Success with probiotics

I have Crohn’s since late 2004. Tried Entocort, which has worked for me but its effect seems to diminish with time. The body develops a tolerance for it, so you must either increase your dose or stay off it for a few months by switching to another drug before you can come back to it.

However, I’m glad to report that probiotics have made a huge difference for me and for over a year now I rarely had to take medication of any kind. Here’s what I’m taking on a daily basis now:

1. Saccharomyces boulardii – 1 pill in the morning and 1 more later in the day if I eat a heavy meal.

2. Health Genesis - Source Naturals - Life Flora 300mg 3 Billion Cells - 120 caps - 3  pills in the morning and 1-2 more in the afternoon. I used to take Flora Q  before this, which has more or less the same ingredients but was almost as expensive as medication. Flora-Q was effective but as I couldn’t afford to take more than one pill per day, it never did as much good as the above probiotic.

I rarely have flare-ups nowadays (except when I drink alcohol, which kills the probiotics, or when I consume too much fruit/milk). When I do, I take Entocort for a few days which always restores the peace very quickly.  

I'm assuming these are antibiotics that do not interfere with the probiotics.

Anyway, the two probiotics above helped me with everything, diarrhea and bloating (which was my biggest problem). I still take medication and off-the-shelf Imodium from time to time, but it went down from every day to about 2-3 times a month. They help me digest bread, rice, milk, and other things that used to give me horrible flare-ups before.

Probiotics work best when taken right before or with meals (so, 2-3 times a day). For this reason, you want to get the cheapest ones, not the $1 a pop pills. The ones that the doc prescribes are often very expensive, but if you take the ingredients and google them you'd always find a generic mix that's 3 times cheaper.