Probiotics

1/18/2008

Does a probiotic a day keep the doctor away? I think it’s possible. I’m a big fan of probiotic foods and supplements for both getting and staying healthy.

What are probiotics? Essentially, they’re supplements of helpful bacteria. We share our bodies with up to a thousand different varieties of “good bugs” that perform important functions, such as digesting our food, maintaining stool quality, producing vitamins, neutralizing toxins, and protecting us from infectious disease. An essential part of our immune system, most of these bacteria live in the intestines, although they’re also found on the skin and in the mouth.

These healthy bacteria are meant to keep disease-causing bacteria in check. But our modern lifestyle and overuse of antibiotics can upset the balance of good and bad bacteria in our bodies. Probiotics restore the natural order of things, gastrointestinally speaking.

I recommend probiotics to:

• repopulate the gut during and after a course of antibiotics
• treat childhood eczema, infectious diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome, and inflammatory bowel disease
• prevent dental caries, traveler’s diarrhea, and possibly the development of allergic conditions.
• strengthen immunity

You can get probiotics from supplements, from some infant formulas, and from cultured dairy foods such as yogurt, acidophilus milk, and kefir. Look for Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, two species of good bugs with strong research behind them.

What should you know when buying a probiotic?

• Look for foods or supplements with billions of colony-forming units (CFUs) of the best-studied species.
• Look for enteric-coated supplements that can survive the stomach’s acidity to arrive alive in the intestine. (This effect is buffered naturally in dairy products.)
• Consider taking a prebiotic with your probiotic. These non-absorbent sugars (usually fructose oligosaccarides, or FOS) provide the food to help probiotics get established.

There’s good research supporting the very significant effects of probiotics on the immune cells and proper body function. Current studies are also looking at possible protective effects of probiotics against cancer and heart disease. There may come a day when we all take a probiotic as routinely as we do our daily multivitamin.