NHS Highland to help TV study on probiotics
Ever wondered if your breakfast probiotic is actually doing you any good?
For anyone who's ever wondered if their probiotic drink or yoghurt is doing them any good, then a new study organised by NHS Highland may help answer any lingering questions.
NHS Highland will source 30 volunteers (not patients) aged between 18 - 65 to participate in a survey set to feature on the BBC TV series 'Trust Me I'm a Doctor'
This week, NHS Highland sent an email to all its staff in Raigmore Hospital and the Centre for Health Science in Inverness asking for volunteers to help with the probiotics drinks study, which will start next week.
The board is looking for people aged 18 - 65 who do not have any bowel problems, who do not take probiotics at present, and have not been on any antibiotics for the past two weeks. They would need to be willing to be filmed for the television programme.
In addition to studying the effects of probiotic drinks, the study will look at the effects of eating foods that can selectively stimulate the growth of specific health-promoting bacteria in the colon – such as leeks, garlic and asparagus.
The study will start next week, days after reports from researchers in Denmark which concluded probiotics made little difference to the gut’s bacteria in most cases. They found that there was “no convincing evidence for consistent effects of probiotics in microbiota (bacteria) in healthy adults”.