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Fellow IBS-sufferer here. Runs in my family. So doing a search for "Reuteri" on Amazon, I immediately see several pages worth of supplements, with such helpful

Fellow IBS-sufferer here. Runs in my family. So doing a search for "Reuteri" on Amazon, I immediately see several pages worth of supplements, with such helpful reviews as "HELPS DIGESTION. ENLARGES TESTICLES."[0] How do you separate the trustworthy supplements from the snake oil? [0] https://a.co/d/4Qa1iy1 https://a.co/d/4Qa1iy1

vimy 4y ago
If reddit anecdotes are to be believed the enlarged testicles are true. https://www.reddit.com/r/Supplements/comments/9pdrg1/my_experience_using_lactobacillus_reuteri_atcc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Supplements/comments/9pdrg1/my_expe... https://www.reddit.com/r/Supplements/comments/m3ywju/questions_about_lactobacillus_reuteri_l_reuteri/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Supplements/comments/m3ywju/questio... There are more but just linking these two.
- b112 4y ago
  In places like this on reddit, so many posts are just influencer accounts. You'd probably be better off reading such reddit forums, and presuming the exact opposite happens. This is another area to clean up, in the digital age.
  - xeromal 4y ago
    It's pretty easy to suss out a lot of those accoutns just by looking at profile age and their comments. Sure, sometimes people sell their accounts but it'll be apparent eventually.
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    Just echoing this. I've worked with marketing agencies who use Reddit to post things like this for their clients. Both of those posts have the OP linking to specific products, with one of the OPs blatantly posting a referral link to a specific product. Even without the links or mentioning specific products or brands, marketers will post things like this to build up markets, audiences and anticipation for new products, in this case it is a specific species and variant of bacteria.
emmelaich 4y ago
https://iherb.com/search?kw=Reuterin https://iherb.com/search?kw=Reuterin
zilen 4y ago
At my hospital we prescribe Lactobacillus reuteri for older patients on broad spectrum antibiotics to reduce the risk of C. difficile infection. The brand name used is ProTectis which appears to be exactly the BioGaia product another commenter was describing. We have actually recently stopped using protectis in this way as the evidence base is too thin to justify the cost, but suffice to say that the Biogaia protectis is sufficiently genuine to be prescribed in UK hospitals.
jamal-kumar 4y ago
There's one supplier I trust out of Sweden called Biogaia. [1] Look for the keith haring lookalike box art. I don't buy anything off of that website but it's something you can get a couple of weeks supply of from the pharmacy for under 100$. Amazon is so full of scams, Jeff Bezos really needs to be held to account for that. [1] https://www.biogaia.com/ https://www.biogaia.com/
- unicornporn 4y ago
  > There's one supplier I trust out of Sweden called Biogaia Which supplement from them are you referring to?
  - lstamour 4y ago
    Probably https://www.biogaia.com/product/biogaia-gastrus/ https://www.biogaia.com/product/biogaia-gastrus/ ?
    - jamal-kumar 4y ago
      Yeah that's the brand, I've seen that in the USA and this in international markets [1] [1] https://www.biogaia.com/product-country/biogaia-protectis-chewable-tablets-lemon-flavour-19/ https://www.biogaia.com/product-country/biogaia-protectis-ch...
      - unicornporn 4y ago
        Thanks.
oneoff786 4y ago
Having any sort of active microbiome is probably a good idea and an intended aspect of the human digestive system. I don’t know that this one specifically is better or worse but I would probably consider probiotics a decent idea to try. The testes thing is… I guess vaguely plausible. I’m bemused everyone in the reviews seems to be confident that this is desirable. It seems like desperate people are just flocking to some study on rats.
- AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
  Sure, but the parent comment was suggesting a specific bacterium, so I would want to make sure whatever probiotics I'm buying contain it. And normally I would probably just rely on getting them through a trusted vendor (e.g. my neighborhood grocer/pharamcy/health food store), but if I'm forced to shop online to make sure it has this specific thing in it...I want something I can check to vouch for its quality, yeah? For example, pretty much every bottle of probiotics you buy will claim it contains "Over XX billion CFUs (colony-forming units?) in every pill!" But, are more better? Are they the right kind? Will I get 60 billion CFUs in a pill if I just dehydrate some pond water?
  - markdown 4y ago
    > And normally I would probably just rely on getting them through a trusted vendor (e.g. my neighborhood grocer/pharamcy/health food store), but if I'm forced to shop online to make sure it has this specific thing in it...I want something I can check to vouch for its quality, yeah? Oddly enough, with the food/supplement I'm most familiar with, kava, the worst quality you can find is in brick and mortar establishments. The trusted vendors are all online-only and dedicated entirely to the one product instead of just trying to stock their shelves with every supplement on the planet.
    - AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
      Well I guess my thought process (however incorrect it might be) is that from a food safety perspective--not necessarily a supplement efficacy perspective--there's a greater bar to pass for the FDA to allow something to sit on the shelf at CVS than to get it from some random vendor on Amazon that might not even reside in the US.
collegeburner 4y ago
Interestingly, may not be all wrong: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3879365/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3879365/ Yes its shitty chumbucket type marketing but there's still some potential.
ARandomerDude 4y ago
> Fellow IBS-sufferer here. Runs in my family. I see what you did there.

