes with improvements in the development of probiotics and increased interest in studying high-dose probiotics, as is reflected in the literature.

The gut is home to about 100 trillion bacteria cells—10 times the amount of cells that make up the entire human body. For this reason, high-dose probiotic therapy may have a greater impact on the beneficial modulation of the gut flora, or microbiota. Here I’ll review a few studies on high-dose probiotics for gastrointestinal conditions.

In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study published in 2010 in the Journal of American Gastroenterology, 225 patients were randomized to one of three groups: two probiotic capsules per day providing 100 billion CFU (colony forming units) of live organisms, one probiotic capsule and one placebo capsule per day providing 50 billion CFU of live organisms, or two placebo capsules.¹ A dose-ranging effect was shown in which the group receiving the 100 billion CFUs had lower incidence of antibiotic-associated diarrhea (AAD) than the 50 billion group, and both probiotic groups had lower incidence versus placebo. In those patients who did acquire AAD, Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea (CDAD) incidence was lower than the 500 billion CFU group, and both probiotic groups had lower CDAD incidence than placebo.

A previous dose-response study published in 1991 in the journal Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease investigated fecal recovery of the probiotic Lactobacillus casei strain GG (LGG).² In this study, healthy volunteers were assigned to six different groups: 1.5 million, 15 million, 150 million, 1.5 billion, 15 billion and 150 billion CFU per day of the probiotic. LGG could not be recovered from the feces of groups taking up to 150 million CFU per day. In the group taking 1.5 billion, LGG was occasionally recovered at low levels in two of the seven volunteers. In the group taking 15 billion CFU per day, all volunteers were colonized. LGG was recovered at the highest level with the highest dose—150 billion. This study showed a dose-response effect at higher dosage levels of 15 to 150 billion CFU per day required for fecal probiotic recovery.

A high-dose multistrain probiotic formula containing eight strains (three bifidobacteria, four lactobacilli and one Streptococcus) has also been shown to colonize the gut and maintain remission of ulcerative colitis (UC) in children and adults.^3-5 In children, 900 billion CFU per day of an eight-strain probiotic formula induced remission.³ In adults, 500 billion CFU per day of that same formula colonized the gut and maintained remission in UC patients.⁴ In another trial, a daily dose of 3.6 trillion CFU per day of the multistrain formula induced remission in adult patients not responding to conventional therapies.⁵

This same preparation (dosages ranging from 450 billion to 1.8 trillion CFU per day, based on weight of patient) was also found to induce and maintain remission of ulcerative colitis in children.⁶ In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of 29 children with UC, probiotics or placebo were added to standard treatment. In the probiotic group, 92.8 percent achieved remission compared to only 36.4 percent in the placebo group. Further, there were no biochemical or clinical adverse events related to the probiotic treatment in these children.

Two more randomized, controlled trials evaluated the effects of this probiotic preparation in twenty-five patients with diarrhea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome (IBS-D). In the first study, patients were assigned to receive either the probiotic mixture (450 billion CFU per day) or placebo for eight weeks. The multistrain probiotic relieved abdominal bloating when compared to placebo. In the second study, 48 IBS patients were randomized, double-blind, to receive either the probiotic mixture (450 billion CFU per day) or placebo for 4 or 8 weeks. The multistrain probiotic mixture reduced flatulence and slowed colonic transit without altering bowel function in patients with IBS and bloating.

In another double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, sixty patients with functional bowel disorders—non-constipation IBS, functional diarrhea and functional bloating—received a probiotic mixture of two strains, Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium lactis, at 200 billion CFU daily for eight weeks.⁷ Abdominal bloating improved in the probiotics group at four and eight weeks when compared to placebo. A subgroup of patients with IBS was analyzed and also found to have reduced bloating when compared to placebo.

Studies evaluating high-dose probiotics are most common for inflammatory bowel diseases, though as we see from the studies cited above, other conditions are also benefitted from a high-potency probiotic therapy. The trend toward increasing dosage of probiotics is influenced and supported by studies using doses ranging from 50 billion up to 3.6 trillion or more.

