1 billion is pretty low...crappy probiotic right there... a lot of good products have 10 billion
Actually, the effective number of organisms depends on the specificity of the strain. KE-99 is extremely strong and hearty, and does not require a massive amount of colony forming units to effectively populate the intestines. In addition, one of the reasons other products use so many organisms is the fact that freeze-drying (the standard method of powdering and encapsulation) causes the death of many of the organisms, as well as doing nothing to protect the organisms from both the acidic environment of the stomach and the protease enzymes that are meant to break down proteins, such as contained in organisms.
The main reason you see so many organisms in inferior products is that they are HOPING that some of the organisms make it through the gastric environment intact in order to influence the population of the intestine. We simply do not need that many organisms in order to be effective, given the patented superiority of the strain and the enteric coating of the capsules.
