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Probiotic Popularity Is Saturating the System with Sloppy Science. This Is a Better Option. {Seed Daily Synbiotic Review}

Have you heard of Seed’s Daily Synbiotic? It’s a unique probiotic. Here’s my honest review of Seed Synbiotic. 

Seed synbiotic

I’m kind of known for reviewing lots of an item if I bother to review one…like over 100 natural mineral sunscreens, dozens of natural nail polishes, and a few dozen reusable sandwich bags and bento lunch boxes.

That’s all well and good when it comes to products on which I can quickly make an opinion, but when it comes to natural health goals it can be really frustrating because of the complexity of the human body and so many confounding factors.

  • Am I fatigued because this product isn’t giving me the energy it promised or because I don’t get enough sleep?
  • Do I feel more clear-headed today versus last week when I started taking this supplement?
  • Are these probiotics helping me digest and eliminate better? Or does it all come down to the food I’m eating or back to that sleep issue?

I just tried to count, and I have at least 10 different probiotics that my family and I have tried during the last decade of our healthy living journey!

Nope. Make that an even dozen. I just remembered two more that were just for kids, even infant probiotics!

Considering my memory just isn’t what it used to be, that probably means we’ve had at least 20 brands of probiotics in our house.

Finding a Quality Probiotic

Probiotic supplements have become a bit of the golden child of the natural health world. Last time I was in Walgreens, I was shocked and in awe by how many shelves were actually taken up with products claiming to be probiotics.

I was also conflicted.

Is this a good thing that more people will be getting an incredibly necessary supplement for their health? Or is there a real danger here that with so many brands trying to get in on probiotic popularity that quality will take a real hit?

And most of the American public may be hoodwinked into thinking they’re doing something good for themselves when they’re actually just giving money to a brand with good marketing — but poor science.

Microbes

I even noticed the other day that quart tubs of organic yogurt are now labeled with the word probiotic in about 200-point font and the word yogurt in about a 45-point scripty font.

???!!!

I was actually questioning if I was buying a new product or if this was just the same old yogurt, which has always had natural probiotics because that’s literally the definition of yogurt–cultured milk with probiotic organisms!

With the food processing and supplement companies all getting in on this marketing, we consumers have to be so much more savvy.

Which Experts do You Listen to on Whole Body Health?

That’s why I really listen up when experts and professionals I trust recommend a product.

To feed my science geek brain, I’m on Chris Kresser‘s email list. He’s a functional medicine practitioner and a genius when it comes to bio-individuality and helping people heal in ways that work for them. He did a podcast with the founder of Seed Daily Synbiotic, and I started digging into the brand.

I’ve been using The Daily Synbiotic for almost two months now, and I feel ready to share my thoughts in this review.

I’m going to admit right up front that because of that darn complexity of the human person and all the confounding factors, I emailed the company after the first month and said that I had no real results to report. I didn’t think that my constipation issues had changed or that it had affected my digestion in any way.

Seed prebiotic + probiotic

However, as I was looking back at my notes, perhaps I was looking too narrow because I’ve realized that we may have seen some quite remarkable improvements.

Hot tip: anytime you’re trying something new, write down how you feel and any symptoms you can think of, good or bad, when you start. You won’t remember them as clearly one month later, I guarantee it.

When it comes to poop, it’s possible I was wrong. More on shape, texture, and surprises later in the post. 😮

My Seed Daily Synbiotic Review

Let’s start with being clear: I did get a sample for free of the Seed Daily Synbiotic. However, let’s also be clear that I had a tab open for at least 10 days and had the stuff in my cart already, but waffled and wavered. 😉

First, because that’s my personality, and second, because I had at least five bottles and boxes of other probiotics in my supplement backup cupboard. Oi!

I’ve been incredibly impressed with everything Seed does, from their research to their training of affiliates and even to their packaging.

In 11 years of blogging, I’ve never had to pass a test before I could become an affiliate for a program. With Seed, I had to take some classes and do some reading and pass an exam to become a “Seed University Graduate” before I could even begin to talk about working with them. I know that they put that depth of focus and integrity into everything they do.

