What You Need to Know About Prebiotics and Probiotics
Even in our purest form, we are covered in germs and full of germs. Everything is fine! This is completely normal. These microorganisms are essential for our health. You probably don’t need to mess with them, but if you want to give it a try, you should know the terms: prebiotics and probiotics .
Probiotics are the “good” bacteria
The largest population of beneficial microbes in our body, respectively, lives in the large intestine. After food is digested and absorbed in the stomach and small intestine, the remnants of the food suspension pass into the large intestine, also known as the large intestine. He can spend hours there, as our body reabsorbs water. And during this time, our food becomes food for the creatures living there.
There are trillions of little microscopic friends living in the colon. By digesting our waste, they do a lot of important things for us. For example, they produce most of our vitamin K. They protect us from infection by harmful microbes and help keep our immune systems functioning normally. Our gut microbes come in many different varieties, and a healthy gut is as diverse as a rainforest. If your digestion isn’t doing well, you might consider adding beneficial bacteria to the mixture. These are probiotics.
But even though many species naturally inhabit our gut, the substance marketed as probiotics contains only a few types of bacteria. Some of them grow easily in dairy products, and it is they who convert milk into yogurt. So, an easy way to get probiotics is simply to eat yogurt with “active cultures”. (These words on the label mean that the yogurt has not been processed to kill bacteria, so they are still alive.) You can also buy probiotic tablets or powders.
Important Note: Probiotics do not settle in the intestines. They seem to be, but research shows they are tourists. They come, they can shake a little, and then they leave. Meanwhile, they can still affect your health, but rarely cause any permanent changes.
Some studies have shown probiotics can help with diarrhea or other health problems, but the science is questionable. Probiotics probably have some good effects, but they’re not important to our health (most people do just fine without them) and, barring a few specific situations , they may not work at all.
Prebiotics are food for good bacteria
Our gut bacteria eat what we eat, but they only get the leftovers. Even before our food reaches them, we have already absorbed the sugars, proteins and fats that we can digest and use. This means that they were left without anything else: only fiber and other things that our body considers indigestible.
Some of these indigestible foods are excellent food for our microbes, and eating them can stimulate the growth and prosperity of certain species. For example, babies’ gut microbiomes are formed at an early age by exposure to prebiotics in breast milk called breast milk oligosaccharides (BMOs). These HMOs not only feed certain beneficial microbes, but also prevent the spread of infections by pathogenic microorganisms.
Prebiotics are foods we eat that have the potential to affect our health by affecting our gut microbes. Most of the known prebiotics are short chains of sugar-like molecules: fructooligosaccharides (FOS), galactooligosaccharides (GOS) and inulin, just to name a few. Certain types of fiber are also considered prebiotics, depending on who you ask. If you pack prebiotics and probiotics together, you can call the resulting pill a synbiotic .
We eat prebiotics as adults, whether we realize it or not. For example, wheat and onions provide most of our inulin and oligofructose . You can also buy prebiotic supplements that contain more concentrated doses of prebiotics, but there is no proven health benefit.
It’s okay to experiment, but don’t expect miracles.
There is no research to prove that prebiotic or probiotic supplements are essential for health. So if you have digestive problems and want to try them – hey, feel free to experiment. (Keep in mind that interfering with your gut bacteria can lead to minor digestive problems, such as gas, as your body gets used to the new diet.)
But I have yet to meet a microbiome researcher who sticks to supplementation. More often than not, I hear them say they include healthy foods in their diets: yogurt and fermented foods for active crops; a variety of plant foods such as vegetables and whole grains to provide prebiotics.