Before I proceed with my recommendation for a probiotic supplement I want to talk a little bit about why you would, anyone would use a probiotic supplement because I want to make it clear what it is probiotic supplements do exactly.
So everything that a probiotic supplement does can be summarized into two words, gastrointestinal health and digestion support or management you could say. Many articles and reviews that are online use those words all the time to my knowledge but few of them explain what they mean, what exactly probiotic bacteria do to, say, improve your immune system or digestion.
Well it's not that hard to figure it out when you think of how many microorganisms are in the human body and, I mean, all of them need nutrition to survive, right? Now they're very small so they don't need much, you don't even notice anything, obviously, but there are good microorganisms and bad ones.
You've heard it before, the microbiome balance, it refers to how many good ones you have and how many bad ones and if the balance is, I guess changes, it can cause problems.
How do probiotic bacteria inhibit pathogenic growth in the intestines? Well for one, both good and bad bacteria need nutrition and they "battle" for it, they compete with each other to get it and they also compete for, i guess space in the body, not that it is not enough but they don't get along with each other and if you have more probiotic bacteria, generally they win the fight, also because they're made to inhibit pathogenic growth through using their lactis acid to exterminate the bad bacteria through covering their environment in this acid, making it acidic which harms them and can kill them thus controlling their numbers and the number of problems that they can cause. Another benefit that helps the immune system directly is more cytokines, which are proteins that signal your body when an infection is occurring and helps treat it. Probiotic bacteria can help produce more cytokines thus improving your body's immune response you see. If you don't care much about you'll find it boring but it's how they work and it can be fascinating.
Now let me recommend a probiotic supplement that I use personally, called Perfect Biotics from Perfect Origins. Ingredients: Filtered water, Humarian Proprietary Blend: (Fermented probiotics, benzoic acid, tartaric acid, nicotinamide, pyridoxine, thiamine, calcium, cobalt, iron, magnesium, manganese, selenium, molybdenum, potassium and sodium). 12 strain Pro-biotic mix: (Lactobacillus Plantarum, Lactobacillus Rhamnosus, Bifidobacterium bifidum, Bifidobacterium infantis, Bifidobacterium longum, Enterococcus Faecium, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus Casei, Lactobacillus Helveticus, Lactobacillus Salivarius, Pediococcus Acidilactici and Streptococcus Thermophilus). Natural grape flavor. The only problems I have with it are the price and the lack of info regarding the CFUs. I decided to purchase it though, for the sake of the article as well as for myself and I tried it out and first of all I'm loving the grape flavor and second, it works, it can help with diarrhea for sure. Check out the website for info. or to order it.
