Hey, it’s Dr Karena your virtual health coach and today I’m going to be discussing probiotics and how they can change your life. When it comes to supplements I’m a bit of a minimalist. But there are a few supplements that I believe are beneficial and even essential for our health.
Supplements are also one of the most asked about topics in the comments and emails that I get from you guys. So I’m going to do a whole series discussing the different supplements that I actually do recommend for my clients.
Today we’re talking about probiotics. Consider your body as a battlefield. Day after day your immune system is working tirelessly to defend you against germs bacteria and other microorganisms that you come into contact throughout the day. To visualize the terrain your body’s defences wielding shields and lightsabers working really hard to try and protect you from foreign invaders.
Now, what if I told you that if we’re living the average lifestyle we could actually be destroying our body’s own defences. Our bodies army or our bodies defence against foreign invaders is primarily composed of bacteria. Now normally we think of bacteria as squirmy little bad guys but actually there’s a lot of good bacteria that is absolutely essential in our gut.
There are other parts of our body to keep it functioning the way that it’s supposed to. So luckily probiotics can actually help restore and rejuvenate this good healthy bacteria. Because probiotics help to restore this healthy bacteria in our digestive tract; they can be very helpful for digestive disorders and diseases like Crohn’s disease, IBS, ulcerative, colitis and even things like constipation, diarrhoea and food allergies.
But what other issues could probiotics potentially help with? The gut is not only responsible for the incredibly important job of digesting the foods that we eat for either future use or disposal from the body. But it’s also home to 80 % of our body’s immune system. So this means our immunity to things like cold and flu will be affected and improved by taking a quality probiotics supplement.
But this also means that autoimmune disorders like Crohn’s disease or thyroid dysfunction rheumatoid arthritis etc these other autoimmune diseases. It can also be affected and potentially improved by taking the best quality probiotics. The gut is also where the majority of our body’s hormones are made. So this means that hormone issues like mood energy and anxiety can also be improved by taking probiotics.
The health of our intestinal flora or these good bacteria and our gut has also been linked to our susceptibility to cancer. Even the efficacy of different cancer treatments. So as you can see there is a wide range of areas that probiotics can help to improve our health.
Carina our probiotics are really worth my money in my opinion. Yes and as I said at the beginning of the article; I really don’t recommend very many supplements but I do think that probiotics are one of the few supplements of utmost importance. So again improving the intestinal flora or the health of our gut not only is going to help you with every kind of gut or digestion oldest order that you could think of right. But it’s also going to help you in these other ways.
Right, so the gut is also responsible for our immunity. It’s also responsible for our hormones. So I get a lot of questions about depression, energy and anxiety right and these are all issues that can be positively affected by taking a probiotic supplement. We also have to consider leaky gut syndrome. Now maybe you’re familiar with this term. Maybe you’re not but basically when we have lots of inflammation in the gut.
Inflammation is just you think about when you get a cut and it gets all red. It’s an immune response. Now when we have too much of an immune response in our gut and the area actually becomes inflamed; we develop what’s called leaky gut syndrome. Basically this means that things in our gut leak into our bloodstream. This is one of the primary reasons that food allergies are becoming increasingly common.
So another thing that these probiotics can help with is food allergies and food sensitivities. So in a moment, I’m actually going to show you some of these different probiotics. These are the actual probiotics that I personally take but before I do; I want to go over a couple of the different things.
In our average lifestyle that are depleting this healthy and very beneficial gut bacteria. So antibiotics are probably what people think of first because we know that antibiotics kill bacteria. But they not only kill the bad bacteria or foreign invaders that we’re trying to get rid of they also kill our good healthy bacteria. So most of us have been prescribed antibiotics several times throughout our lives. We also have a prevalence of things like antibacterial soap, most of the conventional livestock that are raised either for their meat or for dairy products are fed antibiotics in pretty large amounts.
This means that we’re getting antibiotics that we take on purpose. But we’re also exposed to a lot of antibiotics that maybe we don’t even realize we’re ingesting number. Two is drugs and alcohol. Of course, this includes the illicit drugs that we know we should avoid but it also includes prescribed. Even over-the-counter medications like painkillers and birth control and I’m not trying to scare you into a frenzy I’m just trying to illustrate how all of the things that we do in our average lifestyle that maybe we don’t consider to be harmful.
Actually can be damaging to the inside of our gut and these healthy bacteria. The third thing that can negatively impact our good bacteria or our intestinal flora is dietary toxins. This includes pesticides like glyphosate; the primary ingredient in roundup it also includes weird fillers and preservatives like carrageenan and there actually is specific evidence showing that carrageenan causes inflammation in the gut. It actually does stimulate an autoimmune response.