So what is a synbiotic? Is this just marketing to set themselves apart from all the probiotics on the drugstore shelf? Absolutely not.

“Synbiotic” is a term that means you’ll be getting a probiotic with 24 clinically studied, naturally occurring strains not found in yogurt or fermented foods and beverages, plus a prebiotic. That’s where the magic comes in. Ok, not magic — clinically proven effectiveness!

dual release probiotic

Prebiotics support the growth of beneficial bacteria in the gut, both probiotics and your own existing microbiota. You can get prebiotics through certain vegetables and plant foods like fibrous cassava or jicama, for example, but it’s likely that a lot of us aren’t getting enough or the right variety to keep all of our good bacteria healthy. That’s where this groundbreaking design comes in.

Seed Daily Synbiotic includes the probiotic and prebiotic in separate portions of the capsule so that they actually dissolve and enter your gut at different times during transit. I’m glad I didn’t have to figure out how to do that and can just benefit from smart scientists and engineers making it happen! The recommendation is to take Seed Daily Synbiotic on an empty stomach if possible.

If you’re curious, the prebiotics are research-proven to be microbiota accessible, and they come from foods like pomegranate and Chaga mushroom extract, and the capsule also includes choline, another vital nutrient.

This is a good time to note that I’m just a mom and a human being fascinated by health and science. I’m not a doctor, nurse, medical practitioner of any kind, nor do I claim to be or even pretend to be one on the Internet. Anything I say today is facts from Seed about their Daily Synbiotic and my own personal experience. Please don’t assume that any of this is a recommendation to treat, cure or heal a disease.

How a Good Probiotic like Seed Synbiotic Can Support Your Health

There’s been a lot of research on probiotics over the last decade or two, and we are learning more every day about the potential benefits of taking a probiotic. Here are some of the possibilities scientists have discovered:

  • Immune system support.
  • Digestive health, particularly improving transit time and keeping a body regular. Two strains in Seed’s Daily Synbiotic formulation were examined in a study for their beneficial effects in relieving intestinal discomfort, evacuation disorders, hard stools, bloating and pain.
gut flora
  • Cardiovascular health.
  • Skin health: rashes on the skin are often a signal that something is going awry in the gut. Plus your skin has its very own microbiome that works in synergy with your internal gut microbiome. It’s all connected. Seed includes a dermatological health blend of four strains that were clinically studied to promote skin health.
  • Seed Daily Synbiotic is the first to include probiotic strains that synthesize folate and increase production in the body. This is really important for moms-to-be!

Most of the 3 trillion bacteria in and on our bodies are beneficial. We’re still learning so much about the importance of bacteria to our personal health, but we know it is important, and many of us don’t have quite the right balance — hence the need for a good probiotic!

Seed Synbiotic Cares for the Earth, Too!

I get a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach sometimes when I think about all the packaging I’m creating with my “convenient” online ordering.

Getting supplies in the mail helps reduce my stress and improve my life in some ways, but I know that recycling isn’t 100% efficient; and particularly when I order things that are frozen, like a certain probiotic I tried in the last six months, the packaging waste is absolutely insane. (Oh, that’s right. There were two more specialty probiotics with crazy packaging that I’ve recently tried. I bet the number creeps above 25 quickly if I keep thinking about it.)

So let’s talk about Seed’s packaging. Your first shipment will come with a cute green glass reusable container and a separate glass travel container, which I’ve already used and totally appreciate.

seed probiotic welcome package

Everything is packaged in a funny looking, sort-of-brown insulating material (above), which I’m kicking myself for throwing away because I wasn’t composting at the time. Turns out I should have read more closely!

Grown from mushrooms, Seed’s packaging material actually completely dissolves in soil in 30 days. I should have just thrown it out in my garden. #facepalm I’ll know for next time when my refill is delivered in the same cushioning, and I’ll just refill my bottle with hardly any waste!

