Probiotics

The road to health is paved with good intestines. – Unknown

Living a long and healthy life depends on good digestion and a strong immune system. Both of these rely on helpful bacteria living in our intestines.  But various factors in modern life, including poor diet, toxins, stress, various medications and especially antibiotics, have diminished our good bug population. As a result, people living today are more vulnerable to infectious disease than ever before.

Probiotics are special microbes that maintain and restore the body’s beneficial bacteria. All traditional societies relied on probiotic-rich fermented (aka “cultured”) foods, such yogurt, kefir, kombucha, miso, kimchi, sauerkraut and more. The highest percentage of centenarians in the world live in southern Bulgaria, their longevity attributed to frequent consumption of homemade yogurt.

As more people become aware of probiotics’ health benefits, fermented/cultured foods have become more widely available. But buyer beware! Probiotics are living entities and will be mostly dead in any product that has been heat-treated, as most commercial yogurts and sauerkrauts are. Their labels may truthfully say “made with active cultures,” but that doesn’t mean the cultures are still alive!

Although we usually don’t recommend dairy products, the culturing process makes cow, goat or sheep milk more digestible and beneficial. Just be sure it’s raw, and organic (to avoid the many toxins found in commercial cow’s milk).

You can also learn how to make these foods yourself on the internet. 

Taking a probiotic supplement in addition is a good idea because there are many, many different strains of probiotics, and the better supplements will have an array of those strains which have been studied and found to be especially effective in restoring a healthy population of good bacteria in your digestive system. 

The biggest problem with probiotics, however, is obtaining LIVE probiotics, since they can easily die anywhere along the road from manufacture to the perilous trip through the acidic environment of the stomach before reaching the intestines. This is the main reason studies have shown that 85% of probiotic supplements are biologically useless.

Many products today contain as many as 50 billion organisms per capsule. But it doesn’t matter how many organisms the capsule contains if most of those organisms are dead before they reach your intestines due to poor formulations and synthetic ingredients!