Probiotics for the immune system are such a hot topic lately. There is a tiny yet expansive world inside each person populated by bacteria that has a powerful impact on human health, vitality, and longevity. These tiny organisms help us live by carrying out processes inside our bodies. They are often divided into two main groups. So how do probiotics help the immune system exactly?
Can Healthy Bacteria Be Your Immune System Champion?
Most people are aware of the types of things that humans need to do daily to remain healthy. Eating right, exercising, sleeping regularly, and having healthy bowel movements daily are just a few activities that come to mind.
But what if there was another important level that few think about?
What is the Human Microbiome?
The human microbiome is the collection of trillions of bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms that reside on and in humans.
Human microbiome plays a role in many bodily functions. This includes immune function, digestion, and the development of the nervous system.
What are Probiotics?
Probiotics are living, beneficial bacteria present in the human gut. They are microorganisms that are alive. In addition, they have been found to help support health and help the body’s healthy functions.
Probiotics are often referred to as “good or friendly” bacteria. But they are not all good or bad.
Probiotics may help support your immune system. They may also help balance your gut flora. which helps prevent diarrhea and other intestinal problems, like lactose intolerance, constipation, and irritable bowel syndrome.
There are many types of probiotics, including lactobacillus, bifidobacterium, and others. Probiotic organisms are needed for a healthy immune system and digestive system.
Each type of probiotic is unique and has been used for different purposes. They can be found in supplements or food sources.
How Do Probiotics Help Support Your Immune System?
Probiotics support a healthy immune system. They can help prevent infections and support a healthy immune response.
Probiotics can help maintain your digestive system. They are used for many types of conditions, including diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), constipation, arthritis, allergies, weight management, and asthma.
The immune system can help protect you against infection by removing bacteria that cause disease.
However, it can’t always do this. Certain illnesses and conditions weaken your immune system.
As such, it becomes more prone to infection. Probiotics can help restore the balance between your body’s bacteria and yeast. This will enable your immune system to do its job and protect you from infection.
What are the Benefits of Probiotics?
- Increase your immune system’s ability to fight off infections.
- Help with intestinal health.
- Used to prevent infections in your digestive system.
- Help maintain a healthy digestive system.
- Enhance the immune system
- Help prevent overgrowth of harmful bacteria.
- Promote the growth of beneficial bacteria.
- Help reduce inflammation
- Relieving some symptoms of digestive disorders, like diarrhea, constipation, or inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
- Increase resistance to infection.
Many bacteria live in your digestive tract. While most of these bacteria serve no purpose, the friendly bacteria in your digestive tract help keep chemicals and toxins out of your system. These are referred to as good or “friendly” gut microbes.
Some of these good gut microbes can produce their own antibiotics, which they can use to fight infection.
In other words, known as the “hygiene hypothesis,” which suggests that our modern lifestyle and diet may have reduced the number of good gut microbes in our bodies.
As such, we may have become too clean and not evolved enough to properly deal with infectious diseases.
It is possible that diet, lifestyle, and insufficient beneficial gut bacteria may be linked to autoimmune diseases, including Crohn’s disease.
This hypothesis even has some support from recent studies in mice. Researchers feed mice a carefully controlled diet while trying to induce arthritis.
They found that the mice who ate the healthy bacteria-rich food had less autoimmunity than mice who ate a low-good gut bacteria diet. While the jury is still out on whether this is true in humans, it does appear that a healthy gut may be important for good health and immune function.
What Probiotics Should You Take?
Probiotics can be taken as a powder or capsule. Some supplements come in pill forms. Others are made into foods like yogurt and kombucha.
Probiotics are available from many manufacturers, but can be hard to find because the FDA does not regulate some brands.
What’s the Best Way to Take Probiotics?
If you’re taking antibiotics, it’s a good idea to take probiotics along with them. If you currently don’t take any medications, it’s best to take probiotics on an empty stomach.
Some people have more success taking them at bedtime or in the morning. Still, others find they work better when taken with food.
You can find probiotics in yogurt, kombucha, and fermented vegetables. Probiotic supplements are a popular supplement as well.
Probiotics have been used safely in clinical trials. But they are rarely tested for safety or effectiveness in humans.
