Is a Higher CFU Count Better?

Who deals with numbers like 10 Billion, 50 Billion, and even 150 Billion on a daily basis? You can go years without using numbers with three commas in them! Yet, when it comes to understanding how many CFUs you need in your probiotic, you’re presented with these numbers as if you are supposed to understand what they mean. Do you need 10 Billion, or 30 Billion…or, gulp, 150 Billion CFUs in your probiotic?!? Is more really better? Let’s take a closer look.

For a refresher, CFUs stands for “colony forming units.” They denote how many bacteria in probiotics are able to divide and form colonies. If probiotic bacteria is able to colonize, we know that it is alive. And getting live bacteria into your gut is what probiotics strive to do.

Remember your body has about 100 trillion naturally occurring bacteria living in you at any time. That’s about five pounds of bacteria in your body. Yeesh! All the more reason to make sure it is supported by the healthiest, live bacteria possible.

But how many CFUs do I need to supplement my existing internal bacteria?

Is a Higher CFU Count Better?

First, let’s remind ourselves of some uncomfortable truths about the probiotic industry. In our recent 2-part series about the journey of the probiotic, we first learned about the harrowing trip from the manufacturer to your health food store or your home. We then learned about the journey from your mouth to your gut.

We learned that many probiotics do not even survive the trip to your health food store. That is because of near oven-like temperatures in the back of delivery trucks. For those that do survive, their capsules or pearls are often not of sufficient structure and consistency to keep stomach acid from destroying most of the bacteria before it even gets to your gut.

The result? We are led to believe the 50 Billion, 100 Billion and even 150 Billion CFUs are appropriate for your daily health. The reality is many manufacturers need to jam that many probiotics in a capsule just to give it a fighting chance of delivering 1, 2 or maybe 3 billion live cultures into your digestive tract. And that’s even if they survived the first part of the journey to the store! Bacteria are not cheap to cultivate. As the consumer, you pay extra for an inefficient delivery system and ineffective product design.

So when talking about the appropriate amount of CFUs, we cannot have the discussion without understanding how important the delivery system is to our discussion. The point: understand and choose a probiotic that, among its qualities, has a proven delivery system to the store – like Probulin’s iced-packed delivery system. And choose one that has a proven ability to transport live cultures from your mouth to your gut – like Probulins’s MAKTrek™ 3-D Probiotic Delivery System.

(Probulin is the only company that utilizes the proven MAKTrek™ 3-D Probiotic Delivery System)

Why Do Some Companies Offer 50 or 100 Billion?

Most professionals in the digestive health space will advise you to consume 10 billion CFUs daily to maintain digestive and immune health. If that is the case, why do so many manufactures offer much larger CFU counts in their products?

There are three reasons:

• An inefficient delivery system requires many more cultures to deliver a minimum acceptable amount.
• From a marketing perspective, we humans often believe that more is better.  The fact is that this isn’t true.
• We may require additional support because of more serious digestive issues, but only a higher amount for short periods.

What if you have more serious digestive issues? If you have confidence in your delivery system, i.e., one that consistently delivers a vast majority of the noted CFUs into your gut, for more serious issues many professionals advise around 20 Billion cultures a day. Gene Bruno, MS, MHS, Provost and Chief Academic Officer of the Huntington College of Health Sciences notes that “higher doses may be indicated for shorter periods of time…if a specific medical need is being addressed.”

For major health problems, consult your healthcare professional.

What The Experts Say

So what about those huge CFU counts? Are they really needed for normal immune health? Kate Watson is the Lead Researcher and Founder of ProbioticsGuide.com. She says it best when she notes, “Keep in mind that the highest doses of CFUs, 45+ billion, are more than likely just a marketing scheme to make you think that added cells equals added benefits.”

We couldn’t agree more.

For daily use, Probulin recommends its Daily Care 10 Billion CFUs. For extra support, Probulin recommends Colon Support Probiotic 20 Billion CFUs. Probulin can be found in a retailer near you.

Until next time, “Be Well and Stay Healthy”!