What You Don’t Know about Probiotics ~ Integrative Medicine

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What You Don’t Know about Probiotics

Let’s talk a little bit about probiotics. Probiotics are kinds of bacteria that influence a healthier population of bacteria inside your intestines. Now, you know we have roughly 30 to 100 trillion cells in our bodies and inside our intestinal tract. We have also another 30 to 100 trillion cells. Now these numbers may be off by as much as 10 fold but there all in that same ball park.

That means we have an enormous number of different bacteria living in our intestinal tract, and they live with us they are not just followers they are part of us because they keep reproducing they alter various kinds of molecules that we have in our bodies like hormones. They produce various vitamins. They are part of us and they’re what we would say synergistic with our lives. And if we eat the wrong things we start developing the wrong kinds of organisms. And that can cause all kinds of problems from obesity to hormonal dis-regulation to inflammation.

So if we have those kind of conditions we need to bring back a more normal population. And they are two ways to do that one of them is to begin to introduce bacteria that help restore normal population and the second thing is to add various kinds of foods that support a more normal bacterial population. The simple thing is what your grandma said eat lots of vegetables. Because these have different kinds of soluble and insoluble fibers that favor a variety of normal organisms living in your intestinal tract.

I skip a couple of steps here because if somebody is really …you also have to get rid of the improper organisms. Sometimes by identifying them with test, or other times just by using various kinds of things that get rid of yeast, or other things that you have a high suspicion of being present by the rest of your history.

Now, getting rid of the wrong organisms and ten adding a proper bacteria and then adding what those bacteria should be growing on which we call Probiotic can be very helpful. Probiotics are soluble fiber, being things like juice and various kinds of vegetables that make a nice balanced diet. So, when you want to get your gut back to normal you need to eat more normally and you need to use Probiotic and Prebiotic in your food and in addition.

Probiotics and… Ahem, Diarrhea

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6a00e55255b4628834017eea943b50970d-200wiFor nearly 3 decades, my colleagues in the world of Integrative Medicine and Holistic medicine have been warning about the consequences of excessive antibiotic use, calling for the use of more probiotics and other measures to prevent the consequences of antibiotic use in the digestive system, including yeast overgrowth.

Protocols suggested include probiotics as the foundation for treatment of gut issues. Use of probiotics by physicians for problems associated with antibiotics goes back much further than our three decades, but during the recent 30 years or so, probiotics use seems to have been forgotten by the majority of doctors practicing in this country.

The traditional medical establishment seems to have rediscovered probiotics an article printed in JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association)–at least for the condition of diarrhea, which would be a more obvious manifestation of antibiotic overgrowth of yeast and other resistant organisms.

I welcome this study in a popular journal, even though it lacks a prominent mention of the possible relationship to yeast overgrowth from antibiotic use and the other synergistic measures that would help with this problem. Perhaps someday, integrative physicians like myself will be recognized as clinical pioneers than as quacks. And to the authors of the article who have recently explored this treatment, I must add, “You don’t say; what a surprise!”

 I’ve included the abstract from the study below.

To your health,

-Dr. Alan M. Dattner, MD

 

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