A Man Ate 120 Gummy Probiotics For
Lunch. This Is How His Organs Shut Down. BC is a 29 year old man, presenting to the
emergency room disoriented. He tries to tell the admitting nurse what happened. He thinks hes
talking, but words arent coming out of his mouth. BC recently had bad luck with his teeth. They
found multiple cavities. He got them filled, but some of the fillings fell out. It didnt
hurt so he didnt know, until it was too late. BC eventually needed to get multiple teeth pulled, and he needed antibiotics afterwards. The
mouth has a lot of bacteria and wounds and openings in the gums can leak those bacteria
into the bloodstream. But these antibiotics got him really sick. Water exited his body
like never before, and it wouldn’t stop. At the doctor’s office, they found out what was
happening. Huge amounts of bacteria live in our gut. We need them to be well. They help us with
metabolism, mental health, immunity, nutrition, digestion, and overall normal function.
Antibiotics are supposed to kill bacteria, so when an antibiotic is taken, especially
by mouth, some of this gut bacteria is going to get destroyed. Most of the time, the body can
handle this. Your other choice is not taking them and risk a life threatening infection. But when
things go wrong, the wrong bacteria takes over, crowding out all the other species. This
disturbs our metabolism, our mental health, our immunity, our digestion. Everything becomes
a problem. The doctor finds BC has this wrong bacteria growing in his gut. If his problem is
because of bacteria, then, clearly the solution is something that destroys bacteria, meaning,
it’s time for him to go back on antibiotics. But… antibiotics caused this. BC didn't believe
it was gonna help. He started searching online for answers. And it was here where he discovered
gummy probiotics. This would be very helpful to him because gummys are soft and they won't wreck
his mouth. Rather than kill bacteria, he found it reasonable that adding more bacteria to “crowd
out” this bad bacteria would be a viable solution. At first, he’d eat just a couple
of gummies. But the more he ate, the less loose stools he’d have. Sometimes he
would wake up and feel amazing because he had eaten 50 probiotic gummies the day before. These
were so delicious and so soft he started eating more than he should have, until he found himself
accidentally finishing a bottle in one sitting. Sometimes, he’d chew the gummies, and they’d get
stuck in the holes where his teeth used to be. One day, BC accidentally ate 120 probiotic
gummies for lunch. He continued to eat them in the days that passed. But, he didn’t feel
well. At first, he could feel a sweet taste at the back of his tongue, emerge randomly
throughout the day. Sometimes he’d stand up and feel like his insides were getting dragged
into the ground. He’d be sweaty suddenly. And then his left side started cramping. He became
dizzy and confused, and then he collapsed to the ground as he calls for 911 and he's brought
to the emergency room where we are now. At examination, the medical team notes that BC
has a fever. He’s confused and he can't answer all of their questions. Maybe something’s wrong
with his brain. A blood test finds that BC has leukocytosis. Leuko from Greek Leukos meaning
white. Cyto meaning cell. And -osis meaning a disorder of. White blood cells were floating
everywhere inside his body, much more than normal. Combined with fever, this looks like
he has an infection. If his abdomen hurts, and it’s swollen, then maybe all of this is
happening because something is growing there. BC complained of pain on his LEFT side. If you
look at the abdomen, different organs sit on the left versus the right, and different organs could
indicate that different things are happening. In a very small number of people, the inside is
transposed, a situation called Situs Inversus. But when the medical team take a look at the
CT scan, they find that BC doesnt have Situs Inversus, but rather he has Splenomegaly. Megaly
from Mega meaning large, and Spleno referring to the Spleen, an organ that sits on the left
side thats responsible for controlling the count of blood cells in your body. Clearly,
something is wrong with his spleen. If it’s responsible for controlling blood cell count,
and BC has leukocytosis, a problem of too many white blood cells floating around in his body,
then, are these associated with his splenomegaly? When the medical team look closer at the
scan image, they find that BC’s spleen is also starving of oxygen. So, is it swollen
because it’s starving of oxygen? Or is it starving of oxygen because it’s swollen?
But even worse, why is this happening? Well, the simplest case is that the blood supply
to his spleen is being blocked. The medical team dont really know anything else about him except
that he’s young at 29 years old and that he has no known preexisting health problems. They
would have no idea about anything regarding his teeth because dental records are separate
from medical records in the United States. If we keep going with the simplest
explanation, we could think that the blood supply to BC’s spleen is being blocked by
a blood clot. This is when blood pools together and becomes a jelly like substance that can
make flow through a narrow artery difficult. But if this was what was happening,
where did that blood clot come from? This brings us back to his blood test.
