Anyone tried the Probiotic VSL#3?

[cludwig]

Hi Mike,

That's interesting about how important bifido is. I am almost completely off the entocort. I weaned off slowly just in case the biopsies didn't tell the whole picture (am having trust issues now :) I started the caprylic acid pills yesterday as I am weaning off the diflucan. So far so good with the caprylic acid ( my stool test showed bad bacteria overgrowth as well as no bifido). The caprylic is supposed to kill the bad. After a week on this I will add the probiotic. I hope mine goes as well as yours. Will let you know.

Love, Cristi

[mle_ii]

Still no problems with the probiotic. BMs seem to be pretty consistant now, less abdominal pain. Still gassy, but not painful gas like before.

There's still some food that I haven't quite figured out that's effecting me. Could have been soy, corn, oranges, pinapple, potato or avocado. I'm thinking it's soy (perhaps potato... I hope not), but I'm not sure yet. None of those showed up on any food alergy or antibody test.

Mike

[mle_ii]

Whoa, how in the heck did I miss this artilce:
VSL#3 probiotic preparation has the capacity to hydrolyze gliadin polypeptides responsible for Celiac Sprue. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... s=16311022

The native structure and distribution of gliadin epitopes responsible for Celiac Sprue (CS) may be influenced by cereal food processing. This work was aimed at showing the capacity of probiotic VSL#3 to decrease the toxicity of wheat flour during long-time fermentation. VSL#3 (10(9) cfu/ml) hydrolyzed completely the alpha2-gliadin-derived epitopes 62-75 and 33-mer (750 ppm). Two-dimensional electrophoresis, immunological (R5 antibody) and mass spectrometry analyses showed an almost complete degradation of gliadins during long-time fermentation of wheat flour by VSL#3. Gliadins non-hydrolyzed during fermentation by VSL#3 were subjected to peptic-tryptic (PT) digestion and analyzed by CapLC-ESI-Q-ToF-MS (Capillary Liquid Chromatography-Electrospray Ionization-Quadrupole-Time of Flight-Mass Spectrometry). Search for several epitopes showed the only presence of alpha2-gliadin-fragment 62-75 at a very low concentration (sub-ppm range). Compared to IEC-6 cells exposed to intact gliadins extracted from the chemically acidified dough (control), VSL#3 pre-digested gliadins caused a less pronounced reorganization of the intracellular F-actin which was mirrored by an attenuated effect on intestinal mucosa permeability. The release of zonulin from intestinal epithelial cells treated with gliadins was considerably lower when digested with VSL#3. Agglutination test on K 562 (S) cells showed that the PT-digest of wheat flour treated with VSL#3 increased the Minimal Agglutinating Activity of ca. 100 times. Wheat proteins were extracted from doughs and subjected to PT digestion. Compared to PT-digest from chemically acidified dough, celiac jejunal biopsies exposed to the PT-digest from the dough fermented by VSL#3 did not show an increase of the infiltration of CD3(+) intraepithelial lymphocytes. Proteolytic activity by probiotic VSL#3 may have an importance during food processing to produce pre-digested and tolerated gliadins for increasing the palatability of gluten-free products.

[Dee]

Hi Mike!!
Explain your findings please...
And you are taking the VSL#3, right????

Dee~~~~~~

[mle_ii]

Hi Mike!!
Explain your findings please...
And you are taking the VSL#3, right????

Dee~~~~~~

I'll have to wait til I can read the full article, but from the abstract it appears that the bacteria in VSL#3 break down the proteins that cause problems for some folks. So much so that decreased permeability took place in comparison to controls. Meaning that the bacteria broke down the proteins and made them less likely to cause problems in folks who are susceptable to this protein. But until I read the full article I'm not sure. That and I wouldn't go back to eating full gluten, though it would make one less susceptable to cross contaminiation I would venture to guess if one had the "right" bacteria in their bodies.

And yes, I'm taking VSL#3 right now. About 2 weeks into it. No problems thus far. More gassy, but the gas is a lot less painful than it used to be.

Mike

[Dee]

Interesting!!
I have a friend that is in contact with a retired medical professor from UCLA who swears by the VSL#3.... Both of these women have been diagnosed with IBS...

Thanks for the info!!

Dee~~~

[tex]

Mike,

Very interesting, to say the least. Maybe this is part of the explanation of why only one percent of the general population has glueten sensitivity, when around 40 percent have the gene that makes them candidates, but the gene is never activated. IOW, maybe most of those other folks already have something in their guts to deactivate the giadins.

