PROBIOTICS

[REDCHEQHEN]

I am a great believer in using probiotics, and used  Progem Plus (Gem supplements) for most of the last racing season. Recently I bought Entero-plus - a medpet probiotic, and I am rather disappointed in it. It says on the side that 1kg contains 10 to the power 7 lactobilus ( I can't do it on computer, LOL !) thats only 100,000,000 and you use 5g to 1kg of corn. That only works out at 500,000 bacteria, you buy a human probiotic from Holland and Barrett and EACH little capsule contains 3 billion of the blighters (3,000,000,000 ) Thats 30 x more in one capsule than there is in 1kg of the other product. I have used the medpet product for 3 weeks and I am very unimpressed. Does anybody else use probiotics and which one? Has anyone used Vydex or Osmonds? Avian probiotics please, not human ones, no offence ...........

[ribble]

most med-pet products are the same,they seem good value but you have to use more.

[Guest]

Maybe comparing apples and pears?

 

All probiotics, whether animal or human, deteriorate during their shelf life. Perhaps the label you've read is only correct on Day 1 on the shelf when there are 3bn live bacteria but every day the product sits on the shelf, a few million will die..

 

It may be that the pigeon product is giving a guarantee of perhaps 100m live bacteria at the end of the product's shelf life?

 

Personally, don't use pigeon probiotics. I use live natural organic yoghurt on the birds grain over 3 days (ie I finish product in three days, and I have what's left over).

 

 

 

 

 

[BIGK]

Actimel is as good as anything else, its all about good bacteria, we've all seen the advert, but some are better than others. There a  few good ones for horses but are horses the same as birds? are the human forms the same as birds?? not sure, stick to whats for birds as different animals will have different bacteria within the guts!!!

[Guest TAMMY_1]

 

 

USE THE LIVE YOGHURT AS WELL , AS GOOD AS IT GETS

[MsPigeon]

Hi Redcheqhen,

I recommend Vydex! They have excellent products which I order despite the shipping to the USA. They have all the info on their probiotics like content and a chart that compares them to others on the market.

http://www.vydex.co.uk/Animal/pigeon.html

Carol

[Guest]

Carol I've been using chisholm trail for 7 seasons now and can't fault it at all

[Chatrace]

I used  chisholm trail mix last year for the 1st time and had great results

http://www.ctlloft.com/

[schyphos]

I have to agree with Redcheqhen.I have been using Protexin probiotic for the last year and found it an excellent product,but my supplier has discontinued this product and is stocking Entro-plus instead,which after using for 6/7 weeks i find is not as good.I will find another supplier who stocks the Protexin probiotic and revert back to it.

[birdman55678]

Carol does the Vydex mix with the water or do you add it to the feed.  

[MsPigeon]

I use the Vydex probiotics in the water but I think you could use it either way.

Carol

[Roland]

 

 

Experts have called for tougher controls on products claiming to contain 'friendly' bacteria purported to promote good health.

Eating live bacteria can benefit people with certain illnesses, clinical trials have shown.

But what about people who are already healthy?

Should everybody be dashing down to the local supermarket to buy a drink or yoghurt packed full of 'friendly bacteria' in the chance they may get sick if they do not?

The use of foods containing bacteria - probiotics - dates back thousands of years.

It is reported that people in Biblical times drank sour milk to combat problems in the gut.

 

The idea is by constantly topping up the bacteria in your body you're maintaining well-being.

 

Dr Simon Cutting from the Royal Holloway, University of London

In recent years, a number of food products have been hitting the supermarket shelves and bombarding our TV screens.

The annual probiotic market is now worth an estimated £135 million in the UK alone.

There are two ways a probiotic can be classified.

Dr Simon Cutting, a reader in molecular microbiology at the School of Biological Sciences, Royal Holloway, University of London, explained: "One is a novel food - that's when you buy things from the supermarket. The other type is what is classified as a drug.

"When you have a drug, that means you have specific claims which have to be supported by clinical trials. You can't just say it will make you better - you have got to say specifically what it is.

"With novel foods you don't. So novel food is how probiotics are being sold at the moment in the UK."

He is working with a pharmaceutical company to develop a probiotic that can be classified as a drug.

Good plants

Dr Cutting said: "The idea is by constantly topping up the bacteria in your body you're maintaining well-being."

Having a balance of "friendly bacteria" is thought to stop harmful bacteria taking a hold and causing disease, much like having a garden filled with good plants rather than weeds.

To do this, probiotic bacterial strains must be alive and be deliverable to the gut.

That is they must survive gastric and bile acid and digestive enzymes during the gastrointestinal transit until they reach the gut.

Dr Cutting said trying to prove the effects of probiotics in health scientifically was extremely complex.

