Karen Baker BSc, DC
There seems to be a lot of media chatter recently about “good bacteria” and probiotics. Many of my patient’s have been asking me: what’s the inside scoop?
Well, probiotics are species of health promoting bacteria that we require for proper digestion of food and for immune defense against illness promoting bacteria, viruses and fungi. The term “probiotic” derives from Latin and Greek, meaning “for life”. The World Health Organization has defined probiotics as: live “micro-organisms” which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host. In fact, to have optimal health we need to be home to over 100 trillion of these health-promoting bacteria! That’s 10 times the amount of cells you have in your entire body!
Having the proper probiotic bacteria in your digestive system is essential for your health and wellbeing, and being deficient can lead to severe health problems. Intestinal microflora (probiotics) promote balanced gastrointestinal function and are essential for many metabolic requirements such as synthesizing vitamins and short chain fatty acids and digesting fiber and proteins. Probiotic bactieria are also important for immune function. They directly protect from infection by competing with the unhealthy bacteria, viruses and fungi we are exposed to every day.
Research shows that we now consume one-millionth of the healthy probiotic bacteria that we did before pesticides, herbicides and industrial farming. Much of our healthy bacteria are destroyed by eating sugars, grains, and by consuming alcohol, antibiotics, and other prescription drugs. The North American diet is dangerously deficient in probiotic bacteria. This deficiency is implicated as a causal factor in alarming numbers of preventable illnesses from infancy to old age.