vimy 4y ago

If reddit anecdotes are to be believed the enlarged testicles are true. https://www.reddit.com/r/Supplements/comments/9pdrg1/my_experience_using_lactobacillus_reuteri_atcc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Supplements/comments/9pdrg1/my_expe... https://www.reddit.com/r/Supplements/comments/m3ywju/questions_about_lactobacillus_reuteri_l_reuteri/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Supplements/comments/m3ywju/questio... There are more but just linking these two.

b112 4y ago
In places like this on reddit, so many posts are just influencer accounts. You'd probably be better off reading such reddit forums, and presuming the exact opposite happens. This is another area to clean up, in the digital age.
- xeromal 4y ago
  It's pretty easy to suss out a lot of those accoutns just by looking at profile age and their comments. Sure, sometimes people sell their accounts but it'll be apparent eventually.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  Just echoing this. I've worked with marketing agencies who use Reddit to post things like this for their clients. Both of those posts have the OP linking to specific products, with one of the OPs blatantly posting a referral link to a specific product. Even without the links or mentioning specific products or brands, marketers will post things like this to build up markets, audiences and anticipation for new products, in this case it is a specific species and variant of bacteria.

emmelaich 4y ago

https://iherb.com/search?kw=Reuterin https://iherb.com/search?kw=Reuterin

zilen 4y ago

At my hospital we prescribe Lactobacillus reuteri for older patients on broad spectrum antibiotics to reduce the risk of C. difficile infection. The brand name used is ProTectis which appears to be exactly the BioGaia product another commenter was describing. We have actually recently stopped using protectis in this way as the evidence base is too thin to justify the cost, but suffice to say that the Biogaia protectis is sufficiently genuine to be prescribed in UK hospitals.

jamal-kumar 4y ago

There's one supplier I trust out of Sweden called Biogaia. [1] Look for the keith haring lookalike box art. I don't buy anything off of that website but it's something you can get a couple of weeks supply of from the pharmacy for under 100$. Amazon is so full of scams, Jeff Bezos really needs to be held to account for that. [1] https://www.biogaia.com/ https://www.biogaia.com/

unicornporn 4y ago
> There's one supplier I trust out of Sweden called Biogaia Which supplement from them are you referring to?
- lstamour 4y ago
  Probably https://www.biogaia.com/product/biogaia-gastrus/ https://www.biogaia.com/product/biogaia-gastrus/ ?
  - jamal-kumar 4y ago
    Yeah that's the brand, I've seen that in the USA and this in international markets [1] [1] https://www.biogaia.com/product-country/biogaia-protectis-chewable-tablets-lemon-flavour-19/ https://www.biogaia.com/product-country/biogaia-protectis-ch...
    - unicornporn 4y ago
      Thanks.

oneoff786 4y ago

Having any sort of active microbiome is probably a good idea and an intended aspect of the human digestive system. I don’t know that this one specifically is better or worse but I would probably consider probiotics a decent idea to try. The testes thing is… I guess vaguely plausible. I’m bemused everyone in the reviews seems to be confident that this is desirable. It seems like desperate people are just flocking to some study on rats.

AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
Sure, but the parent comment was suggesting a specific bacterium, so I would want to make sure whatever probiotics I'm buying contain it. And normally I would probably just rely on getting them through a trusted vendor (e.g. my neighborhood grocer/pharamcy/health food store), but if I'm forced to shop online to make sure it has this specific thing in it...I want something I can check to vouch for its quality, yeah? For example, pretty much every bottle of probiotics you buy will claim it contains "Over XX billion CFUs (colony-forming units?) in every pill!" But, are more better? Are they the right kind? Will I get 60 billion CFUs in a pill if I just dehydrate some pond water?
- markdown 4y ago
  > And normally I would probably just rely on getting them through a trusted vendor (e.g. my neighborhood grocer/pharamcy/health food store), but if I'm forced to shop online to make sure it has this specific thing in it...I want something I can check to vouch for its quality, yeah? Oddly enough, with the food/supplement I'm most familiar with, kava, the worst quality you can find is in brick and mortar establishments. The trusted vendors are all online-only and dedicated entirely to the one product instead of just trying to stock their shelves with every supplement on the planet.
  - AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
    Well I guess my thought process (however incorrect it might be) is that from a food safety perspective--not necessarily a supplement efficacy perspective--there's a greater bar to pass for the FDA to allow something to sit on the shelf at CVS than to get it from some random vendor on Amazon that might not even reside in the US.

collegeburner 4y ago

Interestingly, may not be all wrong: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3879365/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3879365/ Yes its shitty chumbucket type marketing but there's still some potential.

ARandomerDude 4y ago

> Fellow IBS-sufferer here. Runs in my family. I see what you did there.