How to choose a quality probiotic - Part 2: Stability

When you swallow a probiotic it needs to be alive and reach the right place in your intestine to do it’s beneficial work for you. It’s like a lettuce, fresh when picked; but is that same lettuce still fresh 3 weeks later? No, it isn’t. It has degraded. The same can apply to the live bacteria in probiotics. They are grown, fed, and alive, reaching a level of full potency at the beginning of manufacturing. They then need to be put into a state called freeze drying (put to sleep) which will allow them to last through to the products expiry date for your benefit. You dont want the bacteria to die or degrade like a lettuce because why would you bother buying and consuming a dead product.

There are many reasons a probiotic can become unstable and degrade:

  1. The strain of bacteria selected is not able to survive the initial manufacturing process so the bacteria die. If they do survive the first stage, they may not survive the freeze drying. Lots of the bacteria in bad quality probiotics can die during these stages, rendering your product useless. We only sell probiotics that have been through rigorous testing and trials to ensure they are alive and stable through to the expiry date. 
  2. Temperature and moisture are two factors that play a role in keeping the bacteria alive in your probiotic.  Probiotics must be manufactured at a certain temperature and be kept dry, as water can activate them and take the bacteria out of the freeze drying state.  
  3. Incompatibility with other products can cause the bacteria to degrade or die. Often probiotics are mixed with numerous other vitamins and minerals to create a convenient “all in one” product. Sometimes these ingredients aren’t tested together but instead promoted as a series of ingredients which have only been tested individually. We only sell products that have been tested as a blend or probiotics made without any additional ingredients.
  4. Cost can play a huge part in deciding whether a probiotic is unstable. All the practices mentioned above are costly and take extra time and experience to ensure a stable product. Many brands skip over these steps as they can still write that a product contains probiotics on the label, even if the probiotics are dead. We have spent over 30 years curating a selection of probiotics made and audited to the highest level to ensure we only bring you stable products. Sometimes its worth spending a bit more to avoid buying a dud. 

The probiotics that do provide the promised benefits to you are the ones that follow these stability steps with success. The bacteria will not have died off. They will be stable and there will be at least the amount of bacteria that is quoted on the label right up to its expiry date. Trust us, there are very few that do this!