Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post! I’ve been paying for my own orders. But if Seed would like to sponsor a post I’d love a lifetime’s supply of seed. 😂
I’m a beautiful b**tard. Well not exactly… but I do watch Phil DeFranco’s videos and one of the sponsors was Seed Probiotics.
Now I have an awful digestive system thanks to the Canadian medical system. Don’t get me wrong, I love OHIP; but the system also has its flaws. And one of the flaws is awful doctors. I ended up with one the year I moved to Toronto. The doctor prescribed some pretty strong antibiotics without an anatacid or a probiotic, and I ended up on the floor of the bathroom a week into a course of antiobiotics. My gut biome had been well… gutted and I’ve had severe acid reflux ever since. I was also diagnosed with an e-difficile infection. I spent a year eating bread & jam and oatmeal for breakfast, and rice and yogurt for my lunch and dinner, gradually introducing spices and acid slowly into my diet 6 months into my bland diet. For the last 3 – 4 years I’ve survived on Activia Probiotic shots. I’ve tried every type of probiotic — Pills and probiotic drinks, but so far Activia has worked for me. There’s a strain of bacteria in Activia (and in Seed) that seems to help me: lactobacillus reuteri.
I’m always looking for a better probiotic and a better quality of life. I still cannot eat anything with vinegar or lemon or extremely spicy foods. I cannot have tomato based pasta for more than once a day. I cannot drink coffee or milk with lactose. If I don’t have my daily dose of probiotics, I get acid reflux in 2 – 3 days. I dream of the day I can go back to normal but I think the antibiotics have done some irreversible damage.
So when I came across Seed on Philip’s channel, I was interested. I’m a skeptic; there’s no magic pill to cure e-difficile or restore your gut biome. Most probiotics are temporary, so is Seed. But I decided to give it a shot. I did some sleuthing and found a coupon code that discounts the cost of the pills for the first month. I had to pay for shipping and taxes which weren’t much.
Placing an Order
Placing the order was fairly easy: you register, provide your credit card details and place an order. The problem was that it took forever to be shipped to Toronto. Now that seems to be situation lately for orders from the US so I wasn’t surprised.
The order came with a sealed glass bottle with 60 pills and an additional travel bottle that was empty. I liked the way it was packaged and the frosted glass bottle is very pretty.
My experience with the product
As per the instructions, I took one pill every morning for 3 days as soon as I woke up and then bumped it up to 2 per day. The first two days I was fine, but by the third day I started getting acid reflux when I had only the pills and then waited to have breakfast an hour later. I changed it up to have the pills as soon as I woke up but I followed it up with breakfast (which was usually a smoothie). The first few days were a bit difficult and to me it felt like the pills weren’t helping with my digestive problems. What gave me relief was adding back the Activia probiotic shot to my diet. Looks like this pill isn’t enough probiotic for an extreme case like mine.
As I started having the pills every day I started noticing a few changes. My digestive problems reduced. I still can’t have caffeinated coffee, but I could tolerate milk with lactose in it for a day or two. The combination of Seed and Activia did a great job of almost normalizing my body.
What I also noticed was that my skin got better and I was able to manage my weight better. Now I don’t have scientific proof for this and I’m as skeptical as you are about this. It could just be a placebo effect but I’m not sure because I was skeptical even before I started taking the pills.
After 2 years of Covid acne scarring my face, I felt relief when I started taking Seed. Again, this could be a placebo effect or this effect it has on my skin may not last, but as long as it does, it’s good. The same goes for weight management, no matter how bad my diet was, when I started taking seed I didn’t put on weight as quickly as when I wasn’t taking Seed. Now this could just be bloating that was kept at bay and not actual weight management, but it felt good.
A month off of the pills
Because of how long shipping takes and because I was sure I was going to continue with Seed, I had deferred my next shipment. Which meant that I spent a month without the pills, which I was fine with because it would help me test if what I was experiencing was the placebo effect.
Off the pill, I was fine for the first few days. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to purchase more. And then gastro problems began. I couldn’t eat some foods without experiencing discomfort. Around a week into being off the pills, my acne resurfaced and I started feeling bloated (or fat) again. An example of this is that while I was taking the pills, my arms looked slimmer. While I stopped it I started gaining arm fat. I was following the same diet and same exercise. While it wasn’t a drastic difference, I could tell the difference — my chicken wings were larger and flappier. I found it difficult to tone my body.
I quickly scheduled the next shipment and decided to continue taking the pills.
Will I continue buying it?
Here’s a summary of my experience:
What I liked
- Perceived toning and skincare benefits. I’m still skeptical about this
- The packaging is so pretty and fancy. I think I need a peignoir to be truly deserving of it!
What I didn’t like
- It is expensive. It costs me US$ 149.97 for 3 months + US$ 10 shipping + US$ 6.50 for duties. That comes up to US$ 166.47 or ~CA $217.05 or CA$ 2.41 per day. When you add that to the cost of an Activia Probiotic Dailies which comes up to a CA Dollar a day (91 cents + tax), my average cost per day shoots up to CA$ 3.41
- This isn’t one pill solution for me. I do need to add an Activia to my diet for better digestive health
- It is temporary and doesn’t last long. It won’t completely heal the biome in my body. I won’t be able to stop taking it a year from now because my body is back to normal.
So while I continue buying it? For now, yes. But I will also be trying other options like Ritual and BioGaia in some time. I’m looking for a lasting solution and I’d rather have something that fixes my body than a temporary fix.
Should you buy it?
Maybe. If you haven’t found relief with other probiotics it’s worth a try. What works for me may not work for you. If you’re in the US it may be worth it, but if you’re outside, I’m not sure if the shipping cost is worth it.
If you do choose to purchase it, be sure of what you want from the product and manage your expectations. As I mentioned earlier, there isn’t a magic pill to fix your gut.