One of the frequent questions that I am asked is when and how the De Simone formulation was invented. Well, about 30 years ago, I had the idea of working on a series of products containing lactic acid bacteria, and this is, the current one available is of the many formulas that I have developed. The idea came from the observation that there are many, many bacteria in the intestine and that at the time the available products were unable to provide an adequate amount of beneficial bacteria.

Making 2 calculations it came to my attention that we were under dosed, and therefore I decided to develop a formulation that in a tiny sachet would contain as many bacteria as possible in one gram. The magic number was 450 billion. How many strains? 8 strains, not one more, not one less. Why this number? Because it has to be a team, each strain has its own immunological, biochemical characteristics, and put together they should work in synergy, not as a sum of bacteria.

To be sure that the formulation was effective, it was proven in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases. What are inflammatory bowel diseases: they are ulcerative colitis, pouchitis, Crohn’s disease.

What’s interesting is that in these situations you really can see if the product works or not, there are no alternatives, there is no placebo effect. What we can say now after so many years is that this formulation is currently accepted, and accepted by doctors and is present in the guidelines of the American Gastroenterology Association, the British, German and European ones, the formulation is successful because it works, because It is effective and because it improves the quality of life of patients with inflammatory bowel diseases.