References

1. Gao XW, et al., “Dose-response efficacy of a proprietary probiotic formula of Lactobacillus acidophilus CL1285 and Lactobacillus casei LBC80R for antibiotic-associated diarrhea and Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea prophylaxis in adult patients.” Am J Gastroenterol. 2010 Jul;105(7):1636-41.
2. Saxelin M, et al., “Dose-response colonization of faeces after oral administration of Lactobacillus casei strain GG.” MicroEcol Health Dis. 1991 Jan;4:209-14.
3. Miele E, et al., “Effect of a probiotic preparation (VSL#3) on induction and maintenance of remission in children with ulcerative colitis.” Am J Gastroenterol. 2009 Feb;104(2):437-43.
4. Ringel Y, et al., “Probiotic bacteria Lactobacillus NCFM and Bifidobacterium lactis Bi-07 versus placebo for the symptoms of bloating in patients with functional bowel disorders—a double-blind study.” J Clin Gastroenterol. 2011 Jul;45(6):518-25.

1. Miele E, et al., “Effect of a probiotic preparation (VSL#3) on induction and maintenance of remission in children with ulcerative colitis.” Am J Gastroenterol. 2009 Feb;104(2):437-43.
2. Venturi A, et al., “Impact on the composition of the faecal flora by a new probiotic preparation: preliminary data on maintenance treatment of patients with ulcerative colitis.” Aliment Pharmacol Ther. 1999 Aug;13(8):1103-8.
3. Bibiloni R, et al., “VSL#3 probiotic-mixture induces remission in patients with active ulcerative colitis.” Am J Gastroenterol. 2005 Jul;100(7):1539-46.

1. H.J. Kim, et al., “A randomized controlled trial of a probiotic combination VSL# 3 and placebo in irritable bowel syndrome with bloating.” Neurogastroenterol Motil. 2005 Oct;17(5):687-96.
2. H.J. Kim, et al., “A randomized controlled trial of a probiotic, VSL#3, on gut transit and symptoms in diarrhoea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome.” Aliment Pharmacol Ther. 2003 Apr 1;17(7):895-904.

Leonard Smith, M.D.
Dr. Leonard Smith is a prominent Board-Certified, general, gastrointestinal and vascular surgeon who had a successful private practice for 25 years. In addition to his active surgery practice, he also incorporated lifestyle, diet, supplementation, exercise, detoxification, and stress management into many of the therapies he would prescribe. Many of his patients with cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other serious illnesses did so well under his treatment regimes that he began to devote most of his career to foundational health care and preventive medicine.

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For over 60 years now, it has been recommended that baby’s first food be white rice cereal mixed with either breast milk or regular milk. Rice is known for being well-tolerated by babies’ sensitive digestive tracts due to its low allergen status.  Recommending white rice as baby’s first food is coming under scrutiny, however, and I agree.

White rice is a highly refined product. In processing, it is stripped of fiber, vitamins and other beneficial nutrients.  What’s left is little more than a simple carbohydrate—the very food that leads to the development of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The risk of these diseases seems far off when we are talking about infants, but experts believe that starting off a baby’s diet with white rice cereal may be setting the stage for unhealthy eating habits to come.

So this week’s challenge is to substitute brown rice cereal for white rice cereal in the diet of a baby you know. This simple substitution could be the beginning of better dietary choices later in life.

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Unnecessary antibiotic use is a common practice, especially in pediatric medicine. Children with ear infections are often prescribed antibiotics, which often aren’t necessary. A recent analysis of 135 published studies found that most kids who see a doctor for ear infection do not need an antibiotic.

The review, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) determined that 80 percent of children with ear infections will get better on their own in about three days. When antibiotics are prescribed, this number only increases to 92 percent, but comes with many side effects—three in ten will develop a rash in reaction to the medication, five in ten more will get diarrhea, and an unpredictable number will be at risk of developing antibiotic resistance. 

Experts encourage doctors to give parents a “safety-net antibiotic prescription,” which is a prescription that parents take home and only use if the child does not improve after three days. This reduces the amount of office visits necessary (which can be one reason for parents to push early prescriptions), and reduces the number of children who take antibiotics unnecessarily.

I see so many people with digestive issues that stem from repeated antibiotic use as a child, and  I know how destructive that can be first hand. The long-term consequences of unnecessary antibiotics can wreak havoc on a person’s digestive system.  They did mine, and it took a long time (and the right supplements) for me to get back to vibrant health.  The more we know about safe ways to avoid antibiotics, the better. 

So the next time one of your little ones has an ear infection, talk to your doctor about a three-day safety-net antibiotic prescription. In the meantime, a bedtime dose of ibuprofen was recommended for best relief.

As always, when taking antibiotics, a probiotic should be taken (not within the same 2 hours) during and after, to help replenish the healthy gut bacteria that are depleted with antibiotic use.

