Probiotics are the good kind of live bacteria and yeasts that help out as digestive probiotics and are considered healthy and good for the gut and the digestive system. Probiotics means “for life” and these bacteria are found in foods like yogurt, miso, kefir, tempeh, and sauerkraut. Plus, it is also available as dietary supplements in the form of pills or capsules that can be purchased in health food stores, drug stores, and many other locations, including online.
How Do Probiotics Work?
Digestive probiotics help fight against the bad bacteria and balance it with good bacteria for your digestive system. The most common kind is Lactobacillus, which is in yogurt and fermented food. Another popular type of digestive probiotics is Bifidobacterium, which is in some dairy products.
Here are 10 benefits of incorporating digestive probiotics into your life:
- Improves Digestion System
The body has thousands of bacteria types living in the digestive system that help to break down foods and absorb nutrients. Sometimes these get killed off when someone takes antibiotics because they can kill both bad and good bacteria. If you take digestive probiotics, it can help repopulate the digestive system with good bacteria we need to be healthy.
- Increases Absorption of Nutrients
Digestive probiotics also help the body to absorb nutrients better, especially calcium and B vitamins. They help the body use the nutrients in the foods we eat.
- Protects against Infection
Probiotics can also help protect the body from certain kinds of infections, especially yeast infections and urinary tract infections, as well as fight e. coli contamination. It also fights against irritable bowel syndrome.
- Strengthens the immune system
Taking digestive probiotics is also known to help strengthen the immune system because it not only increases the amount of healthy intestinal bacteria, it also helps to increase lymphocytes, which are an immune responder in the body.
- Improves Bowel Movements
Probiotics can also help with bowel movements, both diarrhea and constipation issues. It can also help protect you from getting travel bugs like traveler’s diarrhea when you go on vacation. These probiotics help you to have regular bowel movements that are healthy for your body.
- Decreases Allergies
Taking probiotics has also been shown to aid in reducing the allergies that a person has. For instance a study showed that pregnant women who too probiotics regularly actually had children that had a 30 percent less occurrence of childhood allergies like asthma and eczema.
- Detoxes the body
Probiotics also detox the body in a natural fashion. There is no need to buy dangerous colon cleansing kits for detoxing the body, because if you instead eat food rich in digestive probiotics it will help your body detox more naturally and safely.
- Prevents Obesity
Studies have also shown that people who are obese have a different kind of bacteria in their digestive system than people who are of a normal weight. The research showed that obese people who underwent weight loss surgery had a better chance of losing weight if they also took probiotics. Plus, the probiotics helped in reducing the abdominal fat around the waist.
- Promotes Vaginal Health
A woman’s vagina also has a mix of good and bad bacteria in it. If this gets disrupted then she can get diseases like yeast infection or vaginosis. However, if she takes either oral or vaginally inserted probiotics, it has been shown to help prevent these infections from coming back over and over. So if you are getting frequent vaginal infections, talk to your doctor about taking probiotics.
- Prevents Urinary Tract Infections
The urinary tract system is another part of the body that needs the good and bad bacteria to be balanced in order to be healthy. This balance can be destroyed if a woman gets frequent UTIs and takes a lot of antibiotics. Studies have proven that if a woman takes probiotics it can help stop the bad bacteria from taking over and help the good bacteria to grow and this in turn helps break the cycle of recurring UTIs.
Tips to Make Probiotic Work Better
If you are going to start using digestive probiotics in your daily routine to get some of the above health benefits, then you will also want to do the following things to help those probiotics work better:
-Try to eliminate sugar from you daily diet as much as you can because bacteria eat sugar and this could in turn cause stomach issues.
-Be sure to eat a nutritious diet, including lots of vegetables as they are a good source of vitamins and nutrients that help good bacteria to thrive.
-When eating yogurt to get digestive probiotics into your system, stay away from the ones with lots of sugar or high fructose corn syrup, as they are bad for your health. Stick with the nonfat or plain unsweetened yogurt for best results.
-Only take antibiotics if absolutely necessary and then only for the minimum prescribed amount of treatment since they can kill off both bad and good bacteria and make it so you have an imbalance in your digestive system.
– Avoid the use of any kind of soap that is labeled to kill bacteria as it can kill both good and bad bacteria.
-Try to avoid stress and stressful situations as much as you can. It is a good idea to use relaxation techniques to ease stress such as meditation, hypnosis and getting enough rest.
The bottom line is that digestive probiotics are a great way to help keep your body running well and being more comfortable by giving you regular bowel movements, less body fat, less digestive problems, less infections like UTIs or vaginal yeast infections, as well as protecting you from killing off the good bacteria if you are taking antibiotics. So, if you want a healthier life in many ways, then talk to your doctor about the best way for you to add digestive probiotics into your life.
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