What this means is the number of alive and active microorganisms in one serving of a probiotic dietary supplement. These are typically measured in CFUs per gram or per milliliter. A colony refers to the individual colonies of bacteria, yeast or mold growing together. Bacteria, yeasts and viruses are all considered microorganisms. When you look at a shelf of probiotic supplements at the grocery store or pharmacy, you will see a wide range of CFUs listed on the supplement facts label.
Some companies even advertise extremely high counts such as over Billion CFUs. In microbiology, a colony forming unit is used to estimate the number of viable cells of bacteria or fungi in a sample.
Individual cells are very small and some may be dead whereas others are alive. To measure the number of colony forming units, a bacterial culture of the microorganism is added to an agar plate a petri dish with agar solution as a growth medium for the microorganism in a microbiology laboratory.
Often, this requires serial dilutions of the original sample, as the original sample might be very concentrated. If the sample is too concentrated, you will see a large area of bacteria, instead of the individual colonies. After a few days of tracking the bacterial growth, the colonies can be seen as a cluster of bacteria or fungi growing together. These colonies are counted. Then you use a specific formula to calculate CFU. A single colony often has a circular pattern. The reason why CFUs matter especially for probiotics is because they indicate how many living beneficial bacterial cells you ingest with your probiotic.
In order for the probiotic to be effective, the good bacteria you swallow should be alive. In recent years, some companies have focused on extremely high CFU counts, claiming that higher CFUs means better results. The gut contains to different bacterial strains and species. The goal with taking a probiotic supplement is to add beneficial bacteria back into the gut so that these bacteria can improve the overall environment in the gut. Of course, you want to take a high enough quantity of bacteria to ensure that these can make a positive difference in the gut.
At the same time, taking too high an amount of one or a few specific strains of bacteria may actually have a negative effect. You might experience digestive upset, or the bacteria will flush through you without having an impact and leave your body when you use the bathroom.
Each one of the to probiotic bacterial strains in your gut carry out a different function. Furthermore, you want to make sure that the probiotic includes the right kind of probiotic bacterial strains that address your health needs. This allows us to combine specific bacterial strains that work hand in hand to address different health goals. You have to know which bacterial strains work well together, rather than competing with each other.
In a groundbreaking study , scientists examined the gut microbiome of identical twins. They also found that certain gut bacteria work best in teams to perform specific functions. Each individual bacterial cell that is healthy should be capable of dividing over and over again, forming a colony of bacterial cells. On an agar plate these colonies can be counted individually by the naked eye and total CFU can be estimated from that count.
And on a probiotic label, CFU represents the number of live cells contained in each serving. One is related to age. A young infant under the age of 6 months should have no more than billion CFU simply due to their size as well as the natural lack of diversity in their gut. Toddlers aged 6 months to 3 years also need a low CFU, within the ballpark of billion. Children 3 years old and up need a lower CFU than adults, between billion.
Outside of those ages, some adults do need lower probiotic concentrations. This is especially important for those who are already very sensitive to supplements, already have very inflamed gastrointestinal tracts, and those who have autoimmune conditions like MCAS. Of course, there are many other possible health conditions that may make an individual more sensitive to probiotics. In that case, feel free to indulge in a whopping billion CFU.
Of course, you may feel the need to back off on the dosage for a beat if any temporary die off symptoms like gas, bloating, loose stool or headaches get in the way of your daily life. This is very important. It is entirely possible to have too much of a good thing. Some people have reported a sudden onset of chronic diarrhea lasting longer than 1 week when taking probiotics with a total CFU per dose of 70 billion or higher.
In all of these cases, the best way to see if your symptoms are caused by too high of CFU is to take the probiotics every other day or try to take half the dose and see if that lessens the symptoms.
If it does, then you can take the lower dose until you feel ready to scale up. Since they can be so good at helping probiotics to expand quickly, some people with sensitive digestive tracts or other severe health conditions may want to be very calculated in which prebiotics to take, when to take them, and how much.
Compared to a sample kept in a cooled environment and put for testing short time after the sampling. The water sample is given in a so called Petri dish. The sample is kept for a certain time at a defined temperatur. The microbes in the water breed. The result can be visualized in a petri dish. The colonies can be counted one by one. In most cases this is done manual by a certified laboratory. The petri dish is transparent, as seen in the photo. Putting light behind, the cells or the colonies are easy visible.
The counting of the cell is either done direct or if there a lot of small cells using a microscope. Testing for instance waste water, a high quantity of microorganisms in the water is to be expected. In order to obtain usable results, the water sample can also be diluted. The dilution hold less microbes and will give a clearer result. Clean Room A. GLP A. Safety A. Food A. SOP A. Hygiene A. Sterilization A.
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