How the best Probiotic supplement was discovered | Reviews.com

A list of probiotic supplements discovered by reviews.com

We started our search with the most popular products from major supplement retailers like Amazon, Drugstore.com, GNC, and Whole Foods. That gave us over 200 supplements. With so many options, we then narrowed our search to 70 probiotics whose purity, potency, and projected efficacy have been vetted by an independent lab, like ConsumerLab, Labdoor or the NSF. Because supplement claims aren’t regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulated, we wanted to make sure someone was testing whether they worked as described.

From there, we made sure each supplement had at least 1 billion CFUs per serving.

CFUs — colony forming units — are the number of active live organisms inside the bacteria. As a general rule, a probiotic should provide at least 1 billion CFUs. While a probiotic with fewer CFUs isn’t a bad choice, a supplement with more stands a better chance at being effective. Supplements with more than 100 billion were out too — those are only recommended in specific circumstances by your doctor, like if your body doesn’t naturally produce enough probiotics. While there’s little risk of overdose, too much can cause abdominal pain like cramps and bloating.

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