When Alex Comb’s son was an infant, he had pretty bad eczema. (Eczema is a reddish dry skin rash.) He also had a nighttime cough, a dry cough that started and stopped throughout the night. The cough lasted months. It turned out he was allergic to carragenen. The cough was mostly, but not entirely, eliminated by avoiding carragenen. Sometimes there were flareups.
When the son was 2 years old, he had a mild case of eczema. Doctors wanted to give him steroids. Alex started researching the causes of eczema and how to alleviate it. He came across research on the hygiene hypothesis. In a forum, he read that some people had tried probiotics for eczema with some success. Research on the subject had had mixed results but it seemed worth a try.
So Alex and his wife gave his son DanActive (a probiotic dairy drink) every day for over a year. After a week or so, he noticed improvement. The nighttime cough completely went away. The eczema went away 95%. This isn’t a use of DanActive I could find on their website.
When his son was 3 yrs old, Alex and his wife stopped the DanActive. They assumed his immune system was better. He had gotten tired of drinking it all the time. He drank it less. His diet got broader too; he started eating yogurt. He never really stopped drinking it, he just drank it less.
A few months ago, the son started a 10-day course of antibiotics for a nasal discharge. A few days later, the nighttime coughing mysteriously resumed. It lasted at least 5 nights, and ended around the same time the antibiotics did. It was an asthmatic cough rather than a respiratory infection cough. An asthmatic cough is much drier and shorter.
A few weeks ago, the son was put on antibiotics for an abscessed tooth. Two or three days after antibiotics started, the asthmatic cough started again. Was it the antibiotics? He had not been drinking the DanActive so Alex and his wife started giving it to him again. They gave him the antibiotics earlier in the day and the DanActive before he went to bed. The very first night they did this the cough went away. They kept doing that and the cough stayed away. He has had no cough since then.
What’s telling is the clarity of the correlations. They support the idea that we have a large need for bacteria-laden foods.
What I find interesting here is the relatively small amount of probiotic material required to show an improvement in symptoms in this example. Makes me wonder what the optimum amount would be in general, and if there is some benefit to the timing just prior to sleep.
I think the tiny amount needed to show benefit indicates that the deprivation is great. If an engine has no oil, even a little oil produces a big improvement.
Seth, have you considered probiotic supplementation? I generally supplement during and after an anti-biotic regimen but am now quite curious about daily doses. Would also be curious about your take on pill-form probiotics vs. dietary changes.
Full disclosure: I work for a company that distributes (but does not manufacture) probiotics from 15+ companies, along with a wide variety of nutritional supplements.
Carol:- The idea is that the probiotics are cultures of friendly bacteria that then reproduce rapidly and colonise the gut. You only need a few to get the process going.
The Hygiene Hypothesis makes great sense in the mysteries surrounding allergies and the overcleanliness of the modern world has given us a problem. As my father-in-law used to say “let them eat mud”. They might get all sorts of other problems but less allergies
I hope that helps
I am so glad I found this blog.
My daughter has had the coughing fits for 24 months (she’s 5 1/2 yo).
Inhalers, several doctors, ona nd on nothing help. She routinely coughed until vomiting. After one 10 hour coughing fit I reached my limit and scoured the web.
After putt in her whole medical history as search qualifiers I found this. The prior ezcema and antibiotics were key indicators.
After 3 days of drinking 1 probiotic shake a day, she showed very marked improvement. After 1 week, no symptoms. This is a girl who’s been unable to run and play for 2 years. Who woke up coughing and gagging most nights.
After 6 weeks of the same regimen, she still shows no symptoms and is running and playing full blast.
The pulmonary specialist discounts the results we’ve seen as a fluke . . . we’ll see. Previously my daughter’s lung capacity was measured at 47% of expected.
Hey y’all,
I stumbled across something a while back that you might be interested in. I’ve been suffering from allergies, allergic asthma, and exercise induced asthma for most of my life. I’ve taken some form of fast acting inhaler since I was about 14 (I’m now 44). I didn’t take anything before that because the doctors attributed my breathing problems to simple allergies. I began taking steroidal inhalers approximately 18 years ago.
The steroid inhalers worked well at first and allowed me to continue my passion of jogging. Then, over the course of a couple of years, I could no longer jog during the colder months. This progressively got worse over the years to the point I had to take 4 fast acting inhaler puffs during exercise and even that wasn’t working well at all. Finally, after nearly going to the hospital after one particularly bad bout of exercise induced asthma, I went back to the internet in research.
Before this, I had tried everything under the sun. I tried Vitamin D; it didn’t work, but it did help my nasal allergies somewhat. I tried low carb dieting, and just like Dr. Lutz of “Life Without Bread” said, it made asthma worse while it practically cured my nasal allergies. I also tried the Dr. Sears approach of taking as much as 7.5g of EPA/DHA a day; no change at all in the exercise induced asthma.
During this research, however, I re-reviewed the probiotic slant and found the Helminth story and all the trials that were going on in pubmed for them. With that logic in hand, I set about to find a probiotic that worked. I tried yogurt, kefir, fermented cabbage, and buttermilk to no avail. I then tried store bought probiotics one by one. I tried The Maker’s Diet probiotic and it didn’t help; but I do think it helped make a 20 year long wart go away. I also tried all forms of probiotics on the market; even LGG. Nothing.
Finally, one day I bought this super high dose probiotic and took it along with a L. Sporogenes/bacillus coagulans. Voila, three days later I could really feel the difference during exercise. I continued that for 10 days. By the 10th day, I didn’t have to hit my inhaler at all during exercise. Wow!
First, I had to decide which probiotic did the trick. I didn’t want to spend a ton on that high dose probiotic, so I stuck with the Bacillus Coagulans and it continued working normally. So, I found my probiotic. Now, I needed to verify it wasn’t placebo. A close cousin to exercise induced asthma is the phenomenon of waking up sneezing and then promptly getting an asthma attack/or closure after that.
I went off my bacillus coagulans that I had been on for 14 days. By the second day, I noticed a little difference. By the third day, I had to hit my inhaler during the workout. By the 10th day (bacillus coagulans supposedly lives in your intestines 7 days), I was full-blown back to having to use 4 inhaler puffs and it wasn’t doing the trick. This was test phase one.
I then went back on the bacillus coagulans for 10 days. The same process repeated itself. The nightly asthma attacks abated after about 4 days and the same no-puff needed during exercise continued as well.
I then went back off the bacillus coagulans for 10 days. I got the asthma back at day 3.
I’ve now been back on 5 billion CFU’s of bacillus coagulans (duraflora) for 18 days. I don’t have to use my inhaler for exercise. I can feel the asthma come on very slightly and then go away. I’ll be curious to see if the success of this treatment continues through the toughest time of the year for me (the fall).
The only side effect I’ve noticed is a sticky feeling in my hands that comes and goes along with a little itching on my nose, eyes, and ears that is not bad.
I’d love to see if anyone else sees similar results.
JohnG
Hello,
Came across your blog. I am interested in finding out what kind of probiotic you used ( name, manufacture etc ).
Thanks.
~Tom
I used Source Naturals Dura Flora which is 5 billion CFU’s of Bacillus Coagulans; formerly known as Lactobacillus Sporogenes.