Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Probiotics for athletes? Possible someday, but right now - I (and others) don't think so

Nice article in Outside Magazine by David Despain: Should You Be Taking Probiotics? | Performance Plate | OutsideOnline.com.  The article has comments from me, Peter Turnbaugh and Ellen Silbergeld.  The article discusses some of the overhyped claims about probiotics and athletic performance and even mentions my Overselling the Microbiome award.  I like in particular the following paragraph:

The biggest issue scientists currently have with probiotics, however, doesn’t have to do with athletes. Instead, it has to do with the initial hypothesis that we need them in the first place, says Ellen Silbergeld, a professor of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Because there’s still no real understanding of what makes “healthy” or “poor” microbiomes, there’s no real understanding of how or if we should cultivate them.

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