Seed also commits to you that their probiotic strains are never grown using any of the top 12 allergens, and the care and concern they take with everything is exemplary.

The Science Behind Seed Daily Synbiotic

As I mentioned above, the risk with so many probiotics flooding the market is that there’s no way there’s in-depth science behind all of them.

Seed has a huge Scientific Advisory Board headed by Dr. Gregor Reid, chair of the United Nations and World Health Organization’s expert panel that authored the definition of probiotics. The rest of the team includes primary investigators from the National Institute of Health’s Human Microbiome Project.

This makes total sense to me, because it was that project which recommended people eat at least 25 different types of plant materials every single week so that our microbiome has enough variety for all the different strains of bacteria to stay healthy.

seed synbiotic

Every strain included in Seed’s Daily Synbiotic have been researched to make improvements in specific areas of human health and development.

Update from 2020! Seed just got permission to do an IND study from the FDA. It’s a huge deal. It basically means that after this study, they legally are able to make claims similar to a pharmaceutical drug…but without the pharma of course. I don’t think another probiotic has done this for IBS at all!

I cannot tell you how exciting this is!

I can speak science fairly well. But let’s hear directly from the company on a bit more.

Science isn’t static—there are 82,796 publications on PubMed around the microbiome, probiotics and prebiotics (and counting).

 

Our strain collection includes probiotic strains banked in Italy, Denmark, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Spain, Japan and the United States. Our collection of strains, methods of use, finished formulations, and scale-up processes are unique to Seed and not found in yoghurt, fermented foods, or ‘probiotic’ beverages.

All of our strains have GRAS and/or QPS (Qualified Presumption of Safety) status under the European Food and Safety Authority (EFSA). They are not cultured with, and are free from the 12 Classes of Allergens defined in Annex IIIa of Directive 2007/68/EC.Directive 2007/68/EC.

Every microbe has its own preferred growth medium and ideal fermentation parameters for maximum viability as a probiotic. Our bacteria are biofermented in conditions optimized for pH, temperature, oxygen, water activity, and 26 other growth factors. Our mediums do not contain meat or dairy. Biofermentation of all strains are conducted under cGMP and HACCP guidelines.

To date, our strains have collectively been studied in 23 human clinical studies including double-blind, placebo-controlled trials conducted in the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, and Japan. Primary and secondary outcomes demonstrate statistically significant improvements in multiple markers of gastrointestinal health, cardiovascular health, and dermatological health. These studies are published in peer-reviewed journals like Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology, Scientific Reports (Nature), and JAMA Dermatology, and are all indexed to PubMed, the central database for life science journal literature at the National Institute of Health.

To get a little more food for thought for your science-geek brain, check out this extensive page: Probiotics 101 from Seed, including the definition of probiotics, why fermented foods are good but not sufficient, and why probiotics go way beyond just digestive issues.

Ready to Get Started?

Scrape your jaw up off the floor. If you are as impressed as I am, you can get started with Seed today!
I’M READY TO SEED!

Use the code KITCHENSTEWARDSHIP to get 15% off the first month of your Daily Synbiotic subscription. 

My Review of Seed Daily Synbiotic and How it Worked for Me

Before I started Seed (which, by the way, is recommended to scale up from one a day for a few days and then up to two), I took some notes. Here’s what I wrote:

  • Cycles a bit wonky – getting longer, still heavy bleeding, breakthrough bleeding every so often. In other words, although over the past year and a half my super-irregular, super-heavy cycles had actually been showing a great deal of improvement, which I attribute to the detoxing I was doing with a practitioner, for the last three or four cycles, I was back to a serious decline in both regularity of time and that breakthrough bleeding mid-cycle, which is always alarming.
  • Fatigue? I don’t sleep well enough, so …?
  • Motivation wanes often.
  • Hair definitely falling out a lot.
  • Constipation – some days with no bowel movements, lots of little chunks through the day, usually one big bowel movement but probably Bristol level 1 or 2. 🙁 Basically back to where I always was. In other words, I had seen improvements in my constipation for about a year. I was working hard. I did a month or two of AIP and another four months completely grain-free. Have taken a bajillion supplements. Detoxing with saunas and working on my stress. For whatever reason, the end of the summer spelled doom for me, and I started to revert backward. So frustrating, and I was really hoping Seed would push me forward in the right direction again.
  • Craving sweets and junk and carbs. Doesn’t everyone just before the holidays? It was really bad for me. I just wanted cookies and candy all the time.

