(Lucy Bode/ Women’s Health) — We’ve long considered probiotics a miracle cure for a whole range of health probs: bad bloating? Kaching! Sucky skin? Kaching! Anxiety playing up? Kaching, kaching! But when it comes to one ailment in particular, you’d be better off saving your pennies (if new research out of Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science is anything to go by):
Gut health.
Two studies published in the journal Cell looked at how well probiotics work and if they do in fact help the bacteria in a person’s gut recover after taking a course of antibiotics.
In the first study, participants were split into two groups: with one given a commercial probiotic and the other a placebo. They then had their gut bacteria analysed through an upper endoscopy and colonoscopy. Interestingly, researchers found that the probiotic caused one of two responses. The bacteria either moved from one end or the other without ever attaching to the gut (meaning it was kinda pointless) or it caused only minor changes to the microbiome. (…)