Probiotics were the silver bullet that cleared my skin completely.
I wonder whether people breaking out from them may be taking probiotics containing additional ingredients such as inulin/fructooligosaccharides. That would explain breakouts.
Probiotics on their own will mostly do nothing good or bad. That's because they are far too low dose. You need a much higher dose for them to work. Only one brand worked for me... and when it worked, it freakin' worked good!
It's what got me back interested in this forum because i'm now fascinated by all things to do with the microbiota!
Probiotics were the silver bullet that cleared my skin completely.
I wonder whether people breaking out from them may be taking probiotics containing additional ingredients such as inulin/fructooligosaccharides. That would explain breakouts.
Probiotics on their own will mostly do nothing good or bad. That's because they are far too low dose. You need a much higher dose for them to work. Only one brand worked for me... and when it worked, it freakin' worked good!
It's what got me back interested in this forum because i'm now fascinated by all things to do with the microbiota!
The probiotics I took didn't have any of that stuff in it. Just curious, though, what is the brand that you take?
Probiotics were the silver bullet that cleared my skin completely.
I wonder whether people breaking out from them may be taking probiotics containing additional ingredients such as inulin/fructooligosaccharides. That would explain breakouts.
Probiotics on their own will mostly do nothing good or bad. That's because they are far too low dose. You need a much higher dose for them to work. Only one brand worked for me... and when it worked, it freakin' worked good!
It's what got me back interested in this forum because i'm now fascinated by all things to do with the microbiota!
The probiotics I took didn't have any of that stuff in it. Just curious, though, what is the brand that you take?
A really high strength one I found called Elixa. It's a three day program in a little purple box. I'll do a sort of write-up/review on here after another week or so of observing the effects 
Their website has alot of extra info on it if you're interested. It's best thing since sliced bread as far as i'm concerned 
Probiotics were the silver bullet that cleared my skin completely.
I wonder whether people breaking out from them may be taking probiotics containing additional ingredients such as inulin/fructooligosaccharides. That would explain breakouts.
Probiotics on their own will mostly do nothing good or bad. That's because they are far too low dose. You need a much higher dose for them to work. Only one brand worked for me... and when it worked, it freakin' worked good!
It's what got me back interested in this forum because i'm now fascinated by all things to do with the microbiota!
The probiotics I took didn't have any of that stuff in it. Just curious, though, what is the brand that you take?
A really high strength one I found called Elixa. It's a three day program in a little purple box. I'll do a sort of write-up/review on here after another week or so of observing the effects
Their website has alot of extra info on it if you're interested. It's best thing since sliced bread as far as i'm concerned
I'd love to read a write up about it. I just realized my probiotics have algae in them. Algae is very comedogenic and I've also heard that it can caused breakouts when consumed. There's not a lot of algae in it, but I wonder if that could have been the culprit.
Hey Paige,
I'm confident I've given this an extremely thorough trial since it has been atleast 10 weeks. Despite it recommending just to take it once, the positive results made me super motivated just to see how how i could really take it, or if there are diminishing returns.
I took about.. 4 boxes in the past 2 months, i'd say.. My skin is great. No seb derm anymore and my oiliness has gone from total oil slick to a barely noticeable (healthy looking) sheen. It's not dried out and it's not oily. It's just about perfect while i eat healthily and a little touch of oil when i eat greasy foods for a few meals in a row. I'm very happy. I look forward to seeing more out of this brand because it only seems to have popped up recently, atleast in my country... Website is [Link removed]or just google/ebay search elixa probiotic, if you want to read some of the more in-depth explanations. It's a purple box.
Hope it can help you. I'll come back and post another update if i remember in a few months because i'm going to get a couple boxes right now, before i go on travels. (Sorry, i'm in a rush!)
500 CFU's?? Holy that's a lot. I remember having diarrhea after just taking 10 billion CFU's. This stuff would kill me...
Yeah if you got diarrhoea maybe it was from inulin/FOS in your supplement.
