Are You Confused About The Value Of Probiotic Supplements?

It is perhaps understandable that companies want to sell their products and if they can include the latest trend in their advertising it is generally to their advantage.

But have you been taking various probiotic products on a daily basis and wondered if they have made any difference? You are not alone. There is much confusion so let's take a little time to do some clarification.

First, let's just quickly look at the meaning of the words. The word 'biotic' means, 'of or having to do with life or living organisms', so for simplicity sake, let's just say 'life'.

'Pro' means, 'in favour of, supporting something' and 'anti' means, 'not in favour of, against or in place of'.

So, very quickly we can see that 'probiotic' means, for life or supporting life and that antibiotic means the exact opposite, against life.

In our intestines, which are some 20 feet long, there live about 100 trillion bacteria. Applying our definition of words to these bacteria, a probiotic supports the life of these much needed bacteria and an anti-biotic kills them off.

Some things kill them off on an ongoing basis like coffee, fluoride, chlorine, carbonated drinks, processed foods and much more. But one of the biggest killers is antibiotics.

The difficulty with antibiotics is that they do kill off the bad bacteria which have been the cause of your infection or problem but they also kill off the good bacteria at the same time. This makes you very vulnerable towards further infections once your antibiotic course has finished.

I remember reading how a well known athlete was surprised that she succumbed immediately to a bad cold and chest infection after finishing three consecutive courses of antibiotics for a much more serious problem. She was obviously totally unaware of the devastating effect that the antibiotics were having on her 'friendly' bacteria!

It is easier to refer to the good bacteria as our 'friendly' bacteria because their actual names are much more difficult to remember. How about Lactobacillus Acidophilus or Bifidobacterium Bifidum, to name just two?

There are foods that contain these 'friendly' bacteria. Just as with vitamins and minerals, some foods have a higher probiotic bacteria content than others but generally due to the desire for longer shelf life, these bacteria have had a pasteurisation treatment thus rendering them more or less useless.

You will have realised by now why probiotic supplements are much needed and so we can now finally, come to the good news! The best probiotic supplements will contain a variety of the different strains of bacteria including both lactobacillus and bifidobacterium bacteria.

A capsule holding 10 billion bacteria overall is generally recommended on a daily basis. Yes, that figure is correct, 10 billion!

Properly formulated these capsules will dissolve in the intestines where they will go to work dealing with breaking down foods still further, extracting remaining vitamins and minerals for absorption and most importantly, duplicating themselves.

If you have access to magazines or articles that independently test natural products you will be able to find those few products that genuinely have the 10 billion live bacteria.

A recent test of 55 probiotic products found that just 11 contained all the ingredients listed on the label! 9 had no bacteria at all! Sadly this is not unusual, so don't believe everything you read on the label!

Therefore, be committed to taking a probiotic supplement on a daily basis and enjoy improved health daily.