Over the last 20 years or so there have been a number of studies done in both Europe and the United States to see if probiotics can help people with lactose intolerance digest lactose more easily and alleviate the symptoms of lactose intolerance.

First let’s take a look at what probiotics are, they are living organisms that should be present in your intestines that are there to help keep your digestive system healthy. In some people there are not enough of them to do the job so they buy them as a supplement or buy foods that have the live cultures in them. Foods like yogurts are a good source of them and brands like Activa advertise themselves as having probiotics in them.

The tests showed overall that the use of probiotics did not conclusively change the lactose intolerance in the majority of test subjects. It did however vary significantly depending on the strain of probiotics being used and was more successful in some people than others. One thing that was noted was that more people became less intolerant if they consumed active cultures from sources such as yogurt of other fermented dairy products as compared to milk that had acidophilus added to it.

For the most part it would seem from the reports available that there is still much testing to be done in this area to be able to provide any reliable and conclusive results.  However the use of fermented dairy products to ensure sufficient calcium intake in lactose intolerant children does seem in many tests to have reduced the amount of diarrhea and irritable bowel syndrome they suffered from during the test period. Researchers say that although there is much research still to be done the results so far show some promise.

In the end it is up to each individual lactose intolerant person to perform their own test using probiotics to see if it helps them with the symptoms. This is the only way that they will know for themselves if probiotics help or not. However you should make sure that the probiotics you are using contain only live cultures whether you get them in foods or in pill form.