It indicated that BC might have had an infection. When the body detects bacteria that’s
not supposed to be inside , it activates the immune system. Sometimes, when the
body is in this inflammatory state, it can cause blood clots to form. But did the
infection cause the blood clot? And if so, what kind of infections, block
blood flow to the spleen? When the medical team listened to his heart,
they noticed it was making sounds that it wasnt supposed to make. The heart has 4 chambers.
Blood needs to move forward in the body. You dont want it flowing backwards. The heart solves
this problem by having valves at the exit of each chamber that open and close during each
heart beat. The opening and closing of these valves is what makes the normal heart beat
sound. If there’s abnormal sounds being made, then maybe there’s a problem with his valves.
There might be some blood flowing backwards. The medical team took a probe and sent
it down BC’s throat. This machine will send sound waves into his heart to create
an image of what’s happening and causing these sounds. And what they found,
told them what they needed to know. When the medical team looked at the images of
BC’s heart, they found a vegetation growing all over the valve where his heart connects to the
aorta, the largest artery in the body that carries oxygenated blood everywhere. This means that PART
OF his heart has bacteria growing all over inside of it. In the ensuing inflammation, a blood clot
was spawned. When it got pumped through the body, it landed in the blood vessel going to the spleen,
blocking blood flow and starving it of oxygen, causing it to swell. All of this meaning that
BC has Infective Endocarditis. Endo meaning on the inside. Card from Cardio referring to the
heart and -itis meaning an inflammation of, or in this case, an infection. An
infection happening inside his heart. The vegetation was large. When
bacteria grows in the heart, the mass formed is made not only of bacteria, but
also of blood proteins and platelets. This makes the vegetation “hard” and it’s a problem
because it makes it very difficult for antibiotics to penetrate through and act on the
bacteria. Even if the bacteria can be destroyed, it might not remove the vegetation, which is
physically contributing to BC’s heart failure. But what can remove the vegetation, is
actually going in and taking it out. Surgeons look at BC. The aortic valve is close
to other valves in the heart. Because of this proximity, infection can spread, and they
noticed that BC’s vegetation was floppy, physically touching the other valve,
spreading the bacteria all over. Because he was young and previously healthy, they
were able to recommend him for surgery so that they could go in and repair the
valves. But what about his spleen? The medical team had taken part of his
blood sample and put it on a Petri dish so any bacteria that might be in his blood can
grow. They took a few different samples and days later when they looked at the results, they found
it was the bacteria Lactobacillus paracasei in his blood. This is the bacteria that was infecting and
growing in his heart. But where did it come from? On the bottle of his gummy probiotics, listed
as an active ingredient was… Lactobacillus paracasei. By this time, the medical team knew
about BC’s troubled dental past. They knew that he recently had work done to his teeth. And they
know that the sheer amount of gummy probiotics he was eating, exposed him to an extreme
amount of this particular microorganism. Lactobacillus is a genus,
a group, of bacteria that are generally thought to be benign. They
don’t typically do bad things in the body, actually they’re pretty normal.
You can find them inside, and on, every human. They’re in regular dairy products.
Probiotic products have them because they’re part of the normal gut microbiome.
Gummy supplements are interesting because they’ve exploded onto the scene in the last 15
years. It’s well known that people don’t adhere to their medication schedule. Sometimes it’s by
accident. Sometimes you just dont want to take it. But non adherence is more than 50% of people.
By being candy, with a pleasing and soft texture, gummies aim to make a treat out of something
you wouldn’t otherwise want to take. In the United States, these are mostly limited
to supplements, because the gummy version of medicines would have to go through another
round of FDA approval. And minimizing the chance of someone NOT taking something they need, could
increase the chance that they take too much of it. This is something we can find a lot of information
in search. And something that helps me organize my thoughts when I search is Opera, who helped make
this video possible. Opera’s an internet browser that I’ve been using for a while now, and it’s
my favorite because of how organized it keeps me. When I’m on the computer, there’s so many choices
of things to do, it’s easy to get side-tracked, but Opera’s Workspaces helps keep me focused.
