A client of mine this past week needed to take antibiotics. She had an infection that got serious and although she had not taken any antibiotics for a long while, she went ahead this time because of the severity of
A client of mine this past week needed to take antibiotics. She had an infection that got serious and although she had not taken any antibiotics for a long while, she went ahead this time because of the severity of her infection. She also had to get a tetanus shot since she hadn’t had one in over 10 years. This is something that many times people don’t keep up with once they leave school. You really do need to have them every 10 years, so if you get a deep wound you will not have to worry about tetanus killing you.
As a consequence to receiving the antibiotics, my client ended up getting a yeast infection. This happens, too, as the antibiotics kill off the good bugs as well as the bad ones. So my client needed to get some probiotics to help replenish the lost good bugs.
This is the point. We need the good bugs for health just as much as we need to rid ourselves of the bad ones. Under normal healthy conditions we harbor friendly, helpful bacteria in our digestive tract and in the vaginal canal. We also have a lot on our skin and just about everywhere else that mostly do us no harm. In this day and age the antibiotics in use are stronger and stronger as we have unfortunately created a situation of “super bugs” due to indiscriminate antibiotic use in the past.
Here are some issues that might throw your good flora (bacteria) out of harmony. A poor diet, medication including antibiotics, birth control pills and corticosteroids can all contribute to either an overgrowth or a reduction in your bacteria count. Naturopathic physicians recommend probiotics to help with multiple conditions. Probiotics means in favor of life, just like anti-biotics means against life.
All types of digestive problems, including diarrhea, constipation and some types of food poisoning, can be helped with probiotics. Anything that helps improve digestion, including how you absorb and utilize nutrients, will impact your overall health greatly. A study appearing in the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in 2012 noted that daily doses of lactobacillus (a probiotic) lowered total and low-desnsity lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. The study seemed to suggest that lactobacillus breaks apart bile salts, which leads to reduced cholesterol absorption in the gut.
There is even some evidence that having the proper balance of intestinal bacteria reduces belly fat. Research from the Department of Genomic Sciences at the University of Washington found that lab rats that lacked probiotics had increased fat storage. Another study, this time from the European Congress on Obesity, suggests that women taking probiotics during the first three months of their pregnancy are less likely to experience obesity. Yogurt is looking better all the time isn’t it?
There is some evidence as well that probiotics can help boost the immune system and lessen the severity of colds and other viral conditions.
Probiotics are shown to protect the digestive tract from irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease, such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, by helping to reduce digestive tract reaction to long-term stress.
Of course, most women are aware that an upset in the bacterial balance of the digestive tract can lead to vaginal yeast, bacterial vaginosis or urinary tract infections. Probiotics can help prevent yeast overgrowth by blocking harmful bacteria from attaching to the gut wall and by keeping the acid/base balance appropriate.
It is usually recommended to follow any course of antibiotics with acidophilus supplements for double the time that the antibiotics were consumed.
So here’s the truth about bacteria and how it interacts with us. All the bacteria living inside you would fill a half-gallon jug. There are 10 times more bacterial cells in your body than human cells, according to studies from the University of Idaho. However, even though there are vast numbers of them, bacteria are far smaller than human cells. Although this all sounds gross, it’s actually a very good thing.
Human infestation with bacteria begins at birth. Babies take in mouthfuls of bacteria during birthing and then pick up much more from their mother’s skin and milk. And that’s just for starters. Throughout our lives we consume bacteria in our food and water and just about everywhere else. We need to live in harmony with the good bugs.
• Jane Riley, M.S., B.A., C.P.T., C.N.A., can be reached at janerileyfitness@gmail.com, 808-212-1451 or www.janerileyfitness.com.
