What can I do to get pro-biotics if I'm a vegan?!

When doctors recommend probiotics to meat eaters, they do not tell them to eat meat. So why should someone tell you to eat meat when you ask about probiotics? It doesn't make sense.

Unfortunately I am very familiar with bacteria in the digestive system, and antibiotic-associated diarrhea. I studied it for a year while a family member was suffering with a recurring life-threatening hospital acquired infection due to antibiotic use. Even for vegetarians, yogurt is not an ideal source, due to both processing and the relatively small amount of beneficial bacteria that actually survives your stomach acid, on through to your intestines. There are vegan cultured yogurt-like products. However, if a doctor recommends it for antibiotic-associated diarrhea or other digestive issues, I think you're better off with capsules that contain a large amount of active bacteria. Many of the capsules you find on your pharmacy shelves have gelatin as the capsule material, and some are made with milk ingredients. But you can find vegan versions. As one example, NOW Foods markets a vegan probiotic in a vegcap in the US, and you can find other brands as well. http://nowfoods.com/ look for the ones in the Vcaps such as this http://nowfoods.com/Products/ProductsbyC… and this http://nowfoods.com/Products/ProductsbyC… . They have several different products.

There are some products like vegetarian PB-8, which is a popular probiotic, that are vegetarian but not vegan. They use milk for producing their bacteria.

From the time we're born, bacteria start colonizing our digestive systems. We have both beneficial and harmful bacteria. The beneficial bacteria helps keep the population of bad buggers under control. What happens when you take some kinds of antibiotics-- particularly the broad spectrum antibiotics such as when you're in hospital, it wipes out a lot of that good bacteria, allowing the bad buggers to move into the neighborhood and cause problems. Using a probiotic-- beneficial bacteria-- can help while your good bacteria is being replenished.

Be thankful you can get capsules. In some parts of the world, they take the feces from a healthy person and use the bacteria from that to either do an enema, or use a tube up your nose and into your stomach. Fun times. lol.

If you would still rather try a food product first, there are products like cultured coconut milk-- a yogurt-like food. http://www.turtlemountain.com/products/c… However, I have not seen these in my local markets.

There are soy yogurts you could try, but I think it would be more effective to take a supplment for a month or two until your stomach is feeling better.

One high quality vegan probiotic supplement you could take is by Rainbow Light is their ProbioActive. You can pick it up at your health food store or order it online. Vitacost.com carries it.

I would go with GoodBelly. It is vegan and delicious and if you buy it in the little containers they have a smiley face where you drink...kind of cute.
http://www.goodbelly.com/

There is also vegan yogurts and kefir out there. So delicious and Whole Soy are two brands easily found.

Vegan because animals are not property

Eat more meat. :)

1,000+ of years of humans eating meat and were still skinny and even healthier than today. They may not have lived as long, but that was due to external diseases not what they ate.

Try coconut milk yogurt. It should do the trick, and it's pretty good too!

Vegan