Note that I wasn’t looking for results from Seed for these issues, just getting a baseline on my health, which wasn’t making me happy. 

Initial Results with Seed Daily Synbiotic

All opinions are my own, observations may not be accurate due to the complexity of the human body, and others’ experience won’t necessarily be similar to mine. 

I wish I could say that after three or four days using the Seed Daily Synbiotic, I had amazing brown banana bowel movements and felt incredible energy throughout the day.

Some people do find that in less than a week they see digestive improvements, but that wasn’t the case for me.

I definitely ate a lot of junk food over the holidays which may have affected my results, ahem, cough-cough…

Seed daily synbiotic

When I evaluated in mid-December how things were going, I thought maybe things were slightly better on the poo front, but I still thought I was probably a number two on the Bristol stool chart.

Thankfully I had a two-month supply…so now we get to the exciting part!

Let me be clear that of all those probably two dozen probiotics that I’ve taken throughout the years, only one probiotic has ever really made me believe it made a difference in my health.

My Past Probiotic Experience

When I struggled with a serious Candida rash for about six months, I was able to beat it back to a certain extent, using external means, and of course, I was taking a probiotic the whole time. When I switched to a new brand of probiotics, it took about a month or two, and the rash was beaten all the way back to about a quarter-sized spot on the base of my neck.

It wasn’t until I completed an intensive program called Gut Thrive in 5 and then waited a few more months eating pretty well that the last remaining spot finally disappeared completely. 

RELATED: My final review of Gut Thrive in 5.

At the end of Gut Thrive, my rash had moved around a bit to my hands and then to my shins and it was really itchy.

I wasn’t sure if that was a reaction from bringing back foods or if I was basically chasing out some bad pathogens, so I was nervous at the time.

It all worked out in the end because that spot disappeared, so now I have the benefit of hindsight when it comes to rashes moving around during healing. (You’ll hear more about this next part of the journey coming up this winter!)

Still, from August 2018 until fall 2019, I had a quarter-plus-sized itchy spot in my left armpit – not exactly a cool place to look red and itchy, but at least I hoped if people noticed it they thought I just used a homemade deodorant with baking soda. Ha!

My Seed Daily Synbiotic Review Results

So here’s the incredible news about Seed: I was so focused on it changing my digestion and constipation that I wasn’t paying attention to the fact that perhaps my body needed something else first, and Seed apparently knew what it was.

I’ve just realized in the last few weeks, that for the first time in 16 months, that armpit spot is completely gone!!!

Seed includes 4 strains that were clinically-studied in humans to support skin health. While it isn’t meant to prevent or treat any sort of disease, I definitely recommend it based on my experience.

My review of seed daily synbiotic

Here’s the last thing I noticed: All of a sudden, the cycle that began when I was halfway through month 2 of the Daily Synbiotic was the lightest and shortest period I’ve had in years, like maybe my whole life. I have extremely heavy periods and worked to fix them, with some positive results but still a work in progress.

Besides that, I think this is shaping up to be back to a very regular 28-day cycle, which is something I never experienced until working hard on detoxing 18 months ago. Like literally never in my entire life did I have two 28-day cycles in a row before that!

Now, no one can say that Seed’s Daily Synbiotic caused this healing and regularity in my cycles, but considering that I probably can’t blame my diet of Christmas cookies and sitting around a lot in the winter, I’m giving Seed a big high five and making sure I order another refill for sure.

Shocking Poop Photos

No, don’t worry, you don’t get to see photos of my toilet, but I have two crazy announcements to make.

First, Seed is partnering with a digestion tracking app and issuing a call for poop photos.

