Eli5: If people have different types of gut bacteria what is the point of probiotics?

Question

Eli5: If people have different types of gut bacteria what is the point of probiotics?

In: 19

Answer 1

Specifically for probiotics supplements: To generate profit.

Any time a company wants to claim that their product has a specific medical effect, they have to go through a stringent testing and safety screening process known as FDA Premarket Authorization (commonly known as FDA Approval). This is required by law.

No probiotics has any sort of FDA approval. This means that they can only be marketed as a supplement (an extra amount of a thing, bacteria in this case), and can’t make any specific claim of efficacy.