I'm going to chime in here since it's my comment that is being stupidly attacked, in my opinion anyway. First of all, I have a bachelor's degree in Health Science Pre-Medicine, a master's degree in Animal Health Science, and my classroom year of my master's degree in Physician Assistant studies, along with years working at the Animal Diagnostics Lab at Penn State. I'm not telling you this for any other reason than to prove that I'm not just shouting out things without an education or experience in practical application, and I also wasn't in any way "suggesting that antifungals or medical treatment be replaced with probiotics" as someone else suggested. That just sound like you didn't read my prior post to that one in the original thread, which I'm sure you didn't since the OP only posted my final post. Of course...My point was not to EVER try to suggest that anyone replace medical treatment with holistic treatments, hell, I'm the last person to suggest that, I just told Tracie the other day that she's just now influencing me to try a more holistic approach to medicine, and you know why? Because I have recently tried some things with my 6 month old dragon who has had a horrible infestation of pinworms, and guess what, THEY WORKED FOR HIM. Typically though, due to my education and history in the professional veterinary and human medical fields, I have rejected holistic medicine because I always have gone to the treatments "That are proven". Well like in this particular dragon's case, "Proven Medicine" had made her more and more sick. Tater, the point I was trying to make regarding the antifungal was that the poor owners had a dragon who had already been through the ringer, taken many prescription meds, and then acquired a yeast infection on top of everything else, secondary to the antibiotics it had already taken. So what I was trying to say was "What are their options here, they can put the dragon on yet ANOTHER prescription medication, an antifungal to treat the yeast infection that was caused by the prior multiple rounds of prescription meds, and then they'd be risking the dragon losing their appetite again, or they could spend $6 at Walmart and buy the Digestive Enzyme/Probiotic tablets that my own dragon has had great success with. Those were their options. So what was the harm of trying the latter first, since the poor dragon had already basically been poisoned by so many unnecessary meds prescribed by multiple vets. So Tater I'm sorry you didn't get to read the entire thread about this dragon, nor my post prior to this one that this OP posted. Bottom Line, I was offering an alternative to the dragon's owner instead of putting her on yet another medication, which they were not happy at all about doing.
My first post simply suggested trying probiotics, not in place of anything else, but simply to try to help replace the normal gut flora, which was also suggested by Tracie, who also endorses the use of probiotics in dragons. After I made that suggestion I said that it couldn't hurt anything to try probiotics, as they absolutely have helped a lot of dragons get their appetites back relatively quickly. Then the OP said that "The hurt is financial, probiotics are expensive and they're not proven to help, so it could hurt people who don't have the money to try something that isn't proven to work"...The OP was defensive out of no where. That's when I wrote the post that has been copied here. And again I'll ask, why not try everything, especially something that is known to help many dragons, people, other mammals, birds, etc. and doesn't cause a bit of physical harm?
I'll be the first to admit that I have always live in the US and have zero knowledge of what probiotics cost elsewhere in the world, but in the US they are not at all expensive, and I listed the ones that I use the most for my dragons, specifically the Spring Valley brand called "Multi-Enzyme Probiotics", which is a tablet that consists of several naturally occurring digestive enzymes as well as several prebiotics and probiotics. I as well as many others have had great luck both personally and professionally with giving probiotics to both my dragons and my parrots, specifically before, during, and after they have been getting antibiotic therapy. Are there journal articles or "scientific studies" (I'm not sure what exactly the OP wants as "Proof", but I'm assuming something by the way of a medical journal article describing a controlled study, if I'm wrong please let me know exactly what it is that you'd like as "Proof", I may not be understanding that correctly). Are there FDA controlled studies? Probably not.
I'll be honest, I never looked for any as I never came back to that thread to follow this, I just happened upon the OP's "Warning" to every person that comes on this forum to not even TRY giving your dragon probiotics or bee pollen (I didn't discuss Bee Pollen, but I do use it as well as an appetite stimulant). I'm sorry, but I have to be honest here, I think you are being extremely irresponsible and honestly unnecessarily defensive by actually adding a "Warning" to people in your forum signature, telling them to basically not even try giving their dragons a Probiotics if their appetite has disappeared after taking prescription meds, or for any other reason. I'm sorry that probiotics are so expensive in Australia, I wasn't aware of that, but I have to ask you a serious question: Since when do natural remedies absolutely not work at all if the FDA has not yet done any official, controlled studies on them? (I don't know, maybe they have, I haven't looked yet) Since when is it responsible to actually go on a mission to tell people to not take a natural supplement because you "Haven't gotten empirical data yet"? So you're actually willing to make the statement that since there is no "empirical data" or "official, controlled studies" showing that probiotics offer benefits to bearded dragons when taken to replace normal gut flora after antibiotic therapy, that no one should even try them? You want proof, well to me the best proof that a medication, herbal supplement, vitamin, mineral, or any holistic treatment works is when many, many people have used it with successful results. That's the best proof in the world. And the fact that there is absolutely no negative physical consequence to the dragon by trying the probiotics, then this is the best proof of all. It would be different if we were talking about something that has been shown to potentially cause negative results or side-effects, I wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place then. But that's just not the case with probiotics or bee pollen.
All "official" or "proven" medications start somewhere, and many, many medications that are now only available with a prescription have started out as over-the-counter medications or natural supplements. Actually a very high percentage have started that way. You don't have to use Bee Pollen or Probiotics yourself, and you don't have to give them to your dragon if you don't want to, though if you had a dragon that had been on several rounds of prescription meds and then lost their appetite completely (as many do) , and then started to lose weight and become lethargic, and your vet just gave you Critical Care and a vitamin injection and told you to keep force-feeding him, I know you'd be extremely worried, but would you actually refuse to not even try giving him a probiotic, while you know that it absolutely has helped quite a lot of beardies get their appetites back in this same situation? I certainly hope that you're not so dependent on "empirical data" and "controlled studies" that you would totally ignore a safe treatment that presents no negative side effects and has truly been proven by many experienced dragon owners (and a lot of Certified Reptile Vets, like mine of 15 years) to help.
EDIT: Just to add, I don't want to fight with you or anyone else, that's exactly the reason I never went back to that thread. The last thing I saw you write was something like "So where's that scientific proof you promised?' After I read that I never went back into the thread because it's silly for the two of us, myself included, to argue over something so silly. I have no issue at all having a mature, educated discussion about this, but I never meant this to be a challenge, and even if you didn't mean it that way, that's the way I took it. I just couldn't understand why you got so angry and actually more defensive than anything, with me and other very educated, experienced people who backed-up what I said regarding probiotics. You don't have to use them, but you also don't have to be on a mission to try to stop other people from trying them with their sick dragons who aren't eating or are developing secondary yeast infections after taking prescription meds. You could very well be stopping the owner of a sick dragon from buying a $6 bottle of Digestive Enzymes and Probiotics that could very likely help their dragon after just a couple of days of taking them.