Many health-conscious consumers today want to know when they should take probiotics. They ask whether they should wait until they are sick. If so, they ask which illnesses respond best to probiotics? Or should they take a preventive approach and take probiotics before they get sick? What about use of probiotics with antibiotics?
Today, there is no doubt that taking probiotics may be as essential as a multivitamin to your health. So our reply to such questions is that a daily supplement should always be taken to maintain healthy immune and digestive function. And the use of probiotics may need to be increased during times of stress and illness.
Probiotics - What are They?
The concept of ingesting live microorganisms for the purpose of improving one's intestinal health and general well being can be traced back well before the beginning of the Twentieth Century to earlier eras when most foods were nonrefrigerated and instead preserved with fermentation. But the current practice of using beneficial organisms to improve and sustain health is now referred to as probiotic supplementation.
Although numerous types of bacteria (and yeasts) are currently being marketed as probiotic cultures throughout the world, the two most commonly used ones are Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, both contained in Colon Pure, an all-natural probiotic formula from Whitewing Labs.
Probiotics - A Health Essential?
Consumers rarely consider how essential healthy bacterial populations are to their health. But the fact is that a healthy ratio of beneficial to pathogenic bacterial residing within the gastrointestinal tract is essential to good health and influences not only our digestive health but also our immune function, detoxification, and maintain balance in the female reproductive organs.
Medically prescribed antibiotic use is certainly one of the most important causes of detrimental changes in our natural flora, with travel to foreign lands a close second. But beyond these impacts on our gastrointestinal health, we face many other daunting challenges to maintaining a healthy bacterial balance.
Unless one consumes organic dairy products, for example, one is almost certainly consuming traces of antibiotics and sulfa drugs, which have a disruptive effect on bowel ecology. Our highly processed food supply has also denied our bodies the opportunity to ingest beneficial bacteria as we once did through food fermentation (widely used before refrigeration).
Let's look at some of the conditions that daily use of quality probiotics will help to prevent or heal.
It is not surprising that maintaining a healthy beneficial bacterial population in the bowels will have a normalizing effect on our elimination and ability to detoxify our systems.
Antibiotic-associated diarrhea can be attributed in part to imbalances in intestinal microflora. Bifidobacteria (such as those used in Colon Pure) have been used successfully to treat intestinal disorders and in the prevention of rotaviral diarrhea in children and adults. As a matter of fact, taking a probiotic formula with antibiotics is now quite common in many countries.
Constipation is a significant problem for many people, especially the elderly. The lower intestinal Bifidobacteria population in the elderly may be a contributing factor. Researchers have shown that enhancing Bifidobacteria in the large intestine of constipated elderly individuals provides a significant laxative effect.
If you're taking antibiotics to treat your ulcer, you should be using probiotics along with your doctor's prescribed antibiotics. That's the message from researchers reporting in the February 2001 issue of Digestion.
Frequently, nausea, bloating, diarrhea, taste disturbances and loss of appetite are side effects from use of antibiotics to eradicate Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium thought to be the causative agent in gastric ulcers. These side effects are thought to occur because antibiotics kill both the bad and good microorganisms in the gastrointestinal tract, thus hampering normal gastrointestinal function. As a result of such complications, many patients fail to complete the course of their drug therapy.
This latest study involving 120 ulcer patients shows that persons given both antibiotics and probiotics experienced markedly reduced incidence of bloating, diarrhea and taste disturbances compared to persons given only antibiotics, and most persons given the natural remedy experienced no side effects.
Most of our immune cells reside within the gastrointestinal tract and much of our protection against orally ingested pathogens (such as Salmonella) is the result of a healthy gastrointestinal environment. There is perhaps no greater protection against such food-borne pathogens than the use of probiotics to sustain this healthy environment. Recent studies show that Lactobacilli and Bifidobacteria can stimulate both general immunity and also specific antibodies to certain pathogens.
Our Recommendation
Whether you have occasional or chronic intestinal problems, Colon Pure is an indispensable addition to your health regime.
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