Probiotic Drinks For Summer

Probiotic drinks are a must in the summertime. As you try to cool off and have something that is fizzy and delicious, there are two drinks I recommend.  I drink kombucha and kefir soda all the time. You can make different flavors and you can even make a float with probiotic ice cream that is especially delicious in the summertime! Each of these sodas has a special probiotic yeast, Saccharomyces boulardii that makes them bubbly along with strains of good bacteria too. Check out the benefits of this probiotic yeast that makes the drink bubbly.

Saccharomyces boulardii -The Good yeast

Saccharomyces boulardii (S. boulardii) is an incredible probiotic and when you make kombucha and our kefir soda, you'll get lots of this powerful probiotic yeast. It is what makes these drinks bubbly. The good yeasts eat the sugars out of the drink and create tons of bubbles, fizz, and probiotics. S. boulardii is one of the most researched probiotics and has been used worldwide to support gastrointestinal health. To be an effective probiotic it must survive its passage to the colon. This means it needs to survive at the body temperature of 98 degrees and be resistant to stomach and bile acids, and then survive the complex and diverse microbial world of the intestinal tract. S. boulardii does this and more, and it's resistant to antibiotics, heat, and stomach acids. It has been used in hospitals to help with acute diarrhea in children and adults, offering support for Clostridium difficile (C. diff), bowel disorders, AIDS patients, children with autism, and inflammatory bowel disease. If you need to take an antibiotic, it's a powerful probiotic to take since it's resistant to antibiotics and it will be helpful if you find yourself with Candida overgrowth.  It does not encourage candida but rather the opposite. S. boulardii is unrelated to the yeast Candida albicans and other Candida species. A healthy gut only has a yeast content of 0.1% yeast, Candida albicans being the most prominent yeast present. We need not only good bacteria but good yeasts as well to keep us in balance. When you have Candida proliferating, it will decrease the acidity of the gut making it susceptible to harmful bacteria and yeasts. S. boulardii exerts the opposite effect producing lactic and other acids known to inhibit potentially harmful Candida yeast species.^[1]

The Discovery Of Saccharomyces Boulardii

S. boulardii was discovered by French microbiologist Henri Boulard in the late 1920s in Indochina when he was searching for a new strain of yeast that would withstand heat for making wine. He was a visitor during a cholera outbreak and noticed that some people who did not develop cholera were drinking a special tea made from the outer skin of tropical fruits (lychees and mangosteens) and cooking them down to make tea. He isolated the probiotic strain of yeast and named it “Saccharomyces boulardii.”  In his research of the yeast, he found that it had multiple protective effects for rats infected with cholera. And when Boulard himself became a victim of cholera, he found that he could stop the associated diarrhea by drinking a tea that contained this yeast. The patent for this yeast was bought by Laboratories Biocodex in 1947 which began manufacturing it and began using it on patients exhibiting acute diarrhea. They have done over 53 randomized controlled clinical trials, encompassing 8475 subjects, that investigated the safety and efficacy of S. boulardii. The studies were done in pediatric and adult patients in which they found it had an 81% efficacy rating. His discovery improved gastrointestinal health across the board, and S. boulardii became the most thoroughly researched of all probiotic supplements. ^[2] It is now used to treat C. diff, acute diarrhea, antibiotic-associated diarrhea, some parasitic forms of diarrhea, and other gastrointestinal disorders. ^{[3, 4]}