Tired of getting sick?

Probiotics are live microorganisms and bacteria that naturally live in everyone’s digestive tract.  Different from harmful bacteria like E. Coli, probiotics help your body to keep the intestinal lining clean, regulate the immune system, and break down and absorb nutrients.

Probiotic Depletion

While our bodies are capable of absorbing and building their own probiotics, many people’s diets today lead to a depletion of those bacteria.  Chlorine and sodium fluoride, which are both added to most cities’ drinking water, alcohol, medicinal antibiotics, birth control pills, processed foods, and chemicals in foods all contribute to the decline of helpful intestinal bacteria.

This decline of probiotics in our system can lead to indigestion, diarrhea, irritable bowl syndrome (IBS), and chronic inflammation – the root cause of diabetes and heart disease.

You mean I shouldn’t take antibiotics?

When properly utilized, antibiotics help to fight infection by killing bacteria that make us sick when our bodies’ ability to fight them has been overwhelmed.  The problem is antiobiotics also kill the good bacteria that support our bodies.  This doesn’t mean that antiobiotics do more harm than good–to the contrary they save people’s lives everyday.  What is important is helping our body to rebuild the good bacteria before, during, and after a round of antibiotic treatment by taking both.  Taking probiotics a few hours before the antibiotics seems to be a helpful practice.

Some argue that if our bodies’ immune system is balanced with a healthy level of probiotic bacteria the likelihood of getting a serious infection is significantly decreased.  Even so, antibiotics still maintain a helpful role when used in the proper circumstances.

Increasing the good bacteria

Supplements

Probiotics are available in both capsule and powder form.  In the last decade some probiotic supplements have been found to have fewer bacteria than is printed on their labels, a practice that is detrimental to the many honest suppliers of supplements.  We work to research all of the probiotics we sell to weed these out of our store.

Food

Probiotics are also present in foods, especially those that are fermented.  Western staples like yogurt, sauerkraut, and kefir are all excellent sources of probiotics.  Fermented foods also come to us from Asia, among the most well known being miso soup from Japan.  Tempeh is another popular food from Indonesia, a mild-tasting soy product which can be marinated and stir-fried and absorbs flavors well.  Tofu is another well-known soy-based Asian food packed with probiotics.

Customers avoiding soy need not worry about fermented soy products: the fermenting process destroys the harmful phytic acid in soy and adds the beneficial probiotic bacteria.

The importance of Diet

While supplement and probiotic-rich foods help to build helpful bacteria, both must be coupled with a nutritious diet that does not counteract the benefits.  In addition to the above foods, fresh fruits and vegetables, avoiding processed foods, decreasing alcohol consumption and drinking bottled or filtered water all help to encourage probiotic bacteria to stay in our bodies and continue to help us.

Further Reading

• Is soy/tofu good or bad for you?via Mindful Eats
• Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods by Sandor Ellix Katz
• Top probiotic foods you are not eating via The Conscious Life
• In depth information on what probiotics are and where you find them at Medicine Net