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“Renew You” Challenge – Let’s start the year off right with my weekly challenge (I mean, opportunity!) to help set you off on the right foot and in the right direction for bringing health to your week. Join us!

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’re trying to eat and live healthier—maybe for a digestive condition, maybe to lose some weight (or both) or maybe because you know that you can maintain good health if you clean up your act!

One of the greatest ways to get big health benefits from the food you eat is to consume a good amount of fruits and vegetables. Government recommendations are four to six servings of fruits and veggies, and many natural health practitioners recommend up to nine servings! But children ages six to 12 only eat 1.43 cups of fruits and veggies per day, teens eat 1.76 cups, and adults only 1.81 cups per day, according to a recent report from the Produce for Better Health Foundation. Our intake is getting better, but it’s still not enough, they say.

I know that it can be difficult to get so many servings of fruits and veggies into a day. One of my favorite ways to do this is by eating a big salad for lunch. I like to prepare a big salad on Sunday that I can portion out to last me all week. That way I don’t get tired of making salad. And I add different toppings each day. Grilled chicken and bell peppers one day. Grilled wild salmon and broccoli the next. Hardboiled eggs and asparagus another day. Garbanzo beans and green beans…you get the picture. Often, just a little olive oil and lemon are all I need to dress the salad.

Not only will you receive an array of phytonutrients from the different veggies you include, but you will boost your fiber intake too (especially if you add beans to the salad).

So this week, prepare a big salad as your base on Sunday. Have the dressing on hand and choose your protein as you go. Bon appétit! Feel free to share your topping ideas in the comments.

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Probiotics are now being considered for use in treating many digestive (and even non-digestive) health conditions and diseases. Two such diseases in which probiotics have been studied are the inflammatory bowel diseases ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. These conditions involve chronic inflammation of the intestines. Crohn’s disease primarily involves the lower small intestine, but may involve the entire digestive tract. Ulcerative colitis involves the rectum and large intestine, or colon (hence the name colitis—meaning inflammation of the colon).

A recent double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study found that in addition to standard treatment, a high-potency, multistrain probiotic improved symptoms. Equally important, it also improved appearance of the colonic mucosal lining in patients with relapsing mild-to-moderate ulcerative colitis compared to those patients only receiving standard treatment.

This is the strongest study to date on probiotics for ulcerative colitis and joins a growing body of evidence for their beneficial effects. Because ulcerative colitis is a serious disease, effective treatment is important. If you have ulcerative colitis, talk to your doctor about using probiotics. Want to learn more before you do? Tune in for my PBS Special The Road To Perfect Health, now airing on your local PBS station.

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If you’re reading this blog, chances are good you’ve heard of probiotics. Probiotics are beneficial bacteria that are known for supporting digestive and immune health. From my perspective, probiotics are as important as a daily multivitamin and have many healing properties. I have seen so many people get well while taking probiotics.

When people think of probiotics, the first thing that comes to mind is usually yogurt. It’s true that all yogurt is cultured with probiotics, but not all yogurt contains live cultures in the finished product. This is because yogurt must be pasteurized, or heated, to kill off potentially pathogenic bacteria. Unfortunately, this also kills off the beneficial bacteria the yogurt was cultured with. Some yogurts do contain live cultures that are added back in after pasteurization. Next time you buy yogurt, be sure to look for the “live cultures” label.

The limitation of yogurt, however, is the amount of probiotics in yogurt—it’s low. It may not be enough, especially if your gut is out of balance. Unless you want to eat a gallon of yogurt each day, a probiotic supplement is best.

A recent study found that a high-potency (450 billion), multi-strain probiotic was able to ease irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) symptoms in children and adolescents who took the supplement for six weeks. This is a very high dose, but it can take that much (even in children) in certain conditions to rebalance the gut.

On the other hand, a lower dose (even that found in yogurt) can be beneficial for certain health concerns. Another recent study found that a particular probiotic yogurt containing Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium lactis decreased cholesterol and increased HDL (“good”) cholesterol in women when eaten for six weeks.

It’s a fact: Bacteria are everywhere. It’s just a matter of striking the right balance. Yet another study found that household dust even contains up to 1,000 different microbe species per gram! (No wonder no one likes to dust!) We can only do so much to reduce our daily exposure to harmful toxins and pathogens, but we can do a lot to improve our health by choosing the right foods and nutrients to optimize the body’s functions.

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I read recently that more and more Americans aren’t getting enough vitamin B12 in their diet, and that older Americans are more likely to suffer from vitamin B12 deficiency than their younger counterparts. But why should we be concerned about B12 in the first place? I’m glad you asked!

