Well I started looking into the topic of healthy Probiotics recently and spoke to a nutritional expert mentioned here…
And as mentioned in that article, as added later, Alison advised me to stay away from the yoghurt drinks for the task of getting the gut flora back in balance.
So I headed off to the excellent Health-Food Shop, in Whitstable.
The couple who run it, in Whitstable (Kent), really know their onions (they probably grow those in their organic allotment too) so I’d highly recommend Sue and Mike.
Because they’re independent and as such they can sell products they truly believe in and they are more than happy to tell you why.
This is a picture of the chemical chain of actual Bifidobacterium showing it’s natural definition.
One of the best probiotics
The upshot is that we can get all the gut balancing we need by eating the right things, but for the sake of giving the gut a head-start and re-balancing the healthy bacteria I came away armed with two things:
- Udo’s Choice – Super Hi-Potency Probiotic (with adv to take last thing)
- Solgar 100% – Psyllum Husks Fibre (to enable the high strength Probiotic the best chance of doing its job) – taken as a drink (once a day) between meals
But here’s something on the subject I found at eZine Articles by James Corman
Probiotics is generally defined as the use of beneficial strains of bacteria or yeast (or simply, beneficial micro-organisms) to improve the well-being of a person. Essentially, people use Probiotics to boost their immune system and to improve their digestive function. Good bacteria play an important role in human health.
Apart from helping us fully digest food, good bacteria also help control bad bacteria in the digestive tract. That’s right – we play host to both good bacteria and bad bacteria.
There are even yeast strains in the digestive tract! If you are healthy and your body has a healthy amount of good bacteria, destructive yeast and other undesirable micro-organisms are suppressed.
However, when this delicate balance is disturbed by illness or by poor food choices, the digestive tract can become inflamed or even infected. When this happens, some people turn to Probiotics to aid the body in its path to recovery.
Uses of probiotics
Humans did not really invent Probiotics in the truest sense of the word. If you want a name for its real inventor, try Mother Nature. Evolution made sure that the strongest survivors of natural selection would have a way to fend off harmful micro-organisms, should they try to proliferate in the body. And what better way to do this than by using good bacteria and yeast strains?
In modern medicine, Probiotics is usually used in paediatrics because newborn infants do not have the beneficial bacteria in their digestive tract yet. That’s why paediatricians usually advocate zinc supplementation during the first few months of life. Zinc has been known to boost the immune system and the digestive system. When these two systems are healthy, beneficial bacteria can easily flourish.
Being informed about probiotics
In recent years, alternative healthcare practitioners and some conventional medical practitioners have turned their attention to Probiotics to remedy specific conditions such as diarrhea and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).
It should be noted early on that doctors do not usually prescribe Probiotics to anyone, because Probiotics have not been established as a cure of any single disease. A cure is different from a complementary treatment. Doctors have been trained to be wary of drugs and alternative practices that have not yet been studied rigorously.
Does this mean that you should avoid Probiotics because doctors are not prescribing it to people?
Of course not. It’s actually entirely up to you. You don’t need a prescription to buy probiotic products on the market; you just need the right information so you can buy the right type of supplementation. Our first piece of advice for you if you are just starting out with Probiotics is to stick with probiotic foods before you try probiotic pills or capsules.
We advocate this because the body can take care of itself if you give it the right kind of food. If you eat well, your diet will have a probiotic effect on your body. It is likely that you already have all the beneficial bacterial strains that you need to fend off certain infections. You just have to eat well to ensure that you have a healthy population of these bacteria in your body.
Summary
I’m not hot on referring to good bacteria and bad bacteria like pantomime characters but apart from that my instinct is to leave this job to the daily food intake once you’ve restored yours to a balanced system, and maybe that will be ongoing for some time. However Bifidobacterium is one of the key players in this whole restoration drama lol so if you are going to take this route be sure to look out for it on the label.
Meanwhile I shall be doing some more digging around on the topic and have already started the course of supplements. I’m also looking into Colon Cleansing at the moment as well (with a local expert) so shall be reporting on that too – sometime soon.
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