Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

For the record - I ordered a bottle of nutrition essentials probiotic all on my own (twenty bucks). Maybe two weeks later, I received a post card from nutrition essentials with an offer for an additional free bottle (or a bottle of one of their other products) if I were to write an HONEST review. Since I was planning on ordering more anyway, it saved me twenty bucks and motivated me to write a review (something I haven't done in a while but enjoyed doing in the past). After a lot of research on probiotics in general, then hesitation on which brand to try - I landed on nutrition essentials. I was especially hesitant to try big box store brands given recent scandals in the actual ingredients in supplements (their weren't any of the claimed ingredients). As many of us know, supplements ingredients are not FDA regulated. Hopefully, some day that will change. Nutrition essentials has claims of independent verifications, and given their relatively low cost I decided to try them out. Not a whole lot to lose if there was no effect anyway. So, I ordered a bottle of and started taking a dose in the morning, before breakfast, with warm-to-room temperature water. First thing I noticed was no after taste, or upset stomach of any sort. So far so good. A few days later, I noticed I was just generally feeling better, lighter... an absence of gastro issues. Mind you, I wasn't having terrible issues to start with - just kinda gassy after certain foods, or I'd wake up with in the middle of night, with gastro discomfort usually resulting in a 15 minute trip to the bathroom. But all that started going away, and I realized I had more issues than I thought - now that I was feeling much better. The final push to try a probiotic was a round of antibiotics for a sinus infection that turned in a major jaw joint (TMJ) issue. The antibiotics just aggravated the gastro issues I already had. Also, I don't take any other supplements. I tried fish oil a while back for cholesterol, but didn't see any results and gave up on supplements in general. But then, something unexpected happened. I ate hot buffalo style chicken wings and didn't have any gastro issues. I know, stupid to eat a food that makes one sick, but damn I love buffalo chicken wings - hot style with bleu cheese. I ate them, was anticipating the stomach pain and burning trip to the bathroom in the middle of night - but NOTHING. No pain. No issues. Everything normal. So I wanted to push it and see if I could eat anything else and not have issues. I could always eat cheese - but not ice cream or milk. I drank some milk - no issues. I ate ice cream - no issues. I honestly don't know if probiotics are supposed to have this kind of effect, but either way, I can eat things I couldn't before, now without issue. It's nice to live without an anxiety of eating certain foods that I had before. Something else happened that was very odd. The rest of my family (wife and two young kids) all got terrible stomach viruses, vomiting... the works. And for the first time... I didn't catch whatever it was they had. None of us could believe it. Normally, if their sick for 2 days - that meant I'd be sick for 5 days no matter what. But not this time. Again, not sure if probiotics are known to have this kind of effect. My wife started taking them now because neither of us can believe how much better I'm doing. She was on some strong antibiotics too, for other issues. I'm trying to talk my dad into taking them because he's gone through back-to-back rounds of antibiotics for oral/tooth infection issues. He's got heartburn so bad that he's afraid to eat anything. I'll bet it's because his good bacteria was wiped out and all that's left is bad bacteria and stomach acid. So, so what... I can eat chicken wings and ice cream and milk again. But here's the best unintended side effect - because I see a real change (even a small one) in my health, it's kick started my motivation to get healthier. I ordered Nutrition Essentials Neuro Clarity (which unfortunate doesn't seem to be doing squat) and I started taking an off-the-shelf multivitamin. This has led to baby steps in working out which I'll then turn into motivation to use that gym membership I'm paying for. So for me, the twenty bucks is totally worth it. In summary, I'm very pleased. I can eat foods that I couldn't before, I'm sick less and it kick-started a healthy mindset and action. For the price, it's really worth a try.