"If you were to perform a clinical trial how can you be sure that the same number reach the small intestine for every person?

 

Some bacteria can be harmful to the gut

"At every step it becomes more and more difficult. And of course with a novel food you don't have a clinical trial, so it's really done on hearsay."

He doubted whether the novel food probiotics sold in the UK could work.

"In England, all they are selling at the moment are lactobacillus products.

"When you take a dose of lactobacillus, it's not clear how many of those can survive digestion.

"But in Japan, for example, they are all based on spore-forming bacteria.

"I have a lot of faith in the novel foods based on bacillus products simply because I understand that the spore can survive the stomach so when you take a dose it gets through the stomach into the small intestine."

 

I'm not entirely sure there is any great benefit in young healthy people

 

George MacFarlane, Professor of bacteriology, Dundee university

 

Ask the Doctor: Probiotics

 

Professor Jeremy Hamilton-Miller, from the Royal Free and University College Medical School, London, said: "Not all probiotics achieve the same results.

"Despite claims on the label, some contain too small a quantity of bacteria to be beneficial, some contain probiotic cultures that do not survive the gastrointestinal passage, whilst others contain strains of bacteria that are not shown to benefit health."

But the professor, who works with Seven Seas, which produces Multibionta, said many of the probiotic foods sold in the UK did promote good health.

Constipation

Professor Collette Short, director of science at Yakult, said there were studies showing that probiotics boost health.

"There are scientific papers looking at people who are healthy and looking at different parameters, like mild conditions. Constipation would be one example.

"The other area you have is in healthy children going to nursery school where they are in an environment that they are more exposed to bacteria and potentially picking up infections.

"There are several studies that show that children on probiotics were better able to cope and had less use of antibiotics than other children."

 

THE 'NORMAL' GUT BACTERIA

Lactobacilli

Streptococci

Clostridia

Coliform

Bacteriodes

She said it was difficult to prove probiotics' effects in healthy people because there were no obvious biomarkers to measure any improvements.

Professor George MacFarlane, professor of bacteriology at the University of Dundee, said: "To be honest, I'm not entirely sure there is any great benefit in young healthy people. On the other hand they may not do any harm."

He warned that some products being marketed as probiotics had no demonstrated probiotic properties whatsoever.

"Some actually contain bacteria that are harmful. People have to be very careful if they are buying these things over the internet or even from a health food store."

But he said this was not a problem with products from the big companies that had extensively tested their products over many years.

Different things

"Most of the things that are available now are well proven to be safe," Professor MacFarlane said.

"One of the biggest problems with all the work on probiotics is that they are funded by companies that have their own products, which means they are asking the questions that companies want answered," he said.

"The other thing is that different probiotics do different things.

"For example, if you take a probiotic that is proinflammatory, so it stimulates your immune system, it could actually do damage if you had something like ulcerative colitis.

"Ideally you would want to take something that reduces inflammatory processes. Many lactobacilli tend to be proinflammatory," he said.

Wendy Johnson, food scientist and member of the Institute of Food Science and Technology said: "I think probiotic organisms have a place to play in promoting health but providing the evidence is difficult."

 

 

 

seems like a very good vet told me ' If live... will be killed before it could do any good, if dead no good any way ... and he stated that Yogurts etc. are a waste of time. Still every one to their own eh!

[Guest slugmonkey]

I have used probiotic several times over the years and have noticed that the babies I raise on it are nicer than those without but I belive like anything else you can overdo it, I talked with the manufacturer of " Health Gaurd " while at a race in Spring Hill Florida recently and this guy was VERY enthuastic about this product and made some very viable points but I think he was a little too high on this stuff if it worked as well as he claimed we would be able to put the pharmacutical companies out of bussiness with this stuff I use it and I will continue to do so I dont give it every day but I do give it after any meds and after I give my #1 defense Cider Vinegar again I am a firm beliver that you are better using a little of a lot of things than a bunch of any one thing but I also belive you should know why you are specifically giving anything and not just giving substances for the fact of giving substances

[Guest]

Good posts from Roland & Slugmonkey.  

 

If I read Roland's post correctly, (1) it infers that probiotic manufacturers are making certain claims for their products that cannot be backed-up with solid scientific research, and (2) certain experts are campaigning to stop them making these claims because probiotics are not a drug so by law cannot claim to cure anything. (3) Only licensed drugs can cure conditions and these are backed-up with solid scientific research. (4) No in-depth scientific research on probiotics.

 

 

I've done a quick web search which shows probiotic research has been ongoing for at least twenty years, including research on their use and effects when the patient is ill :-

 

(1) Probiotic treatment in bowel disease (Crohns)

 

http://www.crohns.org.uk/Docs/3/Probiotics.html

 

 

(2) Horizon Scientific Press. Probiotics and Prebiotics: Scientific Aspects

Chapter Abstracts.

