Why Spore Probiotics Are Better Than Fermented Foods

8 min read

What you’re getting yourself into

Why probiotic drinks like kefir shouldn’t be your first option for healing the gut.

If someone speaks to you with confidence on what bacteria you need to add to the gut in order to shred fat, it’s good practice to back away slowly without breaking eye contact. Because despite what some ‘experts’ like to convey, the science of the microbiome is still in the dark ages.

A thriving microbiome is also undeniably pivotal for your health. Gut health has been directly linked to the immune system, mental health, autoimmune disease, endocrine disorders, gastrointestinal disorders, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Between 70 and 80% of the immune system is found in the gut. 90% of your serotonin is made in the gut. Autoimmune reactions are directly caused by leaks in the gut barrier.

There’s no debating the critical nature of your intestinal tract. The issue is how to go about it.

I’m going to drop in a huge caveat to the discussion of probiotics, and clarify that without the removal of the stressors that are adding to existing gut dysfunction, throwing probiotics into the mix amounts to chucking gasoline on a house fire. Which means you should be pre-empting this with an elimination diet that removes any potential stressors.

Drinking kefir alone won’t heal your gut, because it won’t get rid of pathogenic bacteria, and it won’t repair a damaged gut lining. All it can do is chuck some extra bacteria into the mix. This should be part of your opening salvo.

This guide will walk you through the numerous ways a carnivore diet can aid gut health, and how to go about it.

How To Heal Your Gut With A Carnivore Diet

The beef and salt version of carnivore happens to be the ultimate elimination diet. So it’s highly recommended that any mission to heal existing gut issues should start there. Once you’ve gone a month into the elimination phase, you can begin to experiment with probiotics.

Because that’s what this is: experimentation. We can’t speak in certainties when it comes to achieving outcomes with probiotics. All we can do is create the perfect environment, and limit unnecessary risks. That’s what this article is here to help you with.

The Risks Of Probiotic Foods And Drinks

should you take kefir

Probiotic drinks like kefir and kombucha are all the rage these days, and they only represent a small fraction of the fermented foods that are advertised as the essential bastions of strong and diverse microbiomes.

You can get milk, tea, yogurts, cabbage, and even fish that contain live cultures that are advertised to help populate the gut with the right kind of bacteria. All of them are advertised to improve digestion, immune health, mental health, and anything else that can be improved by a functioning intestinal tract.

Here are examples of regular probiotic strains:

  • Lactiobacillus rhamnosus
  • Lactobacillus salivarius
  • Lactobacillus acidophilus
  • Lactobacillus casei
  • Bifidobacterium lactis
  • Bifidobacterium bifidum
  • Bifidobacterium longus

They seem like an obvious addition to the armory of anyone looking to reclaim their health, but there is a heavy asterisk to add before you go straining kefir grains into your whole milk and start swigging some tangy live cultures every day.

Probiotic foods are a stab in the dark when you’re already dealing with gut issues. You can’t be certain of what strains of bacteria you’re letting in, the quantity of each strain, whether those strains will survive the stomach’s furnace, and whether they’re going to provoke inflammatory reactions by worsening existing overgrowth.

Some fermented foods are well-equipped to make it past the stomach into the intestinal tract, and hang around past the short term. Kefir contains plenty of the Bacillus species that have the tenacity needed to colonise the gut.

However, if you’re suffering from Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO), drinking kefir can worsen the symptoms like bloating by increasing the bacteria in the small intestine.

The small intestine isn’t designed to have much bacteria lurking around, and the populations there tend to be made up of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, the same species that are in most fermented foods.

Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium have the capacity to grow both good and bad gut bugs. They’re not intrinsically beneficial.

To add to the potential pitfalls of fermented foods is that they are loaded with histamine, and that will spark reactions in people who are histamine intolerant.

None of this is to say that fermented foods can’t be part of a healthy diet, they just aren’t the best tool for the initial stages of healing and repopulating a beleaguered gut. Because there’s a better option.

