People with Chronic diseases that deal with gut health can experience positive outcomes with using probiotics.
Probiotics are live bacteria and yeasts that people can consume to support and help balance the natural bacteria in the body. Common sources include yogurt, fermented foods and supplements.
Probiotics and gut health
The bacteria in your body are said to outnumber your body’s cells at a 10-to-1 ratio. However, a recent study says that the ratio is closer to 1-to-1. According to these estimates, you have 39–300 trillion bacteria living inside you. Whichever estimate is most accurate, it’s certainly a large number.
Much of these bacteria reside in your gut, and the majority are quite harmless. Some are helpful, and a small number can cause disease. Having the right gut bacteria has been linked to numerous health benefits, including the following:
- weight loss
- improved digestion
- enhanced immune function
- healthier skin
- reduced risk of some diseases
Probiotics, which are a certain type of friendly bacteria, provide health benefits when eaten. They’re often taken as supplements that are supposed to help colonize your gut with good microorganisms.
IBS with probiotics
Probiotics are a hot topic at the moment, particularly for people with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common disorder that affects the large intestine. Signs and symptoms include cramping, abdominal pain, bloating, gas, and diarrhea or constipation, or both. IBS is a chronic condition that you'll need to manage long term.
Although there is currently no cure for IBS, there are ways to improve symptoms and feel better.
Gut flora imbalances may contribute to the symptoms of IBS. Probiotics help restore balance in a number of ways, including by inhibiting the growth of harmful bacteria, reducing inflammation and slowing down the digestive system.
Probiotics have been proposed to improve symptoms by:
- Inhibiting the growth of disease-causing bacteria
- Enhancing the immune system’s barrier functions
- Helping fight inflammation
- Slowing down bowel movements
- Reducing gas production by balancing the gut flora
- Reducing the gut’s sensitivity to gas buildup
Probiotics & Tackling Crohn’s
People with Crohn’s disease, which is an inflammatory disorder affecting the gastrointestinal tract, experience a variety of digestive problems. Probiotics may help reduce the symptoms of this condition.
People can buy probiotics as supplements or eat probiotic foods, such as yogurt, kefir, miso, and tempeh.
Researchers have conducted several studies into whether probiotics could offer any benefits to people with Crohn’s disease.
Research suggests that people with Crohn’s disease have an altered “microbiome,” which means that the digestive bacteria in their gut are unbalanced.
Some experts maintain that using probiotics to restore the microbiome can allow a person with Crohn’s disease to reduce irregular immune responses and experience fewer symptoms.
They believe that adding healthful bacteria to the digestive tract, potentially by incorporating natural probiotic food sources to the diet, can reduce both intestinal inflammation and anomalies of the immune system. This could minimize symptoms of Crohn’s disease, such as gastrointestinal irritation, diarrhea, and stomach upset.
Dealing with Ulcerative Colitis (UC)
Ulcerative colitis is a lasting disease that causes inflammation and sores called ulcers in the colon. Experts believe that the cause is a genetic mutation that allows bad bacteria to irritate your intestines. This causes a never-ending reaction. It's treated with medication or surgery, but there’s no cure. Flare-ups can happen even after treatment.
Standard medical treatment for UC has two components: treating active flare-ups and preventing flare-ups. With traditional treatment, active flare-ups are often treated with corticosteroids such as prednisone. Flare-ups are prevented with maintenance treatment, which means using certain drugs long term.
Some people turn to probiotics and prebiotics to help. How do probiotics help with UC? Probiotics act as a barrier.
They line your bowels so bad bacteria don't reach the intestinal wall. They also change the makeup of your gut biome, adding good bacteria to balance out the bad. This lowers inflammation and helps calm the reaction.
People in the studies taking probiotics reported fewer symptoms during the flare-up, and these symptoms were less severe. In other words, while probiotics did not end the flare-up faster, they seemed to make the symptoms of the flare-up less frequent and less severe.
Safe Dosages of Probiotics
Leading doctors and scientists recommend people take a the optimal dose between 15 Billion and 50 Billion once per day. Anything less than that is basically throwing away money down the toilet since studies suggest that it is 96% less effective.
More than 50 Billion CFU is too much, experts warned.
Probiotics with 60, 80, or even 100 billion will likely do more harm than good. Common side effects of too much probiotics lead to bloating, gas, and nausea. And then, if you stop taking these high-dose probiotics, more harmful bacteria can take over leaving you with a more unhealthy balance than ever before.
The doctors' word of advice: keep your probiotics to 50 Billion CFU.
There are hundreds of different types of probiotics in the market, offering similar solutions. But most of these probiotic brands do not tell you that they are made with chemically induced ingredients to cut cost and even add chemical buffers to cut corners.
This makes a major difference when you are purchasing probiotics. Adding chemical buffers to probiotic strains makes it ineffective because your probiotics will not survive stomach acid in your GI tract.
Taking Mighty Probiotics after antibiotic treatments when sick replenishes your good bacteria, making you feel better quicker. Learn more about it here.