The Wondrous World of ProBiotics
Benefits you don't want to miss out on!
Healthy Eating = Avoiding Excess Sugar
Probiotics (from pro and biota, meaning “for life”) are active micro-organisms (bacteria and yeasts) that truly add benefit to your health and well-being.
While your body cannot produce Probiotics on its own, Probiotic supplements help keep your “good” and “bad” bacteria in check and are especially beneficial when your body loses good bacteria to antibiotics. These happy, healthy bacteria have been studied at length for their intestinal and digestive health benefits for years, but hardly ever recognized for all the additional benefits they provide to aid in overall health and weight loss.
Important Types of Probiotics
The two most common groups of probiotic bacteria are: Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium , and are typically praised for their help in maintaining stomach and intestinal health.
“Lactobacillus strains predominantly live in the mouth, small intestine, and vagina. They greatly benefit digestion by producing enzymes that break down food (assisting in the absorption of vitamins K and B, calcium, and fatty acids), and protecting against infection and disease by lowering the pH of the gut to make it uninhabitable by bad bacteria.
Bifidobacterium predominantly lives in the large intestine and vagina, and adheres themselves to the walls of each, thus preventing bad bacteria from building. Bifidum also produces substances that lower the pH of their environment so bad bacteria cannot thrive, and enhances the assimilation of minerals.”
Probiotics and Weight Loss
Probiotics are known to be full of nutrients that are beneficial to our bodies and have even been used as a remedy for women with urinary tract infections and children with diarrhea, to postpone allergies in children, and even assist adults in weight loss. How is that you ask?
Inside your gut, there is an entire ecosystem that ultimately keeps your body running. Its success is based on a number of factors, with dietary factors and consumption being the main ones. And these factors have huge impacts on your weight loss and gain.
Many physicians believe that specific probiotics can assist with weight loss because they make your intestinal walls thicker, and more difficult for molecules that support obesity and type 2 diabetes to get in your bloodstream, ultimately acting as a filter.
Which Probiotics give you the benefits
The probiotic hype is right -- our bodies don’t create these gems in our bodies. In other words, we must consume probiotics to get them. Yogurt with live cultures and fermented vegetables are good sources as are supplements – just be sure they are of high quality and of the correct strain to achieve your goals.
Probiotics are strain-specific, and not all strains are necessarily useful. Do your homework and if you do have a bacterial infection or have a serious illness be sure to see your physician and discuss probiotics along with his or her recommended treatment. Probiotics may be dangerous for people with weakened immune systems.
Some conditions which may be helped by Probiotics:
Childhood diarrhea
Preventing antibiotic-associated diarrhea and infectious diarrhea
Symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome
Vaginitis
Aid in digestion and metabolism
Diarrhea caused by C. difficile bacteria
Treating Crohn’s disease
Treating ulcerative colitis
Treating necrotizing enterocolitis, a type of infection and inflammation of the intestines mostly seen in infants
Preventing pouchitis, an inflammation of the intestines that can follow intestinal surgery
Treating and preventing eczema associated with cow’s milk allergy
Aiding the immune system
Just one question...
How DO they count all those little micro-organisms?! 100 Billion! :- )
