For the last of the big three supplements everyone should be taking to enhance their health this week I’m covering probiotics.
Probiotics are the healthy gut bacteria we should have in our digestive tract. They are found in foods like yogurt and should be in fermented foods like traditionally prepared sauerkraut or kimchi. The problem from getting these from foods is yogurt typically has a lot of sugar in it which favors the bad bacteria in our system. Fermented foods now have to be treated and processed in such a way that they kill off all of the bacteria in the food to make sure there are no harmful strains in them. Which is necessary, given the mass producing plants they are made in, but it also kills off all the beneficial bacteria they should have.
These are a few of the issues showing why we need to supplement our diet with probiotics but there are other reasons.
It wasn’t that long ago that if you wanted to eat a carrot you pulled it out of the ground brushed it off and ate it. Now that carrot needs to be washed, scrubbed and irradiated to make sure there is nothing on it. The problem is, a carrot grown in natural conditions had healthy soil bacteria on it that was actually beneficial to us. Given modern mass produced farmings use of pesticides and chemicals it’s no wonder our fruit and vegetables need to be cleansed before we can eat them.
The problems extend to other foods we eat. Animals raised in large commercial farms are given heavy doses of antibiotics to keep them alive in less than ideal living conditions. Traces of these antibiotics can be in the meat we eat. Plus we are taking heavy doses of antibiotics ourselves. Antibiotics are designed to kill bacteria. They do this very well and can help if someone has a severe bacterial infection, but they kill all bacteria even the good ones we need in our system. This is why the most common side effect from taking an antibiotic is digestive issues. We can’t properly digest the food we eat without these healthy bacteria.
As you can see due to our current food processing methods and antibiotic usage a supplement becomes necessary. But what benefits are there to making sure the bacteria in our digestive tract is balanced? I knew you’d ask that.
Don’t get freaked out by this stat but there are more bacterial cells in our digestive tract than there are cells in our body. These bacteria serve very important functions.
Some are crucial to make sure our food is digested and broken down so our body can use it. Others tag and identify toxins we ingest so our immune system knows how to deal with these foreign invaders. This particular function is why probiotics are so helpful in decreasing allergies.
Lets take a seasonal allergy as an example. We are all breathing the same pollen at the same time of year. Some people react by getting congested, eyes tear up, and sinuses block up and cause pressure. Others have no reaction at all and just look at the person having a reaction like they stepped out of the outbreak movie. So why the difference?
The person not having a reaction to a pollen has breathed in the pollen, some has ended up in their digestive tract and the bacteria have identified the pollen as something that is not harmful and continues along, business as usual. The person that is having a reaction to the pollen has gotten it in their system the same way but does not have the proper bacterial balance and the pollen is not identified as harmless so the body reacts by trying to purge it from entering the system. Make the nose run to flush the pollen out of the nasal cavity, make the eyes water to clear it out of that area and the overproduction backs up the sinuses.
This is one specific example of how a probiotic boosts our immune system but the same principles apply to anything our body is trying to fight off. So you can see supplementing with probiotics can supercharge your immune system. All the more important in the winter when the cold and flu are ever present.
When looking for a probiotic supplement it should have multiple strains of beneficial bacteria in it as different strains serve different functions. It should also be refrigerated. These are live cultures and if it is sitting on a shelf they won’t be viable and you’ll get no benefit. This is why the ones I stock in office are in the fridge when you look for them and are shipped overnight with ice packs.
So now we’re boosting our nervous system with multi vitamins and fish oil. Our immune system is powered up and switched on with probiotics. But there is one more supplement that is vitally important at this time of year and particularly in this part of the country.
