Probiotics - Why Are They Important And How Are They Connected To Many Diseases?
We are not living alone. We are living along with human microbiota. Our body is inhabited by millions of tiny living organisms, which all together, are called human microbiota. They are found on the skin, nose, mouth, especially in our gut. The healthy growth of these bacterias is helping us with protection, digestion and regulating moods. So practically, we are a walking ecosystem structured from human cells, bacteria and fungi. This finding was revolutionary and in unravelled that any disbalans in this particular ecosystem (especially in our gut) can be related with some diseases. The most common are Crohn disease, ulcerous colitis, cardiovascular diseases. Even some mental illness or conditions such as depression and anxiety can be caused my disturbed balans in the microbiome in our gut. It is known that psychobiotics (probiotics) exert anxiolytic and antidepressant effects characterised by changes in emotional, cognitive, systemic, and neural indices.
When we are eating, we are feeling happy and satisfied. It was believed that these feelings of happiness and satisfaction are because of the secretion of serotonin and dopamine hormones. New research nowadays, shows that bacterias in our gut was secreting these neurotransmitters to our brain that are making us feel happy after a meal. So, in more intensive research nowadays in mental diseases, mostly depression, shows that it can occur in people who have disbalance in their microbiota. This is also related to Alzheimer's disease, Autism spectrum disorder, Diabetes.
How can we disrupt the balance in our microbiota? With taking antibiotics, unhealthy diet, eating processed foods, lot of sugar.
What can we do to impar that disbalance? After you finish your therapy with antibiotics, you should take probiotics - twice as the days you took antibiotics. For an example, if you took antibiotics for 7 days, you should drink probiotics for 14 days, because their effect is evolving slowly. Another advice is to eat fresh and healthy food. Cut on fast fast and sugar. The only exception to take probiotics, while on antibiotic therapy, is to take yeast called Saccharomyces boulardii. If you logically think, when you take probiotics during antibiotics therapy, first you intake good bacteria - then you destroy them, so there is no effect.
Probiotics are good for immunity! Probiotics are immunoboosters. It is important to understand that if we take probiotics for a immunoboost we should expect their effects on a longer run. The time dosage for immune boosting effect is 3-6 months through the winter.
How long can I take probiotics? It really depends on the purpose of why are you taking it. Is it after antibiotics therapy, for immunity, for chronic diseases, mental condition. So depending on that you should consult with your physician on the dosage and the what kind of probiotics it is the best for you to take.
Careful when taking probiotics: Like with everything else, you should be careful with probiotics. How would you know that probiotics it isn't doing good for you? You will experience problems with digestion, diarrhea, brain fog, loss of concentration and sleep, fatigue... So, when using it, you should be careful in the first 10 days and notice if any side effect occurs. If they occur, you should stop taking the probiotics. In that case, you should be taking only a yeast probiotics.
Is it enough just to take probiotics? Probiotics need their food too. They eat food rich in fibers. In medical terms the food for probiotics are called prebiotics. Prebiotics are galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS) and fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS), which are a source of nutrition for Bifidobacteria and Lactobacilli, and stimulate their activity and propagation in the gut.
In conclusion, when you are taking probiotics, you should also eating food rich in fibers.
Which combination is the best probiotics? Best combination is Bifidobacteria, Lactobacillus and Saccharomyces boulardii. These combination will guide you through the various conditions we mentioned above like post-antibiotic therapy, immune boosting, candida infections...
The future of probiotics? The new medical era of personalized medicine, will be revolutionary in this topic too. With the individual analysis of microbiome, we should be able to give exactly the probiotics you need, based on findings in your gut microbiome and the condition you have.
Till, then we should go through with what we know so far.