After finishing Tara's book, The Hidden Plague, I immediately ordered probiotics because my brain finally made the connection (okay, with the push from Tara) that besides helping to heal my leaky gut, I had also removed the healthy (good) gut bacteria in my digestive system by taking antibiotics for close to 18 months straight.
Tara suggests that Saccharomyces boulardii is a good probiotic strain to take so that's what I bought. I got two bottles of 50 vegetarian capsules, NutriCology brand. The suggested use on this packaging is 1-3 capsules three times daily, preferably on an empty stomach, or as directed by a healthcare practitioner. These need to be refrigerated too, so since I work I could only take them before breakfast and before dinner.
I started taking these and almost from day one I found that my hunger was reduced significantly. After taking 3 of these pills while I was getting ready to leave for work I started finding myself not even hungry for breakfast. A couple of days I even did skip breakfast because I just couldn't muster up enough hunger to eat anything.
I couldn't take the pills before dinner because I couldn't swear that it was on an empty stomach because I still felt full from lunch... so I decided that I would only take them in the morning.
In a few days I started noticing that I had heartburn when I laid down in bed - this even persisted through until the morning. Imagine waking up with heartburn! Ick!
At this point I decided to change my probiotic. I started taking Ultimate Flora - the directions on this product says to take 1 pill daily preferably with a small meal. This is made from 10 strains of healthy bacteria - unfortunately it doesn't include the S. boulardii which Tara specifically mentions in her book. Since I have a bottle of the S. boulardii still in the fridge I am taking 3 of those before I leave the house in the morning (empty stomach) and then I take the 1 pill of the Ultimate Flora when I have breakfast at work.
Positive side: no more heartburn! I'm not exactly sure what was causing it - especially since I've only had heartburn about 10 times total in my almost 50 years of living. I know that specialists and "doctors" will say that just being overweight is an indicator for heartburn but if I'm proof, they're full of it!
Negative side: MONEY. These things are not cheap! The 50 caps of S. boulardii was almost $18 and the 60 caps of the Ultimate Flora was almost $34. I will not buy anymore of the S. boulardii because I can't afford them at 16 servings for $18!
The bottom line is that a healthy gut is the first step in healing your skin and your overall health so get on a regimen with a probiotic that works for you. A few months solid probiotics should help considerably and check with your healthcare provider to see how long you should continue.
UPDATE: 6/1/14 - I know it is months and months later now, but I neglected to come back and update this. After a few short days of taking the Ultimate Flora I started having heartburn again. Because I was still taking the S. boulardii I believed those to be the culprit and cut those out. Still heartburn. This was crazy. Went to the health food store again, bought another brand, same result. After a few days the heartburn persisted. Once I stopped it was about 4 days before the heartburn was relieved. That is just crazy!
