Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I went to the doctor for loose stools that had lasted a couple months. I tried some probiotics, but I didn't get any improvement. My doctor prescribed me an antibiotic and told me to increase the amount of probiotic I was taking. I bought this because it was a top seller. I can't say for sure that this probiotic is helping me because it might have been the week of antibiotics I was given, since my stools perked right up after the second day. I started these probiotics the day after I finished the antibiotics. My stools have been awesome ever since. So, although I can't say this is working for me, I can verify that is full of living bacteria. I work in the microbiology department of a hospital lab. I took a pill in to work to see if it was viable. What I did was put a pill in a tube of broth (liquid media) and put it in a 37 degree heat block overnight. The next day it was cloudy (indicative of bacterial growth). So, I took some of the broth and innoculated a blood agar plate (solid media) and put that in the incubator overnight. I also put a couple drops of the broth in to a new broth and put that in the heat block overnight. I also did a gram stain which showed different morphs of gram positive rods. The next day, the blood agar plate was full of bacteria and the second broth was also cloudy. The pill never did dissolve completely, but I was able to mash it up with a stick. So, this doesn't prove how this probiotic works in vivo, but it is alive and it does grow in vitro. Some people seem to think that only probiotics that are kept refrigerated are viable, but that is not true. In the lab, we get our QC organisms dried all the time. We reconstitute them in broth or saline, and they are viable. By the way, I did this "experiment" with the brand of probiotic I had originally tried, and I got very little growth in the broth, a faint haze on the plate, and the second broth never did get cloudy, so I can see why it never changed the consistency of my stools. I don't want to name the company, because I could've gotten a bad batch. But I will continue to purchase this probiotic because at least I know it's alive and kicking.