Do you suffer from occasional irregularity? Indigestion, bloating, gas?

Almost all Americans do. Troublesome in themselves, these complaints may indicate a more serious problem called “intestinal dysbiosis.”

Over 90% of the cells in our bodies are not our own! They belong to the approximately 3-1/2 pounds of bacteria and other microorganisms (microbiota) that live in and on us, primarily in our intestines. These bugs play critical roles in our well-being, including:

1. Fighting off pathogenic bacteria, viruses and fungi (the intestines comprise about 75% of the human immune system)
2. Detoxifying harmful chemicals and excess estrogen
3. Aiding digestion
4. Synthesizing nutrients
5. Maintaining healthy intestinal walls, for optimal assimilation of nutrients without admitting incompletely digested food and other toxins into the bloodstream via a “leaky gut”

Digestive complaints often indicate that helpful bacteria (“probiotics”) have become outnumbered by destructive, pathogenic bacteria. This imbalance is called intestinal dysbiosis and your degree of dysbiosis can be assessed with a stool test.

Antibiotics, especially broad-spectrum, cause most intestinal dysbiosis. Antibiotics given to kill bad-acting bacteria, kill both the good and bad. Afterwards, pathogenic bacteria are more apt to grow back and dominate the landscape. Meat and dairy products heavily treated with antibiotics and public water are additional sources of antibiotic exposure. Other factors such as diets high in meat, fat and refined carbohydrates; stress; chlorine; and medications like antacids, oral contraceptives, steroids, NSAIDS and laxatives also lead to the overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria.

Intestinal dysbiosis is a major factor in most disease. It causes nutrient deficiency by impairing digestion and assimilation of nutrients, and by reducing the number of nutrients synthesized in the gut; it causes toxicity by reducing our ability to detoxify harmful chemicals and by allowing foreign substances to enter the bloodstream. Dysbiosis causes poor digestion, resulting in undigested foods fermenting and putrefying in the gut and creating toxins. Since deficiency and toxicity are the two causes of all disease, it’s not surprising that numerous studies have found that taking probiotic supplements has helped with all kinds of conditions: digestive disorders, vaginal yeast infections, autoimmune diseases, skin rashes, arthritis, allergies, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer and more.

It’s difficult if not impossible to restore a damaged gut bacterial population. However, most people can achieve robust health despite a weakened gut microbiota by eating plenty of probiotic-rich cultured foods like raw sauerkraut, kimchi and pickles, and taking probiotic supplements.

Unfortunately studies show that 85% of probiotic supplements are biologically useless, and there are even problems with the remaining 15%! Probiotics are living entities and can easily die anywhere along the road from manufacture to the perilous trip through the acidic environment of the stomach before reaching the intestines.