There is some evidence that probiotics can help with IBS. But only when used alongside other treatments like fiber supplements and antibiotics.
Lactobacillus
These bacteria are generally helpful because they are responsible for many processing functions. When children are made, they receive them from their mother. Some of these bacteria, including Lactobacillus Acidophilus, are related to the breakdown of sugars into lactic acid.
Lactic acid is one substance made in the body helpful in the fight against harmful strains of bacteria. There have also been studies that show that a lack of these bacterial populations can cause a few disorders.
Antibiotics have brought us marvelous advances in medicine. Studies have shown antibiotics tend to have a harmful effect on the beneficial or helpful populations of gut flora.
So it might be necessary to supplement the bacteria by ingesting alternate sources of Lactobacillus. What can you do to combat these losses?
Many of these helpful strains can be found in foods like yogurt, kefir and other fermented food types. There are also many tablet-based probiotic solutions available.
Bifidobacterium
Scientists now believe that over 3/4 of our immune system is kept in our intestinal tract.
Certainly, with over 500 species of bacteria in the mix. With such a large population of bacteria living in us, it should be of little surprise that we depend so heavily on them for the various functions they serve daily.
Many Bifidobacteria reside within the colon and large intestine. The bacteria in the gut play a heavy role in controlling your poop, aiding digestion, and even repair damage from carcinogenic sources in the body.
Firstly, one of the earliest signs of intestinal difficulties or an imbalance in bacteria is your poop. The average person will poop on a pretty regular schedule, between 3 times a day and 3 times a week. If you fall into this range, you are considered to have normal bowel movement.
If you suddenly find you are going more or less frequently than usual, then you may have a problem with your microbiome. You may find that you are going several days between toilet trips. This might mean the Bifidobacterium are having a hard time.
Here, there is a simple remedy to add some probiotics to your routine. There are many brands and products around that you can use. Many tried and tested, and some of the best out there can be found on almost any health store shelf.
For instance, some brands to look out for are: Seed Probiotics, KLAIR LABS, Garden of Life Probiotics, MegaSporBiotics, Custom Probiotics and Renew Life.
That is to say, all these have a diversity of probiotics that can help stabilize your flora. Thus, keep your gut healthy.
How Can Fermented Food and Drinks Help You?
Fermented food and drink can help digestion, regulate blood sugar levels, and reduce the risk of infections.
In addition, also helps regulate bowel movements. Most importantly, they are an excellent way to promote healthy gut bacteria. As well as good at breaking down food.
Fermentation can also increase the nutritional value of the food. Moreover, this is how probiotics help the immune system function better. Fermented foods and drinks contain natural lactic acid bacteria.
Therefore, they are good for your body, as they produce vitamin K2, vitamin B12, and beneficial gut bacteria. This discovery was made in the US, and was published in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” journal.
Alternative therapies to antibiotics are an important step towards finding.
What to Eat: Fermented Foods
Many of the foods we eat are fermented. For example, many types of cheese, kimchi, sauerkraut, and yogurt are fermented.
In addition, soy sauce is fermented. So if you want to improve your gut health and immune function, it is advantageous to incorporate fermented foods into your diet. Fermented food and drinks are easy to make at home.
So, consider some of my fermented recipes below.
- How to Make Sauerkraut: Getting Started with Fermentation
- Coconut Water Kefir Recipe-Homemade & Easy
What to Avoid: Sugar and Artificial Sweeteners
The real truth is that sugar can be bad for you.
For example, sugar feeds the harmful bacteria in your microbiome. It also causes inflammation in the body. Your body believes there will be a threat due to the inflammatory response within the body.
Sugar is also addictive because it causes your brain to release dopamine when consumed. This causes your body to want more of the substance. The body can become addicted to sugar.
Meanwhile, you can read more about this topic on sugar addiction in the article I wrote below.
What are the Recommended Doses of Probiotics?
There is not enough reliable data to support these recommendations.
Let’s Discuss the Immune System & Probiotics!
So, did anything surprise you on how probiotics help the immune system? Let me know in the comment section below.
In addition, I would also love to hear what you think, or take a photo and tag me @Eat_Your_Nutrition on Instagram. I love seeing your photos. #EatYourNutrition #LauraVillanueva
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