Thanks for the link.

Tex

P S I edited your post, (the second one back), to eliminate the need for scrolling. An URL has to have at least one space between it and any other characters around it, in order for it to be correctly recognized as an URL by the php code.

[thedell19]

Mathew- I was on VSL#3 for a long long time and thought that and entocort were the only things to help me before the diet.

However I did confirm with the company that some of the bacteria is grown on milk protiens etc and they can NOT guarnatee that it is dairy free and casein free at that.

I know it says in the website that it doesnt have milk byproducts because of the way it is harvested or whatever but I talked to three people on three different occasions and I was given the same answer each time.

VSL is so expensive- have you tried any other probiotics? iFlora is very good but doesnt have as many CFUs as VSL but has 2.5 times as many strains of bacteria whose benefits range from helping reduce inflammation inteh colon, rectum etc, as well as many others

[mle_ii]

Mike,

Very interesting, to say the least. Maybe this is part of the explanation of why only one percent of the general population has glueten sensitivity, when around 40 percent have the gene that makes them candidates, but the gene is never activated. IOW, maybe most of those other folks already have something in their guts to deactivate the giadins.

Thanks for the link.

Tex

P S I edited your post, (the second one back), to eliminate the need for scrolling. An URL has to have at least one space between it and any other characters around it, in order for it to be correctly recognized as an URL by the php code.

Very, very interesting indeed Tex! There are a few other things of interest, not in this article but related.

Some genes can be turned on or off. From what I've read and learned there are certain genes within the body that due to environmental factors can be turned on or off. I'm betting that some of these genes are turned on or off by this bacteria as you pointed out. It is rather interesting to think about, makes you wonder what other human potentials there are that we have that are yet to be turned on or off.

Second, bacteria communicate. As strange as this sounds I saw a recent science show taking about this. It seems that they have a way of communicating with all bacteria no matter the type, they also can communicate amoungst themselves (in only a "language" they know). It also appears that it can take a certain number of bacteria, I think they call it "quorum sensing", well once they get to a certain number, and communicate, they then can do some amazing things. One example is the bacteria that can light up, put them in small numbers and they won't do this, put them in a larger number within a group and they light up. So, I'm guessing when the quantities of certain bacteria within the GI get to the right amounts they do what they are supposed to do, when not enough they don't. Perhaps a lot of studies or probiotics don't work as well for folks because the numbers aren't large enough. Here's some more info, just search for "quorum sensing" to learn more if you're interested.
http://library.albany.edu/science/newin ... ensing.htm

Mike

[mle_ii]

VSL is so expensive- have you tried any other probiotics? iFlora is very good but doesnt have as many CFUs as VSL but has 2.5 times as many strains of bacteria whose benefits range from helping reduce inflammation inteh colon, rectum etc, as well as many others

It is very expensive, at least compared to the others. Though I would venture to guess that the amounts of found in VSL#3 would only need to be used for a certain amount of time and once the gut heals and is repopulated that some lower count probiotic would work. In fact you could just take partial packets if need be.

I would also venture to guess that every bacteria/probiotic produced couldn't guarentee that their product is free of dairy products since this is the medium used to grow some of the types. The only thing that they might be able to do is to batch test the product to see how many parts per million that they might contain. iFlora says that they are dairy free, so I would have to ask how they grow their bacteria to be this way.

Also, we're not comparing apples to apples here when comparing VSL#3 to most probiotics. iFlora indeed has more species, which may or may not be good. I don't know enough about the different kinds in iFlora to say anything, but I do know that VSL#3 only contains the bacteria that are supposed to be resident in the gut. Also, the counts are not the same, 450 billion VS 15 billion per capsule, so 30 times more bacteria. Given that the numbers in the gut range from 10s of billions to trillions, 15 billion isn't much as far as for repopulating the gut. So if we go by their usage and say $18 per bottle then it's way cheaper but you're only getting 30 billion per day. And if try to get the 450 billion that we get from VSL#3 we multiply $18*15 that's $270 per month, and you'd have to swallow 30 capsules a day. Yikes! ***I think my math is right, but please let me know if it. :)

So perhaps iFlora would be a good product to maintain a good gut flora, but getting there will take you longer I'm guessing.