That’s right — they’re trying to create a database of 100,000 photos of real human feces, to teach an AI to be able to help people evaluate their digestion based on their poo.

Sounds kind of gross, but I can’t tell you how excited I am about this and here’s why. I’ve looked at that darn cartoon picture of the Bristol stool chart dozens of times over the years. I’ve read the descriptions of what numbers 1 through 7 are supposed to mean.

toilet

I was confident that I’m a number two, which means I’m constipated.

I’m sure I’m still on the constipated side of things based on my poor transit time, but it wasn’t until I saw these playdough pictures of poop that I realized I might actually be at a 3, which is a much more healthy level.

Hooray!

Turns out I didn’t really need to look so closely at digestion with Seed, but what a nice surprise that so many other positive changes ended up occurring.

Now it’s Your Turn

I’m going to ask you to do three things.

  • One, go read the story on CNN about the poop photos.
  • Two, consider joining in and being part of the database. I know I’m going to, although it’s going to feel a little odd, isn’t it?
  • Three, read a little more about Seed and strongly consider trying your first month for 15% off with code KITCHENSTEWARDSHIP. 

In this crazy world where health products are marketed without any research, where influencers share anything that gives them commission without having to learn about them at all, and where it’s really, really hard to figure out sometimes if a product really makes a difference, I definitely give Seed my full endorsement.

Rest assured this is coming from someone who never shares anything without dutifully testing it. 😉

Also, this is from someone who hardly ever can connect an improvement with a particular health product or a diet attempt… But I feel pretty confident that Seed Synbiotic is making some promising forward motion in my own health and I really want you to experience this too.

Enjoy the mushroom packaging and don’t forget to throw it out in your garden, not in your garbage, and if I ever see you in the probiotic aisle at Walgreens, I’m going to ask you in a loud voice if you’ve taken a picture of your poop lately!

Hope I don’t see you there… 🙂

Have you ever seen improvement from a probiotic before? Does your family take one regularly?

Unless otherwise credited, photos are owned by the author or used with a license from Canva or Deposit Photos.

8 thoughts on “Probiotic Popularity Is Saturating the System with Sloppy Science. This Is a Better Option. {Seed Daily Synbiotic Review}”

  1. I appreciate the in-depth product review. I am looking for something internal to help with my son’s acne as topical treatment isn’t working and I won’t put him on oral antibiotics. It sounds like this brand offers targeted skin components so might be helpful. I did find your statement interesting that you have taken around two dozen different probiotics but can only identify one that provided clear health benefits. I understand the science behind probiotics, but given that lack of definite benefit and the significant cost associated with many probiotics, I would be interested to know why you continue taking them?

    1. Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship®

      Hi Kristina,
      That might be a poorly worded note – there are tons of research-backed benefits to probiotics, so it’s a no-brainer to me to take some. Seed is the only company that has actually tested THEIR formula exactly as put together, if that makes sense.

      I guarantee there are non-antibiotic options for your son, and I sure hope probiotics can be a part of your arsenal!
      Best of luck, Katie

  2. My first order of Seed did not contain the ViaCap™—a 2-in-1 capsule delivery technology. I opened the green prebiotic outer capsule on a few of mind and it was just the powder inside. Very disappointing. Not sure I will be using them or getting anymore.

    1. Carolyn @ Kitchen Stewardship

      I’d contact the company Jason. It should have a separate capsule inside.

  3. I have been taking Seed for many months but dealing with Nausea when I take two in the am on an empty stomach. What time of day did you take yours? I am reading now that it is better to take them at night before bed?

    1. Carolyn @ Kitchen Stewardship

      If you’re experiencing nausea I would definilty experiment with different times. I’d try bedtime first, and then morning. If you continue having nausea on an empty stomach you can try taking it with food or I’d say to try a different probiotic. Not every brand works for everyone. Hope that helps!

    1. Carolyn @ Kitchen Stewardship

      When you subscribe you’ll create an account on the website and can log in and change/cancel your subscription if you’re unhappy.

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