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I forgot how important probiotics are for gut health, and started again

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Posted 11/12/2023 6:28 PM (GMT 0)
Eight years ago while going to the LLMD and for a couple years after I used LVS3. I think that’s what it was called. It’s about $80 retail a couple years ago I can’t imagine the price today! Its one of the most highly regarded probiotics on the market.

So after all my tick treatments, I’ve been improving my structural health and my gut health.

My gut health history is huge. I’ve tried just about every type of diet there is. So for the past four or five years I have been gluten-free Paleo. Always gluten-free not always Paleo though.

My blood sugar started going up because I was still eating a lot of natural carbs, which equal sugar. And all that fruit on Paleo that’s also a bunch of sugar. Do you think cave man ate a bunch of fruit? No, they didn’t unless they lived in some tropical areas. And tropical natives today ....many of them have blood sugar issues. So basically eating a lot of fruit is really not all that good for you.... not anyone. I mean just how many natural fruit trees are there in non-tropical locations, not very many.

So that said, early this summer I moved on to gluten-free keto diet to help eliminate carbs and improve my blood sugar. Well all that meat and fat without carbs really created a lot of gastric distress, gas, floaters, etc. I’ll try not to gross you out. Lol!

***I tried some cheap probiotics from the health food store. They did nothing. Then I actually came across a lower priced garden of life 25 billion CFU on the shelf at Walmart! Garden of life has quite a few varieties but this one looks pretty decent for what it was and it is actually HELPING my gut health. Depending on what I eat that day I take either one or two capsules of this. I think it was $25 for 30 of them. ***

Moral of the story if one probiotic does nothing, try something else!

LVS3 was great for me years ago , but I imagine it’s $100 a month now, that’s quite expensive.
Posted 11/12/2023 6:46 PM (GMT 0)
Summary, my gut was great for about four years then summer of 2022 was at an outdoor barbecue, which had all kinds of gluten type side dishes in addition to many variations of barbecued meat. So I had a bunch of meat that day, and after that my gut was never right.

I had symptoms of Sibo, but the conventional gut doctor limited testing said I didn’t have it. They did confirm excess fat in my stool, but they had no solutions other than stop eating fat. Well, that was not a solution for me that I wanted to keep for the rest of my life.

They have limited gallbladder testing to and only recognize a gallbladder is that either working or completely not, nothing in between. Typical conventional healthcare, not very good.

So I started using various galbladder supplements that seem to help a little bit, but not completely.

This probiotic seems to work better than bile salts and stomach acid supplements.

I am wondering if it’s possible to have some sort of Sibo overgrowth in the galbladder area or the bile duct, and maybe this probiotic is helping in that area? Just me brainstorming.
Posted 11/12/2023 8:05 PM (GMT 0)
i have used garden of life products in the past - not their probiotics - its was a multivitamin i think - i landed on it because for the money it was very good in terms of quality and ingredients - so i think they are a decent brand.

i am not a huge fan of probiotics generally - not that i think they are bad - but mainly because i think they have been over sold - as in their benefits over hyped - and as a result generally under deliver.

for instance, few people know that we can currently supplement with less than a fraction of 1 percent of the species of bacteria that live in a healthy gut - you would never guess this from the label or the marketing
but to explain - there are maybe 100-200 different genus of bacteria in a healthy gut
but the vast majority of probiotics only offer bacteria from only 2 genera: lactobacillus or Bifidobacterium, so all probiotics are essentially treating this less than 1% of the gut population
( this is at the genus level for simplicity- in reality there are thousands of species at the species level)
so the notion that we can wipe out our gut flora with antibiotics - then repopulate them with probiotics as we have been lead to believe is pure fiction

of the 99% that cannot be taken as probiotics - around half are referred to as "the dark matter of the gut" - these are undocumented species and currently no-one knows what they do - or even if they are good or bad for us

there are companies feverishly working on making new probiotics from so far uncultivated bacteria - as this is seen as a huge market opportunity - but the marketing is running well ahead of the science at this point.

anyway - not knocking it if you have found some useful - the probiotics we have today do have some benefit - the latest thinking is they somehow signal to existing populations of gut bacteria to behave more favourably to the host - eg by reducing inflammation - but there are lots of variables - and what seems to help one person can be no use to or even intolerable another.
overall the benefits are typically just not on the scale the marketing promises.

