Is Your Probiotic Supplement Effective?

What Did We Research?

With hundreds of manufacturers out there, we wanted to figure out what to look for and how to overcome our concerns regarding nutritional health supplements. We started the process by making a list of the main concerns we have over buying a good probiotic product.

• It’s not going to be effective. The truth is, there are a lot of products that don’t work at all. Typically, this is because they don’t contain the right ingredients or the right proportions. A lot of interested consumers don’t realize how exact a science creating an effective supplement really is.
• It’s going to be too expensive to afford. As we conducted our research, we found that a lot of companies sell probiotic supplements for $100 or more! Who wants to risk that kind of money on what could just be snake oil salesmanship?
• The company I buy from might just be exploiting another fad. How can you tell when a manufacturer is just trying to cash in on the latest trend? Most of those companies are all gimmick and no substance. How do you know that the company you choose to buy from is giving you the real deal?

Finding High Quality Probiotic Supplements

So, how can you identify the legitimate products through all the smoke? There are a few key factors to look for that can all but guarantee the product is genuine.

1. Third-Party Monitoring: Independent monitoring companies track each company’s reputation and customer satisfaction. One of the most important qualities for a supplement manufacturer is their reputation. Look for a company with a solid reputation backed by third party monitoring.
2. Risk-Free Money Back Guarantee: Go with a company that guarantees their product and offers your money back if you aren’t satisfied. If the company is not willing to put their money where their mouth is, that means they don’t believe in their own product.
3. Third-Party Testing: Different than third-party monitoring, third-party testing verifies the quality of each company’s products. Third-party testing is really expensive for manufacturers, since it can actually disqualify entire shipments of pills. But when companies don’t have independent quality control, there is no guarantee that their products are what they claim to be.

Our Research On Probiotic Supplement Brands

Your time and money is valuable and we don’t want you to waste either one. So we did the research on most of the top probiotic supplements available.

We studied each product to determine which consistently had not only the right ingredients, but also the right proportions. We disqualified the ones with unnecessary, synthetic fillers and those whose contents differed drastically from pill to pill.

But we didn’t stop there. After all, numbers and percentages are only part of the story. We went on to seek out real customers who had used the products we tested. We asked them for testimonials and compared them with our notes, and then compiled this information to give you a list of the best products on the market.

What Our Research Uncovered

A good probiotic supplement should contain multiple strains of probiotics. Many probiotic supplements only contain one or two strains, but as each strain provides a specific health benefit, the more strains it contains, the more benefits you will experience. The most researched and studied probiotics include those from the genus Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium and Saccharomyces boulardii, so including all of these in a probiotic supplement is ideal. A probiotic supplement should also include a prebiotic, such as Fructooligosaccharides (FOS), which acts as a food source for the probiotics, thus increasing their production in the gut. These prebiotics are not digestible, so they allow the probiotics to travel through the digestive tract whole to reach the gut where they are best utilized.

The strains of probiotics are not the only indication of a successful supplement, the potency is also important. An effective probiotic supplement should provide a significant and potent daily serving of at least 20 Billion CFU. This CFU indicates the culture count of the probiotic and is a measure of how strong it is. The ideal potency is around 20 Billion CFU as less will provide fewer benefits, but too high can’t be taken for a long period of time. There is no need for any additional unnecessary ingredients, binders, fillers, additives or preservatives.

We found only one product that met this criteria. Our #1 top product choice contains:

• 10 strains of the most researched probiotics - many only include one or two strains.
• The probiotic Saccharomyces boulardii - most other probiotics don’t include this strain.
• A prebiotic, Fructooligosaccharides (FOS) - many formulas do not include this.
• The optimal potency of 25 Billion CFU - many others are either too high or too low.
• A vegan-friendly formulation - many other probiotics are harvested from dairy.
• No unnecessary ingredients, binders, fillers, additives or preservatives.

Most brands did not pass the above criteria.

Some of the probiotic manufacturers included the right ingredients, but had a weaker potency or did not include a prebiotic to enhance the production of probiotics in the gut. They use much less than what was used in the clinical studies that led to significant effective results. Many probiotic supplements are not vegan-friendly and may contain dairy. Other companies filled their supplements with cheap fillers, binders, and other synthetic ingredients. Almost all of them avoided quality control testing.

The brands we did pick, we stand by. We are confident that these products can help you achieve your health goals.

Our Probiotic Supplements Top Pick:

We are excited about our first pick and we think you’ll agree. This company has a solid reputation, a high-quality product, third-party monitoring and testing. It also has a solid return policy and stands by its products.