The opinion piece by news.discovery.com about whether probiotics are beneficial for a healthy gut provides some interesting food for thought, based on a Danish study.

The study found that while, an dysbalanced gut flora (irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colitis and travelers’ diarrhea) does benefit from probiotics treatment, the same could not be confirmed for individuals with a healthy gut.

The investigators propose that in order to confirm or refute the hypothesis large scale placebo-controlled double-blind studies are required. The problem with the studies conducted thus far include:

• small scaled studies conducted with sponsored probiotics, (e.g. Yakult);
• defining the differences between ‘being ill’ versus ‘feeling better’ and ‘healthy’: Changes in the body at the molecular level  that will later result in disease, actually start quite early, but at that moment in time one does not know or notice anything. How should that be taken into account?

Further updates are sure to follow 😉