Many people are wondering, what are probiotics? Probiotics are made of live bacteria or yeasts that naturally live in the body. These bacteria and yeasts are considered to be good for the body.
You have both bad and good bacteria in your body and when you get an infection, there are more bad bacteria in your body, knocking your body out of balance. Good yeasts and bacteria help your body to eliminate bad bacteria and return the balance that your body needs for proper functioning. Probiotic supplements are great when it comes to adding good bacteria and yeasts to your body.
Where do probiotics live in your body?
While the most common place linked to good microbes is your gut; you have several other locations in your body that also host them. These locations are usually in contact with the outside world and include the mouth, gut, vagina, skin, urinary tract, and respiratory tract.
Understanding how probiotics work
Good bacteria or probiotics maintain a healthy balance in your body. They keep your body neutral. When you get sick, bad bacteria enter your body. This knocks your body out of balance. However, good bacteria work hard to fight off the bad bacteria and bring your body back to balance.
Good bacteria keep people healthy by supporting their immune function. Certain types of good bacteria are known to keep bad bacteria from knocking your body out of control, helping your body digest food properly, creating vitamins, helping support the cells that line your gut and protecting your body from bad bacteria and breakdown and absorbing medicines. This is why people go for probiotics for healthsupplements.
This balancing act is happening in your body naturally all the time. You do not need to take supplements to make it happen because good bacteria form a natural part of your body. A well-balanced diet rich in fibre helps to keep good bacteria at the appropriate levels.
Common types of probiotic bacteria
While there are a lot of bacteria that are considered to be probiotics or good bacteria, there are two main types of probiotics known as bifidobacterium and lactobacillus. Probiotics are also made up of yeasts. Saccharomyces boulardii is a common type of yeast present in probiotics.
Probiotics for medical conditions
There is a large amount of research happening to find out more about what probiotics can do for the human body. Even though there are a lot of positive outcomes, scholars and researchers are still working hard to find clear answers about how probiotics can help the body with various conditions.
However, probiotics may help with some medical conditions. This can vary between different people meaning that what works for you might not work for me. These can vary depending on the type of probiotics.
Now that we know what are probiotics, let us look at the conditions that might be helped by increasing probiotics in the body. The types of conditions that might be helped by probiotics include diarrhoea, constipation, inflammatory bowel disease, urinary tract infections, irritable bowel syndrome, lactose intolerance, gum disease, upper respiratory infections, eczema, and even may assist and support treatments for sepsis.