and that's not saying a better gut microbiome is not worth going for - i believe it is -
the main problem is that we currently don't really have the tools to know what a good or bad microbiome is.
well, mainly we just a have a few species that are seen as good guys - a few who are seen as bad ones - and then a general rule that more diversity is better.

its still early days in terms of the science.
in fact it may turn out that naming the bacteria that are there is a bit of a fools errand as it is likely to be less a case of "what is in there" - and more a case of
"what they are doing and what genes are active"
as its these active genes that are driving the chemicals the bacteria produce - and its these chemicals that interact with the host
the science of this is called Metabolomics - and its in its infancy

anyway - regarding supplementing the gut with bacteria - the other option that may appeal is instead of pills - is to eat fermented foods.

fermented foods are something we humans have evolved with - people of every traditional culture ever studied have eaten these.
there are lots to choose from
-kefir,
-kombucha,
-live beers/ales
-Kimichi
-sauerkrauts or pickled vegetables,
-natto,
-cheeses
etc

there are advantages
-the quantities/dose of bacteria in a portion are typically above those in a pill
-they include species which are so far not abatable in a pill
-they are typically well established live communities of multiple species already in an ecosystem and more likely to survive / reproduce in our guts
-they include both multiple beneficial bacteria and beneficial fungi species
-they are sibo safe - as they have already had the FODMAPS fermented out of them
-they contain useful micronutrients - eg vitamins A,B, C and K2 in sauerkraut
-they are very tasty!
Posted 11/12/2023 9:10 PM (GMT 0)
This one has 12 types of lacto, bacteria, and six types of Bifidobacterium.

Although that might seem like a Band-Aid, there’s really no other way for me to acquire this all this. There are many things I cannot eat per inflammatory response testing with my blood.

I did recently found out that there are now zero sugar, low-carb, yogurts in North America three brands of them.

It’s about time They stopped putting so much sugar in flavored yogurt. You don’t need any if it has a little bit of fruit in it.

It still comes from milk, though, which I seem easier to tolerate now than in the past.

Post Edited (astroman) : 11/12/2023 1:13:39 PM (GMT-8)

Posted 11/12/2023 9:12 PM (GMT 0)
As far as pure fiction, it did work in the past for a couple of years after I stopped taking probiotics. Maybe that just lost time for your body to naturally re-populate when the bad bacteria is overwhelmed by the additives you’re taking?

But the fact that I fell backwards again, proved that it was not permanent
Posted 11/13/2023 12:40 PM (GMT 0)

astroman said...
As far as pure fiction, it did work in the past for a couple of years after I stopped taking probiotics. Maybe that just lost time for your body to naturally re-populate when the bad bacteria is overwhelmed by the additives you’re taking?

But the fact that I fell backwards again, proved that it was not permanent

yep - they definitely do something - after all everything we put in our guts do something

i am just saying that specifically the claim that we can repopulate our normal flora after antibiotics by adding 1species or even 20 species of probiotic bacteria is fiction - because the number of species in a normal human microbiome is in the thousands or at least many hundreds. so no matter how many lactobacillus or bifido bacteria we add - we are not adding any of the other hundreds of species, genera, families etc - so the claim is just not possible to be true.

i didn't spend a lot of time looking for an idea study to demonstrate this - but its very well studied now
here is an example that gives you a flavour of it - where they identified 461 species in a group of microbiota ( not including about the same again of unidentified reads - total of 1200+ OTU)

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.02029/full

its a difficult topic - as communicating the degree of diversity and how to express it is a real problem in microbiome science
- this diagram may help illustrate it - species are the tiny purple dots around the outside
https://ibb.co/mvrdcqj

the average probiotic contains 0 to 1% of species present
Posted 11/14/2023 11:15 AM (GMT 0)
I have the same view as Garzie. I stopped abx a year ago so stopped the probiotics. I wasn't sure I still needed them so why waste money plus they really don't repopulate the gut as it needs. Strangely my food sensitivities increased. Stuff I could eat while on abx I can't touch now. For me it is the nervous systems that go nuts. My stomach is never sick.

Maybe the abx were killing bad bacteria? Also could the probiotics have been crowding out the bad bacteria?

LLMD says there is no bart in my body. I think I would have to have stretch marks or organ involvement for him to consider that.

I restarted probiotics just to see if they will help me to get back to where i was food sensitivity wise.

The other thing that may be helpful is Saccharomyces. The more I read about it I really wish I had kept that up during the end of abx treatment. I restarted that.