I have a Workspace for each video I am working on. Inside, I can easily organize tabs with Tab
Islands, which can collapse saving space. When I need to communicate with my team, Messengers are
integrated into the sidebar, no extensions needed, no need to switch applications. And while I am
doing all of this, Opera also has music player integrated, right next to the Messengers, where
you can login to Apple Music, Spotify, Soundcloud, YouTube Music. There's also Aria AI, which can
help give me some inspiration when I’m looking for something. Honestly, I think it's worth switching
over for just the sidebar alone. I recommend checking it out, and you can download it now by
clicking my link in the description. It's free. When the bacteria in BC’s blood was cultured
and grown, the laboratory tested to see which antibiotics act on that bacteria. This
helps the medical team know which antibiotic is the right one for BC at this particular
time. And as they switch him over to this, the septic blood clot blocking blood flow to
his spleen no longer becomes a problem. But the antibiotics alone arent enough to
rid BC of the vegetation in his heart. Antibiotics are known to cause reactions in
people sometimes. We see it in the hospital, where certain antibiotics are sometimes
given out like water. On the flip side, you dont give antibiotics in time,
and the patient’s infection spreads everywhere in their body and they
become critically ill. Which one do you choose? BC’s reaction of ingesting
so much probiotic product was intense. But.. what exactly happened? Well, your mouth has
a rich supply of blood going to it, and there’s a lot of blood coming from it going back to the
heart. In the setting of getting teeth pulled, the trauma to the gums causes some of that mouth
bacteria to get into the blood stream. Most of the time, the immune system and the antibiotics
you get will catch this. But sometimes, bacteria will find fatty plaques on the blood
vessels, and it will stick to them. Other times, the bacteria can stick onto abnormal heart
valves. It can inflame it, causing a vegetation to form. BC’s case is one of excess. It
should be obvious to most people that an excessive bacterial load like
eating 120 gummy probiotics might cause some problems. Even
the supplement bottles tell you “Take only as directed. Do Not Exceed suggested
dosage.” But how much is too much? Do you remember that lactobacillus are found
in dairy products? Well, in an extreme example, someone who had gotten a stem cell transplant,
got severely ill with an infection spreading throughout their whole body after eating
just 1 cup of probiotic yogurt daily for just 7 days. And the bacteria found to cause the
infection, was found to be from the yogurt. In a scarier example, someone with no risk
factors at all, ate a cup of probiotic yogurt everyday for 2.5 years, and got
endocarditis from bacteria found in that yogurt. There’s other cases out there where the person
doesnt even remember what dairy they consumed, only that they did, and they had Lactobacillus
endocarditis. To me, those are so much scarier than BC’s situation, because BC was blatantly
obvious to gross excess. These others were just people living their regular lives. So the answer
to "how much is too much?" is largely unanswered. Now is that to say never eat yogurt ever
again? NO. I still eat mine every morning. Sometimes 2. For endocarditis, risk factors
include things like diabetes, liver disease, immunocompromise, structural heart disease. Do
you want to just totally avoid probiotics and yogurt and diary after a dental operation?
You’re going to want to ask your dentist, but im pretty sure at least, they won't suggest
you eat an entire bottle of gummy probiotics.
BC did have the risk factor of dental
operation, compounded with poor dental care. He might have had poor dental
hygiene too. That may not all be his fault, some people really do have bad luck with
their teeth, for whatever reason. Ironically, the reason he went to probiotics was
to get away from antibiotics. But in the end he needed to be given antibiotics in the
hospital to manage his Infectious Endocarditis.
BC’s aortic valve was replaced. After the surgery,
he received care from a medical team that was able to quickly identify what was happening to him.
They continued his antibiotics for a few more weeks. At checkup 1 year after the operation, BC
was doing well as he was able to make A recovery. This footage, just the reenactment to give
you the visual, is me, eating actual gummy probiotics for this video. They are very
delicious. I had 20 in 1 sitting, but I spat out almost all of it out. However, these
have billions of units of bacteria per gummy, and I know for sure there was a nontrivial
amount of this probiotic bacteria that made it into my gut. And the reason I know that
is because for the entire week afterwards, I would get a really sweet taste that would just
randomly emerge from the back of my tongue. You can’t say that it was the sugar from the gummies
because I didnt have any for a week afterwards and this sweet taste would repeatedly reemerge several
days later, becoming a bitter, metallic taste. My sleep was thrown off. My dreams were the weirdest
they’ve been since… I ate a bunch of fiber gummies last year, for a video I don’t know if I’ll
ever publish. Or if I do, you might find it on Nebula. These clearly had an effect on me, but nothing like BC’s case. Please be careful with them, if you feel you absolutely need them. Thanks so much for watching. Take care of yourself. And be well.
