Probiotics for IBS — An Everyday Thing, Really?
Published by tummyblogger September 9th, 2008 in generalSeriously, yes. Recommended, effective, pill-form probiotics need to be taken every day — possibly for the rest of your life.
Several comments have asked this question. To keep IBS at bay in a gentle and effective manner, probiotics are a part of the solution.
I recognize that expense is an issue, especially if you have tried, and/or your doctor has recommended, Align ™.
Possible solutions:
* You can use our special Align code, to order Align at $25 /month, instead of $30 per month (the code is AlignWOM - as far as I know, it still works, and will work repeatedly.
* You can use Digestive Advantage - IBS, which was on the market earlier, and not promoted to Doctors in the same way. If you take the capsule or caplet form (not the chewables) it works, in my experience, as well as Align. For $17 or $18 you can get 96 capsules — a three month supply. A LOT cheaper than Align.
For my money, Digestive Advantage - IBS works as well or better than Align, although you may be more comfortable taking one in the morning and one at night, to build up the good bacteria. When I had to take a megadose antibiotic recently, I doubled DA-IBS to two in the morning, two at night, for a while. Then slowly went back down to 1 at night, two in the morning. Then back to one in the morning, one at night.
Basically, my reason for taking two per day is that
* It’s fairly cheap
* I’m covered if I forget one dose
Two per day costs $36 for three months, or $13 per month, less than half what Align costs. Align is a really good product — and I’ve taken some bad ones — but so is Digestive Advantage - IBS. Part of Align’s cost comes from marketing Align to doctors, sending out specialists in medical marketing to visit doctors,. writing and distributing literature to doctors, and giving them free samples.
I think it would have been nice if they had also put it on the pharmacy shelf next to Digestive Advantage - IBS. Now Align has the aura of a “medicine” for IBS, which it is not. There are probably other probiotics that will be fairly specifically engineered for IBS in the pipeline. How they will be marketed is the question.
One person comments “The symptoms are way worse than taking the pill.” Taking a daily probiotic is just part of the whole story for managing IBS. There are three parts to getting it all under control.
1. Diet
2. Probiotic (Align ™ or Digestive Advantage - IBS ™ are my current recommendations)
3. Soluble fiber supplement - Heather’s Acacia Tummy Fiber ™, FiberSure ™, or a guar gum supplement (cheaper, less appealing to use).
DISCLOSURE: I did receive two months of Align, before its widespread release, on the condition that I would take it every day, and blog about the experience - which I did. I rescued a comment from a manager at Digestive Advantage from my comment-spam file; in it he offered me the same deal — free product for two months, in exchange for blogging about the product on For My Tummy. There *is* the special $5 discount to blog readers, that applies to ordering Align online. There is no special discount to blog readers from Digestive Advantage - IBS ™, only that it is cheaper, and there is both a free sample and a $1.50 store coupon.
No Responses to “Probiotics for IBS — An Everyday Thing, Really?”
Please Wait
Leave a Reply
You must log in to post a comment.