Floraphage - Probiotic multiplier, anyone tried?

Just came across, Floraphage, a probiotic multiplier (as claimed by the manufacturer). I signed up too and the report (of science behind it) that I got claims it to be a phage (as in bacteriphage) that selectively kills bad bugs and multiplies the good bugs.

Manufacturer arthurandrew.com/pages/products
/www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKURxnyMWCo explain the theory behind the product.

I am very suspicious of the claim "kills only bad bugs and multiplies the good bugs". I could not figure out how the heck he finds 'bad bugs'.

Anyone tried?

Thanks in advance.

Mark,

The way I understand phage functioning is, it infects the cell, be it bacterial or other, injects its genetic material into the cell and uses that cells DNA to replicate its own genetic material to produce more number of phage cells. How does this help good bugs to grow? Just because bad bugs are dead and the ground is open for colonization, the good bugs get a foothold?

I have never heard or read of phage specificity in infection. Do you know anything about it? Claim that it kills bad bugs and replicates good bugs is a tall claim, because bugs do not carry any flag that tells it being good or bad. What about opportunistic pathogens?

You are right, its worth shooting them a mail and get more details. I will follow up if I get any answer.

Also real quickly cause it's super duper crazy cool:


So bacteriophages literally make this super fine hollow syringe - land on the bacteria and then wham... prick the syringe through their cell wall and membrane and inject their genetic material inside them. Like getting a shot at the doctor.

It's now been visualized that they (along with viruses) do so well inside us because of our temperature 98.6 degrees. At this temperature the genetic material (DNA) can exist not in the double helix shape we're all familiar with, but in liquid form. Or liquid goop, haha. So it's literally like bacteria getting a needle that we would get at the doctors. Fevers and chills would effect this process, which may be one of the reasons we have this response certain non-phage related viral infections.

Anyway it's all pretty darn cool.

As for the product... who knows. I suspect we may see more of this type of thing if they can get away with labelling Phage Therapy as a "pre-biotic". Which may be a good thing and may not. I guess we'll have to wait and see what the FDA eventually says about it.

"Not new stuff" as in the research and use goes back a very long time as all the studies show. All outside of the US though. So Russia etc etc. I'm not sure of any products here in North America. There's a thread on here that mentions a product from Russia I believe. Someone was looking into it. In fact this is partially what got me super interested in it. If memory serves you can buy Phage therapy product literally at the pharmacy there as an alternative to antibiotics.

I think there's some FDA stuff around it here in North America (I might be wrong though) and that's why I think the prebiotic approach is interesting by labelling it this way if this is in fact the case. Maybe someone else knows of phage therapy products in the US though. It sounds to me like they are using/altering a food industry product and labelling it as generally safe because of this. I really don't know. Just guessing.

In any case, not all e-coli strains are bad and many are quite good for us and common to us as a protective commensal bacteria. So one would have to find out what strain/strains they are targeted towards.

Personally, I wouldn't go anywhere near the product without some well... to be honest I'd want like an FDA approval or some strong studies or something. At the same time I do find it quite interesting and am glad to see some companies going down this road.

Found this on a quick search a second ago -
Bacteriophages and Their Role in Food Safety
www.hindawi.com/journals/ijmicro/2012/863945/

Thank you Mark Canada for the links provided.

I'm living in the Netherlands. The last year, we had two interesting documentaries on national television here, about phage therapy, used frequentley in Russia instead of antibiotics. They have big libraries with phages for almost every bad bacterie. In the USA and Europe, at one point we choose for antibiotics when it was discovered and the Russians choose to continue using phages. The result: Big pharma earns a lot by selling us antibiotics and we become resistent, leaving us with big problems like untreatable MRSA infections etc.

In the article of dr. Jockers I found this line:
'The biggest obstacle to phage therapy is the relative lack of overall published research that would demand widespread usage. This is primarily due to low return on investment from pharmaceutical companies. Patented anti-biotic therapies are a huge money maker for these companies whereas phage therapy is not expected to bring anywhere near the same returns.' and
'Another major obstacle with phage therapy is the public’s negative view of viruses. There will take some education to cross the “psychological barrier” that people have so they will not be worried about using these live viruses as a healthful tool. We can look to Phages as the equivalent of probiotics and perhaps even title them as “proviriotics.”

Well, since the last day of 2017 I experience diarrhea. I don't know what the reason is and why it takes so long. So I tought I'll give Floraphage a try. It arrived yesterday (purchased it on IHerb.com) and today is day 2 of my trial. As advised, I combine it with probiotics (wich I used before without Floraphage, with not so much effect). I'll keep you updated...Unfortunately I discovered that for now, I don't stand coffee anymore. I have to stay away from gluten and dairy too. I hope things go better from here.

I got one of those, and didn't see dramatic change but my slight constipation is gone, also I always use phage probiotic by Life extention and never had any side effects from them