Half the reason I went with Elixa (the other half was that it was high dosage) was that it contained NO inulin/fos/similar fibre. They always talk about inulin/FOS feeding the good bacteria and all this stuff (e.g. 'maximises the effect by 1000x!') but for me it just gives me massive bowel discomfort. And it's obvious why really: if it feeds bacteria and you have an excess of bad bacteria in your gut that are gives you problems... then supplying more food for them to ferment is just going to aggravate the condition. It's not like these oligosaccharides can selectively only feed good bacteria (although some places claim they do, i have had first hand pain/bloating that begs to differ!!).
Example: I took one which was a mix of psyllium, FOS/inulin and probiotics. I never have problems with psyllium or probiotics but that one gave me terrible pain and bloating. (bloating within a few hours and then deep abdominal pain after about 10 hours for another 12+ hours).
Not had problems with this Elixa brand and i've taken quite a few. (i'll also add that I would get diarrhoea pretty easily by, for example, drinking milk. They've actually HELPED in that regard i'd say.)
I'd be interested to see how it works for several people. I've only read 5-10 reviews of it so far and i guess it is quite new.
A little update: Everything's going well. The skin on my upper back and neck are now as smooth as my under-forearm. Really weird sensation to feel that. Still haven't got used to it yet.
Face is all the same tone now, aswell. Never really noticed I had varying skin colour in my face (e.g. slight bits of redness or irritated looking skin) until it went away..
So I just tried Elixa. Gave me the worst breakout I've had all year.
Personally I think it's strange for a product to claim "The #1 probiotic in the world" and yet hasn't moved past selling on eBay.
I'm so tired of wasting all of my money on an endless stream of useless products. In this case, it actually made everything worse.
Especially after reading Listener's posts - I can't find any research that claims gut flora has anything to do with regulating sebum production (oily skin here). This is all very sketchy.
So I just tried Elixa. Gave me the worst breakout I've had all year.
Personally I think it's strange for a product to claim "The #1 probiotic in the world" and yet hasn't moved past selling on eBay.
I'm so tired of wasting all of my money on an endless stream of useless products. In this case, it actually made everything worse.
Especially after reading Listener's posts - I can't find any research that claims gut flora has anything to do with regulating sebum production (oily skin here). This is all very sketchy.
To be frank,
I'm really skeptical when people claim that product X 'broke them out the worst ever' and then proceed to claim that 'topic Y' has no relation to acne whatsoever.
You've said that this probiotic broke you out and then concluded that means gut flora has nothing to do with regulating sebum production...??
Make up your mind!!! There either is or isn't a connection! haha
For me it did the opposite. But then again, I had a gut problem also, and it cleared that up
Could be Herxheimer reaction? (dieoff?)
See what happens over the next few days now you've finished the course.
Recently I've been taking a probiotic and it did make me break out for about a week and a half and im finally calming down, i'm not breaking out from it anymore it seems, btw if you break out really bad you should get a stool sample bc it could be possible that you have some sort of parasite or yeast overgrowth and taking probiotics would exacerbate the problem, you should really read "clean gut" if you think your acne is digestion related, he gives you a step by step process and supplements list throughout the month long process, highly recommend, i will start when my supplements arrive in the mail, currently stationed in germany so it takes a little longer to receive products. suck.
I had this same reaction to probiotics. I began using probiotics about 5 months ago for IBS symptoms. It really helped with my IBS, and I continued taking it everyday. However, then I started getting painful cystic acne on my jawline and neck (which I've never gotten before). I only recently linked it to the probiotics. I stopped taking the brand I was taking (NOW Foods) and switched over to Renew at a similar dosage. Hopefully I'll have better luck with this or other brands. I don't want to stop taking probiotics because it really did have a positive effect on my IBS and other digestive issues, but I never thought it would have such a negative effect on my skin!
I went to a Naturopathic doctor for hormonal issues. One of those issues is hormonal acne. He put me on a very high strength probiotics along with other natural supplements. After 2 weeks of starting the probiotics, my skin started breaking out more than before. I thoughtit was my hormonal condition. But then I came across this post and decided to stop the probiotics. After just 1 week the horrible red, painful cystic acne stopped!! It has been a week since I stopped taking the probiotics and I just got one small white head and this is because I am getting my period, but nothing compared to what I was getting with the probiotics. Now my face is full os scars from 3 weeks of probiotics. Everybody is different, not everybody benefits from probiotics or has a desirable effect.