I wish I could do fermented but the histamine reaction is too bad.
Posted 11/14/2023 1:56 PM (GMT 0)
Well, Im still feeling improvments "gut-wise".

Point im trying to make here, is not that probiotiocs will completely re-populate your gut with all the types you need...........Ive never assumed that. Its impossible.

This is just a reminder for people not to forget that you might need to go back to probiotics at some point if you found they worked in the past....depending on your gut health.

Even limited types/strains of good bacteria can overcome offensive bacteria- which is probably whats going on in my gut now that ive re-introduced some beneficial bacterial probiotics.

Saccharomyces is a probiotic yeast, which works great for some, not so great for others. There were a few good posts on that a few years ago. My LLMD mentioned patients with history of digestive Candida might not addapt so well to Saccharomyces.

As usual, its trial and error per individual.
Posted 11/14/2023 4:39 PM (GMT 0)

trkane said...
I have the same view as Garzie. I stopped abx a year ago so stopped the probiotics. I wasn't sure I still needed them so why waste money plus they really don't repopulate the gut as it needs. Strangely my food sensitivities increased. Stuff I could eat while on abx I can't touch now. For me it is the nervous systems that go nuts. My stomach is never sick.

Maybe the abx were killing bad bacteria? Also could the probiotics have been crowding out the bad bacteria?

LLMD says there is no bart in my body. I think I would have to have stretch marks or organ involvement for him to consider that.

I restarted probiotics just to see if they will help me to get back to where i was food sensitivity wise.

The other thing that may be helpful is Saccharomyces. The more I read about it I really wish I had kept that up during the end of abx treatment. I restarted that.

I wish I could do fermented but the histamine reaction is too bad.

Is your dr Lyme literate?


“ LLMD says there is no bart in my body. I think I would have to have stretch marks or organ involvement for him to consider that. “

Nope
Posted 11/14/2023 5:21 PM (GMT 0)

astroman said...
Well, Im still feeling improvments "gut-wise".

Point im trying to make here, is not that probiotiocs will completely re-populate your gut with all the types you need...........Ive never assumed that. Its impossible.

This is just a reminder for people not to forget that you might need to go back to probiotics at some point if you found they worked in the past....depending on your gut health.

Even limited types/strains of good bacteria can overcome offensive bacteria- which is probably whats going on in my gut now that ive re-introduced some beneficial bacterial probiotics.

Saccharomyces is a probiotic yeast, which works great for some, not so great for others. There were a few good posts on that a few years ago. My LLMD mentioned patients with history of digestive Candida might not addapt so well to Saccharomyces.

As usual, its trial and error per individual.

cant argue with any of that

i do believe some beneficial species can out compete and crowd out some of the less beneficial - more pathogenic ones

from what i have read this doesn't seem to be the whole explanation though - as when i last looked into it they are still trying to figure out how exactly probiotics work. the latest i got is that there seems to be something much more nuanced going on.

remember from above where its not so much "who/what is in there" as "what are they doing" in terms of what genes are active and what chemicals are they making ( and perhaps what other behaviours are they doing) that matters in terms of human health.

so it seems that adding some types of bacteria to an existing population can somehow influence the behaviour of the whole ecosystem in ways that are not fully understood -resulting in differences in gene expression overall - presumably via some kind of chemical signalling - at least this is where the science is pointing at the moment.

it get pretty murky at some point - once we understand that that bacteria - unlike humans - can swap genetic material amongst themselves via plasmids and lateral gene transfer - so at some point naming them at species level and below becomes a bit redundant.
and this is why there is so much interest in studying the gene expression in these microbiota to try and understand what's going on

its interesting to note that something like 90% of the different genes in a human body belong to microorganism living on and in it - compared to only 10% of the host - and we are only now starting to understand what that 90% is
Posted 11/14/2023 5:22 PM (GMT 0)
in terms of the overall project of improving gut health - i am also working on this
many of the foods we are told to eat to improve our gut health are high fibre, high carb, and high fodmaps

i struggle with all of these as - as long as i have bart and lyme etc - my gut just doesnt tolerate anything fermentable very well - and you have trouble following the standard guidance of increasing those foods

the principle that i can follow is to increase the variety of plant food sources in the diet
this is the biggest predictor of gut microbiome diversity in an individual or population
this is the single biggest factor that will determine if our gut microbiome will be diverse
and diversity is the nearest proxy metric we have right now for "healthy" when it comes to the gut