 

Chapter 3 clearly states research on delivery of probiotics has been ongoing for 20 years.

 

http://www.horizonpress.com/hsp/abs/abspro3.html

 

 

(3) This extract confirms that probiotics are not classified as drugs and therefore cannot claim to cure anything. That doesn’t mean that there is no research supporting their use in certain illnesses.

 

http://www.prentice-publishing.co.uk/what_are_probiotics.htm

 

 

(4) This extract comes from a probiotic sales site. I have included it as it gives good information on some of the lactobacteria and their scientifically proven affect on certain micro-organisms. References are given to these experiments at the bottom of the page. Although it is a sales site, it gives good info on what aspects to look for in a probiotic BEFORE you buy, e.g. surviving the stomach.

 

 

http://www.ei-resource.org/probiotics.asp

 

(5) This extract is of a probiotic scientific experiment using what you will now recognize as ‘supposedly’ human lactobacteria being used in chickens (broilers) with positive results.

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=17234844

 

 

(6) This page gives a list of scientific work on probiotics published in 2007 including the one above.

 

http://www.biojournals.com/probiotic.html

 

 

 

 

[jimmy white]

would be better off using pro biotic than anti biotic

[westy]

would be better off using pro biotic than anti biotic

 

true jimmy true.

[Guest]

Extract (5) takes a bit of reading, Jimmy and Westy, I'd to read it about 4 times before it sunk in. It confirms what both of you state, that a probiotic is better than nothing, and is as good as an antibiotic at clearing infection, but with the added advantage that it doesn't kill the good bacteria too as well as the bad stuff.

 

Here's my english translation of the experiment.  ;D

 

"The aim of this work was to investigate a new multibacterial species probiotic in broiler nutrition. The probiotic contained 2 Lactobacillus strains, 1 Bifidobacterium strain, 1 Enterococcus strain, and 1 Pediococcus strain.

 

Four hundred 1-day old male Cobb broilers were divided into 4 experimental groups. The birds were fed a basic corn-soybean diet for the 6 week experiment. The 4 groups were:-

 

(1) "control," fed a basic corn-soybean diet only;

(2) PFW "probiotic on the feed and in the drinking water,"  

(3) PF "probiotic on the feed only";

(4) AB "avilamycin, an antibiotic, on the feed".

 

Treatment effects on birds' growth and gut health were determined.

 

Overall, probiotic treatment (2) PFW. displayed a growth-promoting effect the same as antibiotic treatment (4) AB.

 

Overall, feed conversion ratio in antibiotic treatment was significantly better than the 'feed only' control treatment (1) whereas both probiotic treatments had the same results as the antibiotic treatment

 

Concentrations of friendly bacteria were significantly higher in both probiotic treatments  compared with both the 'feed only' control and antibiotic treatments.

 

Both probiotic treatments had significantly higher specific activities of alpha-galactosidase and beta-galactosidase compared with the 'feed only' control and antibiotic treatments.

 

In conclusion, probiotic treatment (2) PFW displayed a growth-promoting effect that was comparable to the antibiotic treatment (4) AB. "

 

[pigeonscout]

Good bacteria is always fighting for its place against bad bacteria so the more good bacteria the less room for bad bacteria. Vinegar kills only bad bacteria and does not harm good bacteria so if you kill the bad then you leave more room for the good to multiply.

[Guest]

THATS THE WHOLE IDEA OF FEEDING YOUGHART TO REPLENISH THE GOOD BACTERIA CONSTANTLY ANMD WHENEVER THE PIGEON COMES UNDER ATTACK FROM BAD BACTERIA IT WILL HOPEFULLY HAVE SUFFICIENT GOOD BACTERIA TO OVER COME THE BAD .

[Pompey Mick]

Anyone else used Actimel. I've used it in the water once when I had a bout of YB sickness, the birds got over it OK and were 1st,2nd & 3rd next time I raced them.

[Roland]

The Goverment has a big campiagn to cut the Probotice right back I see.

[Guest]

i think you need to watch the disifectant as well 2 years ago i over done it friendly bacteria is picked up from the loft as well as other places some one done a story about fungus and i went on a clean freek took the birds right off the boil i all ways try and give things lik live youghart and some of the probiotics and allso use cyder vinagar twice a week but it can all be undone in a moment if you dont watch other things

[Chatrace]

I use Chisholm Trail Loft Products at  http://www.ctlloft.com/

I had one of my best years racing last year using there product.

[jimmy white]

admit to using a sample of chisolm health products,,,,all natural, and must admit the birds looked great , seemed to take less out the birds feeding young , and lovely ybs