Why Should a Healthy Person Take a Probiotic Every Day?
April 13, 2015
You eat a healthy diet of mostly whole, unprocessed foods most of the time, exercise and feel pretty good. You pride yourself on making the right decisions about your health and preventing health problems before they happen. Congratulations! You’re off to a great start. Since you’re eating a healthy diet, you may wonder why you should take a probiotic supplement every day. Why would a healthy person like you really need the advantage that gut-friendly bacteria in probiotics offer?
Bacteria are Everywhere
Even if you eat a healthy diet, you don’t have complete control over the bacteria that enter your digestive tract when you eat and drink. Everything you touch, eat and drink contains some bacteria and not all of the species that enter your body are “friendly” ones. Even the water you drink from your tap is a source of potentially bad bacteria. The treatment used to eradicate these bacteria is problematic too. Water treatment plants use chlorine to kill bacteria in tap water before it reaches your sink, but it doesn’t kill all of them. Plus, the chlorine itself, used to sterilize the water, enters your digestive tract when you drink water and can kill the gut-friendly bacteria that keep your gut in balance.
Bottled water, often consumed for its “purity,” is no better from a bacterial standpoint. In fact, a study showed bottled water contains more bacteria than water you get out of your tap at home. When these bacteria enter your digestive tract, they disrupt the normal harmony of your gut and create an imbalance. Taking a probiotic supplement helps to balance out the “bad guys” and keeps them from gaining a foothold in your digestive tract. Plus, we now know that probiotic bacteria have other health benefits: they aid in the absorption of some nutrients, help with the production of some vitamins, and support healthy immune function.
Other Factors That Disrupt Gut Harmony
At some point in your life, you’ve probably taken an antibiotic for an infection. Who hasn’t? As a class, antibiotics profoundly disrupt the balance of bacteria in the gut and it can take weeks or months for the imbalance to be corrected, if at all. If you’ve ever had side effects like abdominal cramping, nausea or diarrhea while taking antibiotics, you’ve experienced the direct effects of antibiotics on your gut. Not fun!
Interestingly, when tap water in various parts of the country was analyzed, some samples contained medications, including antibiotics, which enter the water supply when people flush their medications down the toilet. Plus, livestock are often fed antibiotics to help them grow faster and larger. When you eat their meat, you’re taking in low levels of antibiotics that remain in the animal’s tissues. You’re exposed to antibiotics without even knowing it!
Daily Probiotics Help You Defend Your Good health
Even health nuts can benefit from taking a daily probiotic supplement. You’re constantly exposed to bacteria, chemical agents and even antibiotics which kill gut-friendly bacteria, through the foods you eat and water you drink. When you take one every day, it helps restore balance, something that’s essential for good health. This is one more great reason to make a daily probiotic, such as Natren Healthy Trinity, part of your daily routine.
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