i just have to be careful to eat more different plant sources - but still avoid the high carb/fodmap ones
so i eat things like asparagus, lettuce, broccoli, celery
acc to Prof Tim Spector - the target is 30 different plant sources of fibre ( diffent plant based foods) per week
the good news is almost everything counts
coffee counts as a plant
each different nut or seed type counts as a plant
dark chocolate counts as a plant

moreover many of these things - coffee, tea, nuts, seeds, chocolate contain polyphenols
polyphenols are like fertilizer for gut microbes - so having lots of different ones in the diet is very good for diversity

then there are fermented foods - which can be sources of new diverse bacteria

then there is avoiding the things that might decrease your diversity - eg by killing off some of your species
eg preservatives and other additives in food have a surprising impact on gut bacteria
as do many otherwise benign prescription drugs.

there are also lifestyle factors like meditation, time in nature, how much we sleep or exercise etc which have all been show to enhance the microbiome - its crazy to think about - almost everything we do influences our microbiome in some way.

Good day to you all my fellow symbionts!!
Posted 11/14/2023 9:26 PM (GMT 0)

Girlie said...
Is your dr Lyme literate?

Yes, Dr, J in DC
Posted 11/15/2023 4:04 PM (GMT 0)
Garzie- I backed off a little bit on my low carb counting. Keto diet just eliminates so many varieties of foods. And my gut is also sensitive to fodmap’s, so I already have a limited choice anyway.

I get most of my fiber from nightly salads with my supper, but a salad without dressing is pretty boring and most of the salad dressings are not keto friendly. I tried just olive oil and lemon juice but that’s kind of boring.
During the day, I do eat a lot of celery, which doesn’t have much nutrient benefits, but it is fiber.

Getting 30 different types of plants in you would be kind of difficult, but yeah, if nuts are included that makes it a easier. Still, though I don’t think I could accomplish that.

When you think of caveman or even recent natives, they did not have that variety of plants in their diet. They ate what was around them, and was not poisonous.

Post Edited (astroman) : 11/16/2023 6:51:02 AM (GMT-8)

Posted 11/15/2023 4:43 PM (GMT 0)

trkane said...

Girlie said...
Is your dr Lyme literate?

Yes, Dr, J in DC


///////////////////

Wow! I didn’t have organ involvement or stretch marks.
Posted 11/16/2023 2:16 PM (GMT 0)

Girie said...
Wow! I didn’t have organ involvement or stretch marks.

I say that because he is "done" with me. However many years ago I was not getting better after being through IV and all his protocols. It took a very slightly inflamed liver to get him to treat babs again. And that was the key.

It would take a huge relapse for him to start treating me again. I have been off for over a year and recently developed weird issues. Nothing tick related could be causing them.

Post Edited (trkane) : 11/20/2023 3:02:22 AM (GMT-8)

Posted 11/16/2023 4:29 PM (GMT 0)
This thread reminds me of the thread earlier this year when we discussing the usefulness, or perhaps uselessness, of probiotics especially after antibiotics. It's assumed probiotics are good after antibiotics, but this article I'll link below talks about an Israeli study in which

"The Israeli researchers first treated both mice and a cohort of 21 healthy human volunteers with a single course of the broad-spectrum antibiotics ciprofloxacin and metronidazole (14 days in mice, seven days in humans). They then split the mice and humans into three groups:

Group 1 was allowed to spontaneously recover over time.
Group 2 was supplemented with an 11-strain probiotic (in the same formulation as above) for four weeks following antibiotics.
Group 3 underwent autologous fecal microbiota transplant (aFMT), where their own fecal samples before antibiotics were frozen and used to re-inoculate their gut a day after the antibiotics finished.
So, what did they find? Antibiotic perturbation of the gut microbiome only mildly improved probiotic colonization in mice, but it significantly enhanced probiotic colonization in the human gut mucosa, particularly in the distal small intestine and lower GI tract.

More importantly, they found that treating the gut with probiotics actually delayed the normal recovery process of the gut microbiome.

Additionally the authors of the study write: “…probiotics-consuming individuals did not return to their baseline stool microbiome configuration by the end of the intervention period (day 28), and dysbiosis was maintained even 5 months after probiotics cessation, with all stool samples collected through day 180 remaining significantly different from baseline. [emphasis added]

Limitations of the study:

No clinical symptoms were measured during or after antibiotic treatment.
They tested a single combination of broad-spectrum antibiotics and a single oral probiotic supplement mixture: “Other combinations of antibiotics, probiotics, and treatment routes and timings merit further studies.”
The study was also conducted in healthy adults, so these results can’t necessarily be extrapolated to children, the elderly, or those with gut pathologies.

