Does Stomach Acid Kill Probiotics? - "Ask the Doc" with Dr. Nuzum


Does stomach acid kill probiotics before they are broken down? "Ask the Doc"

Does Stomach Acid Kill Probiotics? – “Ask the Doc” with Dr. Nuzum

Video Transcript

Jonathan Hunsaker: Here’s a great question. Does stomach acid kill probiotics? Stay tuned to find out. 

Jonathan Hunsaker here with Organixx. And today we’re going to answer a really important question, “Does stomach acid kill probiotics?” A lot of us take probiotics, and the big question is, does it make it past our stomach acid into the gut and does it really help? 

Dr. Daniel Nuzum: Okay, so our question is, “Does stomach acid kill probiotics?” And the answer is yes. Yes, it does.  

One of the functions; the two primary functions of stomach acid, is one, to kill microbes. Stop them before they get into the rest of the system. So, it burns them up. 

Number two, stomach acid is there to tear apart protein bonds; making protein digestible for our body. 

So, if probiotics get killed by stomach acid when we take them, what’s the point of taking them, right? 

Well, the answer to that is not ALL probiotics get killed by stomach acid. Some of the live probiotics one might take will survive your stomach. If you take enough numbers, some of them will survive, some of them will make it through. 

Some of the fermented foods that you consume, some of the microbes in those will make it through. 

Live probiotics are much harder to get into the gut than spore form probiotics, or dormant probiotics. Some spore form microbes can survive for thousands of years in the wild. I mean it’s amazing. Some of these things can just last for a long, long time. 

In the case of spore form microbes making it into your system, let’s say we go south of the border and we’re not careful, and we drink the water. When we drink the water, let’s say there’s giardia in the water. The adult giardia microbes would normally get killed and destroyed by our stomach acid. What doesn’t get destroyed are the spore form “baby” microbes, if you will, that are carried by that giardia. And when those amoebic spores get into our gut, into our small intestine, they go bananas. They start reproducing like crazy. 

In pathology, it only takes somewhere in the neighborhood of 12-15 giardia spores to make it into the gut to cause Montezuma’s Revenge, and that would be traveler’s diarrhea. Not fun.  

And if you compare that to the massive numbers of live probiotics you would have to take in order to make a difference in your gut, it’s not very economical. If you think about it, if it takes 50-60-100 billion, 100 trillion live microbes to start colonies in your gut, because 90 percent of them get killed off in your stomach by your stomach acid, why wouldn’t we use a spore form of these microbes, where the spore actually is protecting the microbe from the stomach acid? 

And so, that is what we did here at Organixx with our ProBiotixx. We have spore form probiotics that are designed to make it past the stomach acid. 

Jonathan Hunsaker: Great stuff as always Doc. Thank you for sharing. 

Hey, if you’re looking for a quick and easy solution to get your probiotics, then check out our ProBiotixx. Doc Nuzum, of course, formulated them. They’re top of the line. And try them out; see if they make you feel better like they make us feel better. 

 Help boost nutrition and gut health with Organixx Probiotixx


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