Probiotics and Prebiotics – Recommended best products
What is Probiotics?
Probiotics are friendly good bacteria that line the intestinal tract. Our gut hosts around 100 trillion of probiotic bacteria, more than 10 times the number of cells in your entire body.
Probiotics are important to your health including
- helping digestion,
- regulating the immune system,
- reducing inflammation,
- reducing the formation of cancer-causing agents.
- healthy mind and mood, since majority of serotonin are produced in your gut, not brain.
Fermented foods such as yogurt, sauerkraut and beer are rich in probiotic bacteria.
The best time to take probiotic supplement is in empty stomach, when less acid is in your stomach. Take it 15-20 minutes before meal.
What is Prebiotics?
Prebiotics is the food the probiotic bacteria eat. They are FOS (fructooligosaccharide) and Inulin. Prebiotics nourish only good bacteria.
Prebiotics are soluble fiber and only found in plants, mostly vegetables such as asparagus, leeks, yams and others.
Your diet, what to eat, what to avoid
Since bad bacteria, funguses and yeast feed on sugar, it is important to eliminate sugar, fruit juices and artificial sweeteners from your diet.
Commercially produced Yogurt & Kefir are not good. The reasons are
- Starting material is pasteurized milk,
- Typically sugar or artificial sweeteners are added
- They contain such a small quantities of culture.
If you’d like to consume healthy yogurt or kefir, it is the best to make your own.
It is important to keep away anything that kills good probiotic bacteria.
You should:
- Filter drinking water to eliminate chlorine and other toxic chemicals
- Do not use anti-bacterial soap
- Eat Organic food. Pesticide kills good bacteria.
How to choose probiotics
Dr. David Williams says
My interpretation of the research to date has convinced me that it’s not the total number of bacteria in a product that is most important; it’s the number of different strains of bacteria it includes.
Because the different strains of probiotic bacteria have slightly different functions and are concentrated in various places along the digestive tract, probiotic supplements that contain multiple strains tend to be more effective overall than products containing an extremely high concentration of just one or two strains. This is because many strains work synergistically to influence our health. The whole literally is greater than the sum of its parts.
In my opinion, the best probiotic supplements will include at least these three most important strains:
- acidophilus—This is the most important strain of the Lactobacillus species and, it readily colonizes on the walls of the small intestine. It supports nutrient absorption and helps with the digestion of dairy foods.
- longum—Like L. acidophilus, B. Longumis one of the most common bacteria found in the digestive tracts of adults, and it helps maintain the integrity of the gut wall. It is particularly active as a scavenger of toxins.
- bifidum—This strain, found in both the small and large intestine, is critical for the healthy digestion of dairy products. This is especially important as you grow older and your natural ability to digest dairy declines. B. bifidumalso is important for its ability to break down complex carbohydrates, fat, and protein into small components that the body can use more efficiently.
Secondarily, I like:
- rhamnosus—Known as the premier “travel probiotic,” this strain can help prevent occasional traveler’s diarrhea.
- fermentum—This Lactobacillus strain helps neutralize some of the byproducts of digestion and promote a healthy level of gut bacteria.
The good probiotic products should have a form in which the product is created and how that form enables the bacteria both to remain alive and healthy while on store shelves. A probiotic supplement full of dead bacteria—or bacteria that die in a sea of stomach acid—is a waste of money.
Interior coated probiotic are to protect probiotics from stomach acid, but they are normally twice as expensive. Rather, it is better to buy acid resistant probiotics, which is cheaper and 97% will make it to your gut.
Make sure you are buying a quality Probiotics. Study shows that out of 55 different brands, only 13% had all organisms it claimed to have, and 1/3 of them had no live strain at all.
Make sure contains no magnesium steroid, which forms biofilm in your body.
Probiotics and health
An imbalance the bacteria in the body (microbiota) is called dysbiosis, and this has possible links to diseases of the intestinal tract, including ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, celiac disease, and Crohn’s disease, as well as more systemic diseases such as obesity and type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
Resources:
https://www.drdavidwilliams.com/how-to-choose-the-best-probiotic-supplement
http://www.medicinenet.com/probiotics/article.htm
https://www.drdavidwilliams.com/gut-bacteria-and-probiotics-article-index
https://www.drdavidwilliams.com/gut-health-digestive-enzymes