I talked a lot about Frankenfoods. Okay, highly processed foods with really long ingredient lists and why these things are harmful. This is a really good specific example of where these food chemicals are harmful to our health and by destroying the environment of our gut which is responsible for digestion. All of these other things these processed foods and weird food chemicals really should be avoided.
Number four is refined carbohydrates like white bread and refined sugar. Now there is a tremendously long list of negative effects that sugar has on our health. So when we think about the environment of our gut just understand that these refined carbohydrates. Refined sugar chemicals are actually causing inflammation in the gut. They’re causing yeast overgrowth or Candida and in a way, they actually fee the bad bacteria and starve the good bacteria in our gut.
Number five is GMOs or genetically modified organisms. Now once again the presence of these chemicals in our diet has been shown to cause inflammation in the gut and have been shown to elicit this autoimmune response that leads to a leaky gut syndrome which I can actually talk about in a moment.
So GMOs again a very hot topic. When it comes to our health and yet another reason that probiotics can be really helpful for undoing some of the damage that these highly common food chemicals can cause the sixth thing that can be harmful to the intestinal flora or these good bacteria in our gut is stress.
High-stress levels lack sleep inability to relax right just being in a constant or chronic state of stress is also something that negatively affects. These good bacteria in our gut and again something that’s kind of unavoidable. Something that there’s really no way we’re going to be able to completely eliminate stress in our lives and for that reason doing things to help promote and support these good bacteria in our gut really is essential.
Before I show you the supplements that I take I do want to let you know that there are dietary sources of probiotics. Incorporating more of these foods into your diet is a really good idea. Kombucha is a great example of fermented or cultured food that’s very high in probiotics. Other examples would be yoghurt, sauerkraut, kefir, natto, miso and really the list goes on. Please check the video for the more probiotic food.
Top Probiotic Foods
I could do a whole long article on dietary sources of probiotics if that’s something that you would like to see. Now with that said more likely than not most of us are not going to get enough probiotics just from dietary sources. This is why probiotic supplements are one of the few supplements that I actually take myself and recommend to my clients.
Ideally, we want to get our nutrients from food sources right foods in our diet. But if we’re not getting enough of probiotics for example then taking a supplement can be a very helpful way to supplement the number of probiotics we’re getting. So the first one I want to show you is this sola ray probiotic. Now all of these came from the refrigerated section of my health food store. Refrigerated probiotics are going to be the first thing to look for in terms of finding something that’s good and quality.
This particular probiotic is called multi do this 12 and what I love about this product is that it includes 12 different strains of probiotic bacteria. Now another thing is this 20 billion cells now what this indicates is how much of the probiotic bacteria is contained. So as a general rule of thumb 20 billion is a good safe amount for the average person to be taking again multiple strains.
So acidophilus Bifidus those are all specific examples of probiotic strains and if you can find one that contains multiple strains then that’s a really good sign of a good product. Along the same lines, I have this pseudos choice adult probiotic. Now again you can see that this is a six strain formula. We’re getting a good variety of these different probiotic strains and this one you can see is at 17 billion cells.
The third one is a bit more specific this one is called Sakura Maya C’s boo Rd and the brand is Django formulas. So this one was actually particularly recommended to me based on some questions and kind of concerns that I had. So I just wanted to include this one to show you that sometimes it can be helpful to take a more specific strain in addition to your more general multiple strain probiotics.
These are just the probiotics that I take I bought these in the grocery store. Alright, I’m not being paid to endorse these products or anything like that. Just to outline the guidelines for picking out a good high-quality probiotic.
Number one you want to look for something with multiple strains. Again this one is twelve strains and this one is six these are good examples of multiple strain probiotic supplement. Number two you want to look for something that is in the ten to twenty billion cell range in terms of the dosage that you’re getting. If you see a doctor he may recommend something different for you but that’s just a good general rule of thumb for the average person.
Number three is that you’re always going to find a higher quality product in the refrigerated section. These are just bacterial strains inside of these bottles. Something that’s refrigerated just signifies that there are no preservatives. Okay, this is a fresher product or a more live product might be another way to think of it. So multiple strains twenty billion cells and preferably refrigerated.
I just want to show you what some of these pills look like so that you know I’m not trying to make you take some kind of crazy horse pill. Something alright these is just regular plain old boring pills and different probiotics will have different instructions as to whether you should take it before a meal or after and I would just recommend that you take your probiotics as directed on the label or by your doctor.
I want to thank you so much for reading this long article. I look forward to seeing your comments questions and I hope that you’ll subscribe to the blog. You can join me in the next part of this series. If you’d like to learn more about me and my health coaching practice you can visit my blog regularly.
The Best Probiotic Supplement 