Hey everyone!

I was shopping around one of my local health food stores, and came across a brand of organic kefir. Now I know that several folks here have said that homemade kefir is best (less sugar), but I wanted to do a "test drive" with some to see how well I would react to it, especially the plain kind using "raw" cow's milk.

The controversy is about the sugars. A typical serving (1 cup or 240 ml) appears to contain up to 10 grams of sugar. This is offset by the advantages of getting the lactobacilli, acetobactor, Leuconostocs, lactococci, yeasts, ect into you to colonize in your intestines as opposed to yogurt or general probiotics that are only transitory, or cannot survive to make it to your intestinal tracts.

The other issue, is of course, whether or not I'll be able to tolerate the milk, but since this is an experiment, and most of the lactose in the milk is broken down, I decided to take the chance.

So after having taken my antifungals and eaten a decent meal, I had the kefir drink as "dessert", drinking slowly only half a serving. There were no immediate effects, though the kefir tastes better and definitately different than yogurt!

Througout much of the night while preparing for bed, there still was little or no effects, other than having a "full" and satisfied feeling in my stomach. No foggy-head, no cramps or aches in the muscles, only a light to moderate amount of dry skin about the palms of my hands.

Just a couple hours after the drink, I did experiance a slight amount of bloating and gas. Nothing too serious, but it did continue off and on throughout the night and into the early morning hours. This has since gone away.

Throughout my work day, I noticed no signficant pain, and I felt fairly energetic and upbeat. No depression. Dry skin persisted, but otherwise am okay. :-)

Is this due to the kefir or just because I had a good, solid meal last night, and a goog moderate lunch? Was not able to get as much water in me due to a lack of available purified water, which might have contributed to the drop in bowel movements (possible also due to the kefir "good bugs" fighting it out with the Yeast Beast).

So far a fairly positive result and only at most minimal slideback!

Has anyone else had similar experiances?