Monday, May 3, 2010

Probiotics good for Celiac

Back in March 2009, I posted about probiotics being a good idea for traveling Celiacs. Now comes Science Daily reporting a study in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology explained in more common terms by Dr. Michelle Sullivan. She recommends a daily probiotic. There doesn't seem to be much downside except the expense, and the upside could be pretty dramatic.

1 comment:

theMom said...

As far as expense for probiotics goes, here's an idea.

My celiac husband has started drinking Kefir. Previously, although diet controlled his severe and constant intestinal distress, he still had non-formed stools a couple times a day. With the kefir, he has formed stools for the first time in his memory! Strange writing about something like this, but if it might help others with long-term intestinal damage, so be it.

We use yogourmet keifr starter culture and he is able to get probably a month's worth of kefir from each envelope, reusing a bit of the cultured kefir each time to start the next batch. We've been told one can buy a colony of what's called kefir grains which are self sustaining after the first purchase, but we've not invested in such a colony yet. Allegedly the colony kefir has a more rich probiotic culture, with about three times the number of micro-organisms. It's all very interesting to me, but much of the info is anecdotal.

See Dom's kefir pages for a very informational kefir introduction.

http://users.sa.chariot.net.au/~dna/kefirpage.html