Vitamin B12 is an essential vitamin needed for healthy cells—especially red blood cells and the cells that make up our brain and nervous system. It also plays an important role in energy production, which is why it’s sometimes called the “energy vitamin”. We get vitamin B12 from protein-rich foods like meat, fish and dairy products, but a lot of folks just aren’t getting enough through diet alone…and that’s where probiotics come in!

As you know, probiotics are the good bacteria in your gut that help crowd out harmful microbes that can cause poor digestion and disease. And in addition to their proven digestive and immune health benefits, studies show that probiotics play an important role in the manufacturing of certain vitamins needed by the body (vitamins like B12) and that they work to help the body use those vitamins more efficiently to ensure better health and energy.

So there you have it—just one more reason to add a high-potency probiotic to your daily health regimen!

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Great news, folks! My long-time friend and colleague Dr. Leonard Smith will soon be joining our online community with regular guest blog posts about important topics like gut health, nutrition, colon hydrotherapy, natural detoxification and more. And who better to give us advice about keeping our bodies and our digestive systems in good shape?

Dr. Smith has spent his career helping people live healthier through things like good digestion and diet, and he is a true mentor and an inspiration to me. He spent many years as a gastrointestinal surgeon before beginning his own successful private practice, and his knowledge of natural healing therapies is both impressive and inspiring. I have had the privilege of working side by side with Dr. Smith while writing several of my books, and I’m so excited he’ll soon be joining us here on brendawatson.com. Welcome, Dr. Smith!

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Doing what I do, I have a lot of folks come to me with problems like heartburn, constipation, gas and bloating—things that make you think right off the bat, “That’s a digestive issue.” But what about problems like fatigue or weight gain? Even allergies, joint pain or skin problems? What a lot of people don’t realize is that all of these things are connected, and they all come back to your gut.

I have a new book coming out called The Road to Perfect Health, and in it I talk about the vast numbers of bacteria in your body, especially in your digestive tract (which is where roughly 80 percent of your natural defenses are found). And when a healthy digestive balance is upset because of things like poor diet, stress or other factors, the result can be not only poor digestion, but a total breakdown in health.

If you’ve been having persistent health problems that you and your doctor just can’t seem to figure out no matter what you try, it may be time to look at what’s going on in your gut. And to do that, there are two absolutely essential tests that I recommend starting with. One is called a comprehensive stool analysis (CDSA or CSAP) and it’s really pretty remarkable. It evaluates your poop (now don’t cringe, this is important!) and looks at things like how you are digesting your food, as well as your levels of good and bad bacteria, whether pathogenic organisms such as C. difficile are present, what your yeast levels are, and if there are parasites in the gut.

The CDSA will also show you whether you have Leaky Gut Syndrome or inflammation in your digestive system, and it will show you how well your gut immunity is working, along with important gut health markers such as pH, blood, short-chain fatty acids and even how well your pancreas is functioning. These are all extremely important aspects of gut health that together can help you get to the bottom of what is going on in the rest of your body. Again, I can’t stress enough how connected your overall health is to what’s going on in your gut!

The other test is a gluten sensitivity test. Why gluten sensitivity? Because wheat gluten is a major (if not the worst) food irritant to the digestive system, and it is in a huge number of products on the market today—not just bread. Seriously folks, more than 40 percent of Americans are gluten sensitive and most don’t even know it, and 2 million of those have a serious autoimmune disorder called celiac disease, which causes the body to try to attack gluten in the system. And because even a lot of GI doctors don’t understand the difference between gluten sensitivity and celiac disease, most will either label you as having celiac or nothing, which can be extremely frustrating when you don’t feel well and are trying to figure out what’s wrong (read more about this here).The bottom line is that people are having all these problems which could lead to bigger problems later on, and the reality is those problems can be helped.

Both of these tests are non-invasive and can be done right at home (visit www.labtestingdirect.com and www.enterolab.com for more information). Then, all you have to do is send the tests to the lab for analysis (prepaid envelopes are provided) and hopefully take the first step toward getting your health back on track. If they seem expensive, think about it this way: how much money do you spend each week or each month on frivolous things you really don’t need? Isn’t your health a hundred times more important than a $4 latte every morning? And even if your insurance doesn’t cover the cost right away, you may be eligible for reimbursement, so I beg you—make this investment in your health. It’s worth it to get to the root of your problems and start enjoying the vibrant health and energy you deserve!!

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