Imagine your cousin is terribly exhausted by a stomach flu that he accidentally got during the weekend, and he pukes everywhere. Which treatment would you choose? One pill full of probiotics so that they can fight away the ‘bad germ’ that roams your cousin’s gut? Or just a simple hot water bag and a bowl of thin soup? Which treatment do you think will help you get rid of the terrible puking faster? I bet most of you would choose to take the probiotics, since from what we learnt on the internet, probiotics are effective in fighting away the ‘bad germs’ that lies inside your gut. They can adjust your gut microbes, make your skin looks better, help you digest food more efficiently, and finally build a well-regulated and healthy gut environment. More importantly, they are not as merciless as the antibiotics, which will kill whatever left in the gut and leave a gut free of both good and bad germs behind. At least, that was what most videos on Youtube say about the benefits of probiotics.
However, is it true? Is it possible for just a small pill of probiotics to have the ability to save your gut? How good are these small, almost invisible to naked eyes creatures? The answer,unfortunately, is no. In the case of a gut inflammation caused by virus or bacteria, the probiotics can do nothing better than simple placebos. According to two recent big studies in the U.S., probiotics are inefficient in preventing the development of moderate-to-severe gut inflammation, and symptoms of the researched subject shows no difference against the placebo group.
One of the research mainly focused on Lactobacillus rhamnosus and L. helveticus, both are commonly used probiotics. Participants of this research are 3 to 48 months old children that has been diagnosed as gastroenteritis, commonly known as the gut flu or the stomach flu. In this study, participants were randomly selected and separate into two groups, one receives the probiotics while the other group receive the placebo for two weeks. At the end of the study, the outcome of the participants were evaluated to determine if the probiotics or the placebo had treated their illness. Among all the participants who received the probiotics, 26.1% of them developed into a moderate-to-severe gastroenteritis, while 24.7% of the placebo group developed a moderate-to-severe gastroenteritis. This means that the probiotics is of no use in preventing the development of moderate-to-severe gastroenteritis.
So what exactly should we do when we are facing a gastroenteritis? And is it true that probiotics are all useless? Researchers have not given a clear answer yet. What is true is that next time when a stomach flu strikes, do not panic, before purchasing the expensive probiotics, keep asking yourself do you really need it.