Mike

NOTE: Ok, my math was off, well due to some conflicting information on one website. It appears that there are 15 billion per capsule, instead of the 15 billion per gram as one site indicated. So I edited the above to fix that.

[tex]

Mike,

I was totally ignorant of the quorum-sensing issue. I see there's even a dedicated, "official", quorum-sensing website.

It makes a lot of sense that it would behoove them to "lay low" until they had built up a sufficient population to "do their thing", and do it right. I'm not surprised that they communicate, either, since everything else in the world seems to have that capability. The little devils are probably talking about us right now, and laughing over the fact that we're so easy to fool. LOL.

Tex

[mle_ii]

Hi Mike!!
Explain your findings please...
And you are taking the VSL#3, right????

Dee~~~~~~

I'll have to wait til I can read the full article, but from the abstract it appears that the bacteria in VSL#3 break down the proteins that cause problems for some folks. So much so that decreased permeability took place in comparison to controls. Meaning that the bacteria broke down the proteins and made them less likely to cause problems in folks who are susceptable to this protein. But until I read the full article I'm not sure. That and I wouldn't go back to eating full gluten, though it would make one less susceptable to cross contaminiation I would venture to guess if one had the "right" bacteria in their bodies.

And yes, I'm taking VSL#3 right now. About 2 weeks into it. No problems thus far. More gassy, but the gas is a lot less painful than it used to be.

Mike

Ok, the study wasn't quite what I thought. They used VSL#3 to cause the bread to rise the same like how sourdough bread is made. Using this probiotic broke down the gliadin proteins that cause problems in folks with CD.

Though at the end they did propose that it might work the same if those bacteria were or were not present in the GI tract. They said further studies should be done along those lines.

What was very interesting is that they found that using any of the forms of the bacteria by themselves to break down the proteins it didn't work. Only when all the bacteria were grouped together did these proteins all get broken down. Seems that they each had parts of the whole for this process. This seems to tie in with my thoughts about the negative or inconclusive studies using probiotics. Without having the write combination the effects wouldn't be the same for other processes in which the body is help by the gut flora.

Mike

[Polly]

Mike,

I haven't had much time to post but wanted to let you know that I have been following this thread with great interest. The bacteria issue is a big piece of the puzzle, I think. So why do you think that the bacteria levels drop after several weeks of discontinuing the VSL#3 (as claimed by the manufacturer)? And for those of us with MC who apparently develop antibodies to our good bacteria, wouldn't a constant "battle" be set off by replacing the good bacteria daily?

It may not be enough, I think, to ingest good bacteria. Do we also need to kill off the bad bacteria that "overgrows" as the good bacteria is killed off by the antibodies. It seems that some antibiotics preferentially kill off the bad bacteria......like Cipro or Rifaximin, for example. I saw an article that claimed that azithromycin (Z-Pack) also killed off bad gut bacteria, which would go along with our experience here that, if one must take an antibiotic, azithro is one of the better ones for MCers.

The article you cited was interesting. One can't always extrapolate "in vitro" (dough in the laboratory) studies to "in vivo" (what would actually happen inside the body) studies, but I was intrigued to see that reference to zonulin. Zonulin is another big piece of the puzzle - the "leaky gut piece".

Just thinking out loud here. And wondering if I should try some VSL#3. I am very sensitive to casein, however.

Polly

P.S. BTW, why did you decide to switch from the bifido probiotic to the VSL#3, if bifido was what you were missing? Just curious. Also, are you still having normal BMs?

[thedell19]

Becuase the VSL is not meant for getting a quick fix of bacteria especially in people with comprimised GI tracks- It is meant for constant use every day-

[mle_ii]

Becuase the VSL is not meant for getting a quick fix of bacteria especially in people with comprimised GI tracks- It is meant for constant use every day-

Perhaps I'm not understanding your point so take the following for what it's worth... :)

You know, I used to think that, but now I'm on the fence. I think that even in GI compromised folks that it might just be helpful. Heck, those with Crohn's and Ulcerative Colitis have an even more compromised GI tract than most and there are studies showing a benefit. Here's why it might be the case, there is an upregulation of chemicals/nutrients/etc that benefit the GI, and a down regulation of those that do harm. Think about it, these bacteria have been evolving in such a way for millions(?) of years to be in symbiosis with the human body, they want nothing more than to make sure that the body doesn't reject them because this is how they live. VSL/probiotics may not be the cure but they are definitly a stepping stone if not a keystone towards getting there.

Mike