12/20/2018 / By Mary Miller
The word “probiotic” is a combination of the words “pro,” meaning “for,” and “biotic,” meaning “life.” This essentially means that probiotics are “for life,” an appropriate name considering they help promote proper digestion, nutrient absorption, and healthy immune system function of our bodies. Probiotics are beneficial bacteria that live in our digestive tracts. Prebiotics are the food that these friendly bacteria eat. When taken together, they can work in tandem to provide a number of useful health benefits.
Your gut contains around 500 species of bacteria. Some are good bacteria, such as lactobacilli or bifidobacteria, while others are bad bacteria, such as yeasts and parasites. It is important to keep a healthy balance of bacteria; otherwise, it could seriously damage your gut flora. Having too little good bacteria or too much bad bacteria could result in frequent cases of flu and colds, autoimmune disease, candida, digestive problems, skin issues, and other ailments and disorders.
To keep your gut flora healthy, and the rest of your body by extension, you should take plenty of fermented foods that are rich in probiotics, such as kefir, organic yogurt, kombucha, kimchi, miso, and sauerkraut. However, you should also supplement this with foods that contain many prebiotics, such as raw jicama, leafy greens, artichokes, raw leeks, raw or cooked onions, raw garlic, raw asparagus, raw dandelion greens, underripe bananas and raw Jerusalem artichokes. These are food items that our bodies normally cannot digest, but are beneficial in feeding the probiotics. (Related: Why prebiotics are absolutely essential to gut health.)
Probiotics promote the healthy balance of bacteria in our gut. Here are some of the health benefits you can gain from consuming probiotics:
If you want to learn more about the health benefits of probiotics and prebiotics, you can read more articles by going to Health.news.
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Tagged Under: digestive health, fermented foods, fiber, functional food, gastrointestinal tract, good digestion, gut bacteria, gut flora, gut microbiome, metabolism, nutrients, prebiotics, probiotics