Article along with link to the study can be found here: https://chriskresser.com/are-probiotics-useless-heres-a-microbiome-researchers-perspective/
Posted 11/16/2023 4:35 PM (GMT 0)
One thing about the study that interests me is how did they measure dysbiosis or microbial diversity? As garzie pointed out nowhere close to all microbes in the gut can be measured so what does the data really tell us?

Regardless, I have found this study fascinating. Personally, I have noticed that i can load up on probiotics during or after antibiotics and often my poop will become more formed, BUT, my gut symptoms, and overall symptoms will seemingly worsen. The gut remains a mystery. At the moment I'm taking Sachh B. occasionally and am focusing more on things like Psyllium Husk which is supposed to be like fertilizer for good bacteria, but even too much of that seems like it might exacerbate gut symptoms so who knows? It seems to be a delicate game in which I'm not even sure "winning" is possible.

Side note: I wish I would have saved my own poop like people in the study I referenced did and reinoculated myself after abx.
Posted 11/17/2023 7:56 PM (GMT 0)
Yep - having your microbiome saved - or even just measured before you get ill would have been a bonus
none of us ever realised where we might end up though - so its kind of impossible to have known and planned ahead for

the research work being done by the ZOE group ( led by Prof Tim Spector - who is a genetic epidemiologist based in London - who had moved over into microbiome science ) and their sponsored scientists is looking to be about the clearest light shed on teh subject of what is a good microbiome - and what is a bad one - they claim now to have identified 50 "good bugs" and 50 "bad bugs" (my abbreviations) where before there were only a handful in each category - so they can now score any microbiome based on the number of good ones vs bad ones
its still a bit crude - but you can see they are gradually unpicking the puzzle

they just have a paper out documenting large scale randomised control trial for their personalised microbiome improving diet approach over 18 weeks - vs the standard western government advice ( which is basically high carb low fat )
they were able to show pretty decent step changes in things like blood sugar control, blood lipids and microbiome improvement in the ZOE arm of the trial vs control

i think it shows that they are pretty much on the right track with foods to improve teh microbiome - and thereby improve our overall health via improved blood sugar control, reduced inflammation, better sleep etc

i haven't seen the paper - but they discuss results in this podcast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgwoucghgo4


all that said - if you still have infections- like me - and your gut is still upset because bart is messing with blood flow and upsetting the immune system - i think there is only so much one can do to settle it down - eg by avoiding certain things it just cannot cope with - rather than specifically treating the gut being an particularly useful primary treatment strategy for Lyme and co ( unless you have obvious parasites of dysbiosis )

i think of it more in terms of a way of taking some extra load off the immune system - so it can focus more on fighting the infections
Posted 11/21/2023 4:51 PM (GMT 0)
Gut Microbiome and Common Variable Immunodeficiency: Few Certainties and Many Outstanding Questions;

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc8366412/

Interesting and dragged out info/study on gut microbes (lack of diversity) in CVID (Common Variable Immune Deficiency) which the most common of the rare Primary Immune Deficiency disorders. Past studies said 1 in 50,000 people, most recent may suggest 1 in 30,000 population.

[I have this and it probably is my personal reason for having tick infections for possibly three decades and getting digestive Candida easily, along with other gut and blood issues. Its all "Immune Protein" related].

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* I recently learned that a wide variety of "gut disorders" accompany about 1/3 of Primary Immune patients. My immune Dr did not mention this, yet Ive had gut issues my entire five decades being alive. Seems like all he's concerned with is lab tests measuring my immune cells. This is not "managing the patients symptoms" this is simply observing, and taking notes (data).

As always, we learn most on our own. I am so fed up with the "modern medical care" model.

Really looking forward to my online Immune meeting next month with others who have this condition, as this is my next health learning journey beyond tick infection illness. And this one is unfortunately, usually life long.

What I'm starting to realize (from the literature) is my ability to function as I have done without IV Immunoglobulin therapy has been a gift so far. There is a reason twenty five years ago before IV Immunoglobulin therapy, life expectation was only 15 years after diagnosis (literature fact). Wow.

Meanwhile I've been "sputtering" along with my share of "health detours" my whole life but manage to get back on the highway.

