Live Cultures Max

The intensive month. Twenty billion organisms, eight strains, one capsule a day.

Most of the time, your gut runs itself. The thirty-eight trillion bacteria, archaea, fungi, and viruses that share the inside of your digestive tract — collectively, the microbiome — have been there since you were born and will be there when you go. They digest fibre your own enzymes can't break down. They train your immune system. They make a small but real contribution to vitamins K and several Bs. They keep the gut lining in good repair. Most days, the system holds itself in balance without you ever thinking about it.

Twenty billion live organisms per capsule, eight strains, taken daily for a month — a higher count than our Live Cultures Multi. Our daily-maintenance bottle is the four-billion CFU Live Cultures Multi, sitting alongside this one in our range. They are siblings. This is the bigger one.

A clean cream pot, the green band of our label running around it. Thirty plant-fibre capsules inside — a one-month course at one capsule a day, or a two-week intensive at two capsules a day if a clinician has set you a higher dose. The capsules are HPMC — hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, a plant-derived shell — so the bottle is suitable for vegans, vegetarians, and any kosher or halal kitchen.

Inside each capsule, twenty billion freeze-dried, viable organisms held in brown rice flour. The rice flour is not filler — it is a humble, dry medium that keeps the bacteria stable on the shelf, away from moisture, in suspended animation until the capsule meets stomach acid and water. The first sip of water you take after the capsule is what wakes them up.

No refrigeration needed. The freeze-drying and the moisture-control sachet inside the bottle keep the organisms viable at room temperature.

CFU stands for colony-forming unit — the standard way of counting living, reproducing bacteria in a probiotic. It isn't a marketing number. The label gives 20 billion viable organisms per capsule.

Twenty billion is a meaningful dose. For context, a tablespoon of fresh live yoghurt typically contains a few hundred million live organisms — perhaps half a billion on a generous day. A serving of kefir runs a little higher. Live Cultures Multi gives 4 billion CFU per capsule.

When the course is finished — typically thirty days at one a day — most people step down to the daily-maintenance bottle. We do not recommend taking twenty billion CFU every day for the rest of your life. The gut likes a base level of variety and a steady supply, not a constant flood. This is the intensive bottle for the intensive months.

Eight species from the Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium and Streptococcus groups.

Lactobacillus casei. A versatile fermenter found in cultured dairy.

Lactobacillus acidophilus. The original household-name probiotic, in yoghurt cultures since the 1920s.

Bifidobacterium infantis. A colon resident.

Streptococcus thermophilus. The yoghurt-making partner of Lactobacillus bulgaricus. A transient that passes through rather than settling.

Bifidobacterium breve and Bifidobacterium longum. Two colon-dwelling Bifidobacteria, both abundant in the healthy adult lower gut.

Lactobacillus bulgaricus. Named after Bulgaria, where Stamen Grigorov first isolated it from local yoghurt in 1905. Pairs with S. thermophilus in classical yoghurt fermentation.

You don't need to remember the names.

The idea that bacteria in food might be good for you is older than the word probiotic. The Russian biologist Élie Metchnikoff, working at the Pasteur Institute in the early 1900s, noticed that the long-lived peasant communities of the Caucasus and the Bulgarian highlands were heavy consumers of fermented dairy. He hypothesised that the lactic-acid bacteria in their daily yoghurt were displacing less helpful organisms in the gut. He shared the 1908 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on immunity.

It was only in the 2000s, when DNA sequencing made it possible to read the entire microbial population of a stool sample, that the modern field of microbiome research really took off. The strains we use are the ones with the longest paper trail behind them — workhorses, not novel boutique strains.

One capsule a day, before a meal, with a glass of water — the empty stomach lets the capsule pass through to the small intestine quickly without lingering in stomach acid. Most people take theirs in the morning before breakfast.

Take 1 capsule, 1 to 3 times a day, before meals.

The bottle holds thirty capsules; that pattern uses it in just under three weeks. Don't exceed three capsules a day.

When the course is done, step down to a daily-maintenance probiotic — our Live Cultures Multi at four billion CFU is the natural successor — or go back to a fibre-rich, fermented-food diet and trust the gut to hold itself there.

Keep it in a cool, dry place, out of direct sunlight. The kitchen cupboard is fine. The bathroom is not — too much humidity. The car glove box on a hot summer day is the worst spot in the house.

The small sachet inside the bottle is a moisture absorber. Leave it in until the bottle is empty. Don't eat it.

This is a food supplement, not a medicine. If you are immunocompromised, on chemotherapy, or in a critical-care setting, talk to your specialist before taking any live bacterial supplement — there are situations in which probiotics are not appropriate, and a clinician needs to make the call. If you are pregnant, breastfeeding, or living with a chronic gut condition like inflammatory bowel disease, talk to your GP first.

If you have not taken probiotics before, the first three or four days can sometimes bring slightly more wind or a single looser stool as the new organisms find their place — this is short-lived and normal, but if it persists past a week, stop and reassess.

If you read this far, thank you. We tried to write the kind of page we'd want to read — no neon promises. Just a bigger sister to our daily probiotic, an intensive month, and a small living crew of well-studied organisms ready to work.

— Vitadefence