 Hi, this is Dr. Ruscio and let's discuss the question, can you obtain adequate probiotics from probiotic rich foods like fermented foods, sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha, kefir? The answer is yes, these are definitely an important aspect to a healthy diet in my opinion and should be at least attempted to be routinely consumed. As long as one does not have any kind of symptomatic reaction when consuming a given fermented food, these do seem to be healthy and health promoting because of the bacteria that they contain and the fact that these bacteria tend to have a favorable impact on our digestive systems. These include being anti-inflammatory, potentially anti-leaky gut and also providing or assisting in creation of certain vitamins. So consuming fermented foods and the bacteria, the life cultures they contain is a good health practice and something that seems to have dropped off in Western societies, even though more traditional cultures do appear to have made fermented foods a routine part of their diet. Now, a deeper question is, can you obtain a clinical dose or can you consume enough? So how we define enough is a challenge because there's not necessarily one magical intake of probiotics in the diet that is going to be right for everyone. So perhaps another way we can look at this is to pose the question such a way that if you have an imbalance or symptoms in your gut, if you have irritable bowel syndrome, if you have reflux, if you have a presumed overgrowth of bacteria or fungus or even a diagnosed imbalance of such or potentially something like inflammatory bowel disease, can you get a clinically impactful amount of probiotics from your diet? This is where the answer leans in the direction of no. When you look at most of the research studies that have used probiotics supplementally, the amount contained in these trials is actually significantly north of what you can obtain from foods. Now, this is not to say that we should just throw the foods out the window. This is a foundation, but as a supplement used for a term to try to overcome imbalances, then a supplemental probiotic does seem to have merit. Let me put up on the screen for you an actual breakdown so you can see a given food, the bacteria contains, the amount of bacteria, and then the amount of bacteria in a like probiotic supplement. And this is quite enlightening when you look at this. So looking at sauerkraut, we have a few different strains and the amount to a per serving per cup of sauerkraut, about three billion CFU or colony forming units. Now, how much would be found in a typical probiotic capsule? So in our lactobifidoblend probiotic, so one cup of sauerkraut equates to one eighth of a capsule. When we start seeing this, we see that we're really not quite getting a clinical dose, knowing that one may use anywhere from two to four capsules in a day. One cup of sauerkraut equaling one eighth of a capsule falls a little bit short of what may be needed in order to really have a robust clinical effect for a rebalancing, healing, and helping with someone's symptoms. And let's look at yogurt. With a cup of yogurt, 2.5 billion, equivalent to about a tenth of a capsule, lactofermented pickles per pickle, 1.3 billion, and that is about 0.05 of a capsule. Kiefer, 2.5 billion, again, about a tenth of a capsule. And Kim, she actually comes in as the winner here with a half cup containing 11.5 billion CFUs or colony forming units, and that's equivalent to about one half of a capsule of our lactobifidoblend probiotic. So certainly these foods are part and promoting of a healthy diet and a healthy gut. However, we may not be able to get everything that we need, at least from a perspective of trying to remedy, rebalance, and heal the gut from food. And this is where, at least in the short term, considering a probiotic supplement may really kind of compound on top of what you should be doing dietarily. And with the addition of the supplement will have enough impact, hopefully, to combat something like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, to remedy the symptoms of IBS, to help reduce leaky guts, to help facilitate healthy intestinal mortality, or to help to support balance in the microbiota of one of the many different mechanisms that probiotics can positively impact. So we wanna do both, but it does look like for a clinical effect that foods may fall a little bit short from ideal. And I think it's reasonable to say, start with bringing these fermented foods into your diet and then reevaluate. If you're not feeling better, then consider adding, in addition to that, a well-formulated probiotic supplement. This is Dr. Ruscio, and I really hope this helps you get healthy and get back to your life.