Its finally all adding up and making sense.
Posted 11/21/2023 5:15 PM (GMT 0)
interesting connection there Astro

makes one wonder which way round the causality arrow might point

ie - is the lack of immune function - preventing the body from farming the kind of diverse microbiome that it would otherwise normally like
or
is the gut microbiome deficits somehow causative of the immune dysfunction ( seems a bit way out there - but since they don't know the actual cause - its not impossible - especially as 70% of theimmune system resides in the gut - and its contact with the external environment (the gut contents are considered the outside world from a biological perspective) is one of the main factors that tune the proper functioning of the immune system of each individual.

i guess the former is more likely

it could simply be that without the normal set of immune functions the gut tends to become more easily colonised with less desirable microorganisms and that leads to a more inflammatory state which further supports more of the same.

i wonder if you can break that viscous circle to some degree with diet interventions, supplements, medications etc - and whether that would improve overall quality of life etc
Posted 11/21/2023 6:52 PM (GMT 0)

Garzie said...
makes one wonder which way round the causality arrow might point.................

i wonder if you can break that viscous circle to some degree with diet interventions, supplements, medications etc - and whether that would improve overall quality of life etc

It is a which was first, the "chicken or the egg" thing.

I also have some immune and autoimmune "positive" (double copy) genes.

Well, Ive tried many diets, and seem to have identified some foods and groups that are the worst offenders. But whats left along with trying to be low carb as well, does not leave me with much food variety.

Blazers post got me thinking about Peptides. And....what will LDN do to Primary Immune? I've not researched that yet. I should also see if there is a Reddit forum or Phoenix Rising area for Primary Immune (or CVID).

(I dont want to get hooked on Rx IVIG every six weeks because: If I did and lost my job (then no health ins), IVIG is then very expensive and I could easily go bankrupt. The USA is messed up that way. It sounds stressful to be dependent on something you cant afford without Prescription insurance.

As far as IVIG price alternatives: Its hard to make this stuff, dividing / separating cells from doner blood and Its not something I would randomly get off the dark interwebs either even if it was available- it could be very dangerous injecting unknown blood into your veins.

Hoping this monthly Primary Immune group has some inquisitive problem solvers (who have tried new ideas) like this place does vs people just seeking positve "mental" support.
Posted 12/11/2023 6:18 PM (GMT 0)

astroman said...
Well, Im still feeling improvments "gut-wise".

Point im trying to make here, is not that probiotiocs will completely re-populate your gut with all the types you need...........Ive never assumed that. Its impossible.

This is just a reminder for people not to forget that you might need to go back to probiotics at some point if you found they worked in the past....depending on your gut health.

Even limited types/strains of good bacteria can overcome offensive bacteria- which is probably whats going on in my gut now that ive re-introduced some beneficial bacterial probiotics.

Saccharomyces is a probiotic yeast, which works great for some, not so great for others. There were a few good posts on that a few years ago. My LLMD mentioned patients with history of digestive Candida might not addapt so well to Saccharomyces.

As usual, its trial and error per individual.


I eat goat kefir (I'm allergic to cow's milk) with berries and it seems to keep the bad bacteria at bay for me. It's not the best and only has 7 strains of bacteria but I can definitely feel a difference when I have it daily. The berries act as a prebiotic but I still notice a huge difference even without them. I just buy it plain from Trader Joe's and add berries and stevia or sometimes just erythritol. It's probably the only thing saving my gut right now.
Posted 12/11/2023 9:30 PM (GMT 0)
Chocolatecoveredpickles,

I see you are a new member. Welcome to the forum! Feel free to start a new thread and introduce yourself, if you like.

I have eaten fried pickles before, but I never heard of chocolate covered pickles. Is that really a thing?

You mentioned goat kefir, and that rang a bell. I looked it up and saw Redwood Hills brand. I used to get that a long time ago. I liked it with blueberries, too. I think I stopped getting it after I moved. I don’t think anyone sells it where I live now.

Post Edited (WalkingbyFaith) : 12/11/2023 1:33:13 PM (GMT-8)

Posted 12/11/2023 10:59 PM (GMT 0)
Hi WalkingbyFaith!
(I love your display name btw!) No, I've never heard of chocolate covered pickles, I was just pretty sure that name wasn't taken. ;) Fried pickles are delicious, though.

I just use goat kefir because I'm allergic to cow's milk, although places like Walmart and Aldi do sell cow's kefir and it's probably just as good for you if you can handle it. It also has the plus of being lactose free.
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