Probiotics and Your Digestive Health

Jun 23, 2020

How Probiotics Help with Your Digestive Health

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Dealing with digestive issues can be difficult, not just in the daily discomfort, but in trying to figure out exactly what the problem is. Even after eliminating foods, changing your diet, and switching up your daily habits, you might still experience the same issues with your digestion.

What you might want to do instead is start taking probiotics. This blog post will show you exactly why probiotics can be so amazing for your digestive health.

Understanding Probiotics
If you’re somewhat unfamiliar with the concept of probiotics, then you’ll be happy to know that they could be a step towards some relief for a variety of issues in your gut. To get started, it would probably be beneficial to see where the belief in these tiny organisms began. To put it simply, probiotics are bacteria that are thought to have a positive effect on the body. The use of probiotics can be traced back to the first creations of cheese. In the early days of humanity, fermentation processes were used to help preserve foods that were considered to be valuable, primarily dairy products.

Benefits Related to Your Gut Health
As mentioned before, scientists discovered that diarrhea could be helped by introducing bacteria into the intestines infants. Having such a sudden and inconvenient illness can put a damper on your day. Ingesting some probiotics can help you to get rid of that feeling in less than a day. Some studies even seemed to be able to create effective relief in as little as 12 hours.

They Can Stop Constipation
You might be wondering how can probiotics be able to stop diarrhea, and ALSO stop you from being stopped up? This is possible because sickness like constipation and diarrhea can stem from a variety of factors. Hydration issues coupled with the overpopulation of some bacterial populations in your gut can have a massive influence on the way your body handles different foods. The resulting wastes will have to be eliminated from the body, and an interesting without the right bacteria to break things down can send wastes down the line without proper treatment.

Weight Control
Now you’re probably aware that bacteria help the human body to do all sort of tasks. One of the most important tasks that the body needs hep to perform is the breakdown of the food you eat into its most simple pieces. Bacteria that produce acids work quickly to break down many of the foods that you ingest so that your body can absorb the released nutrients from an easily convertible source. As these tiny bits of chemicals pass through your intestines they are absorbed and sent to storage where they can be brought out at a later date to make repairs to your body, or as simple fuel to keep you alive and kicking.

Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Even though the mechanisms that control the reaction that your body has to stimuli isn’t fully understood, positive results have been discovered in connection with probiotics and IBS. The introductions of helpful bacteria to the gut during testing have shown that it’s possible to slow down or arrest a lot of the inflammatory response that takes place in the gut for most IBS sufferers.

 

Tips for Getting More Probiotics

Here are some foods that can have a good amount of probiotics:

Yogurt
Perhaps the most widely known source of probiotic flora in the world, yogurt stands above most of the rest as the most recognizable of the bunch. Yogurt tends to contain Lactobacillus delbrueckii. The acidic nature of the bacteria gives the yogurt it’s distinctive taste ad coagulates the casein in the yogurt to give it a more solid texture.

Kombucha
This popular drink is known for its unusual flavor and its probiotic content. Kombucha contains the bacterium Saccharomyces, which is known for its ability to directly help with gastrointestinal issues.

Sauerkraut
This cabbage mixture is a primarily European food that contains a helping of Lactobacillus. This bacteria is famous for its ability to help people who are lactose intolerant to be able to deal with dairy more effectively. It’s also great for a number of the other health improvements that have been mentioned in this article.

Fresh Peas
Peas are amazing little vegetables. You might not have ever known that peas contain a very powerful bacteria called Leuconostoc mesenteroides. This bacteria has the ability to stimulate your immune system. This can help you to defend yourself from a wide variety of illnesses that you might be vulnerable to if you has skipped the peas.

Kefir
This drink is a fermented milk drink that is very similar to the fermented milk of day. It contains important bacteria that can help you to process dairy, and also to help you to break down more complex nutrients into their more simple parts for use in the body. These bacteria are called Propionibacterium.

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Hello and Welcome! My name is Carla Alpert, and I’m a Board Certified Functional Medicine Health Coach and Diagnostic Practitioner, focusing on the gut and how it affects your overall health. Think of me as a health detective and wellness coach working in partnership with you to restore your health. We work together to uncover the contributing factors to your chronic symptoms, to eat well, sleep well, move more and stress less.

I love the GI MAP test because it helps my clients and I discover gut dysfunction that may be contributing to daily digestive issues as well as other chronic symptoms like anxiety, fatigue and brain fog. I created this GI MAP Coaching Package to help you stop struggling with your health and get back to living your best life.

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