Ever since having a young child who crawls around the floor and licks/touches/eats everything regardless of how dirty it is, I’ve noticed that I have become sick with A LOT more frequency. It seems like all that good immunity I have built up over the years has gone right out the window! In an attempt to reverse the effects of this change in my healthy lifestyle, I decided to start taking a probiotic and it has made a huge difference.
Probiotics are healthy, “good” bacteria and yeasts that live in our guts. Probiotics are found naturally in our intestines although they can be disrupted from external factors like stress and antibiotics.
Current research shows that probiotics can help:
Probiotics are found naturally in some of the foods we eat like:
Eating these foods can help increase the amount of probiotics in your body and therefore, increase the benefits of the probiotics!
It depends! A probiotic supplement can help replace the good bacteria in your body if you have lost some recently due to medication or other factors. They can also help balance the good and bad bacteria in your body, perhaps better than your body is able to do on its own. As with any supplement or medication, you should talk to your doctor before adding them to your daily routine. This is especially true since the FDA doesn’t regulate probiotics like they do medicines so the standards are not as strict. If you do decide to take a supplement, look for one that contains at least 30 billion probiotics, typically lactobacillus or bifidobacterium.
So as you can see, probiotics have a lot of advantages and some people can really benefit from taking a supplement. I know for me it has made a huge difference! What do you think about probiotics?
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Holly Nilson
March 29, 2017This post is very clear and informative. I am processing this information and I think I need a probiotic, too. A couple of the foods–I’ve never heard of: keifer and tempeh. Thanks for the info!