Why Spore Probiotics Are Your Best Option

benefits of soil based probiotics

These are also known as soil-based probiotics, and exist in the soil. Getting down and dirty is a staple tradition of human existence that has been lost in hygienised modernity. These probiotics are incredibly durable in harsh environments thanks to its hard protein shell.

They can get past your stomach acid, bile acids, and digestive enzymes, only ‘hatching’ once they reach a profitable environment like the large intestine. At which point they transform into their active form and begin the process of colonising your gut.

Spore probiotics go one step further by actively reconditioning the gut through targeting and killing harmful bacteria and producing metabolites that encourage the re-growth of helpful bacteria.

21-28 days later, they leave your body through your poop and transition back into a dormant state, ready for their next adventure.

Here are some examples of probiotic strains:

  • Bacillus coagulans
  • Bacillus subtilus
  • Bacillus clausii
  • Bacillus indicus
  • Bacillus licheniformis
  • Clostridium butyricum
  • Enterococcus faecium

The point here, is that spore probiotics are a more precise and reliable way to colonise your gut. By all means, you could potentially achieve the same ends by drinking kefir, but there’s an accompanying risk that you could make your gut problems worse. Or, if you’re like me, see absolutely no difference despite months of diligently straining milk every single morning.

Benefits of spore probiotics over fermented foods

  • Less histamine issues
  • Doesn’t aggravate SIBO
  • Easier to experiment since you know exactly what strains you’re putting in, rather than a random cocktail

What Spore Probiotics Should You Try?

spore probiotic product recommendation

CThere are still a number of products with their own spin on soil-based bacterial cocktails. This is where I’d recommend doing your own research, but the one I’ve been most impressed by is MegaSporeBiotic.

Saccharomyces Boulardii is not spore-based, and doesn’t hang around for long, but also presents a valuable option for its antimicrobial abilities. Because this isn’t just about colonisation, it’s also about removing the pathogenic natives.

In the long run, it might even be worth adding in fermented foods like kefir to improve your ability to digest specific foods that you have an intolerance to, like dairy in this case. But save this option for a few months down the line, once digestion and gut health are already in a good place.

Do You Even Need Probiotics On Carnivore?

carnitine benefits

There will be people who state that carnivore in and of itself is sufficient for root-cause healing, and that any additions or supplementation is unnecessary. When made as a sweeping statement, I disagree. Carnivore can be enough. But there will be situations where supplementation can be beneficial, even if not necessary.

Iodine is such an example. With soil-depletion and interference from bromides in the environment, it’s a challenge to obtain enough iodine from the diet. Given its critical nature in thyroid production, adding an iodine solution can have positive effects on your energy levels.

Why Nutrients Are Lacking On A Carnivore Diet?

The gut is no different. In much the same case as iodine, you have to make peace with the fact that you can’t replicate the same environment that your paleolithic ancestors lived in, hundreds of thousands of years ago. You’ll struggle to achieve the same intimacy with soil bacteria.

So there’s a good case to be made that a good probiotic could help circumvent the drawbacks of modernisation by putting some of Mother Earth’s finest back inside you. Just keep in mind that this isn’t a sure-fire success, because we just don’t know enough about the microbiome at this point to speak in certainties.

It might even pan out that you still have to deploy additional antimicrobials to get rid of pathogenic bacteria.

What we can do is experiment, and the carnivore diet provides the perfect baseline for its repetitive nature and lack of extra noise. There’s little harm in trialing out probiotics over a 1-2 month run, and seeing whether it has any beneficial effects.

Ultimately the spore probiotics aren’t sticking around forever, because their home is the soil, not your colon. Which means you also have a clear exit strategy if you do experience any unwanted effects.

If you want to figure out the best way to set up your own metabolic revival, reach out to me on Twitter, Instagram, or sign up to my coaching programme below.

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