Health & Medical Nutrition

Add Probiotics to Your Food Plan for Better Gut Health

The importance of promoting strong digestive system health couldn't be overemphasized. It is at this time thought as much as 80% of our total body's immunity is situated in the intestinal track, and it can affect allergy symptoms, common colds and influenza plus an array of immune system related diseases. Now recent reports have also revealed a strong connection between gut health and mental health.

We've always intuitively acknowledged the brain delivers signals to the gut if we're distressed. Those butterflies inside the stomach or upset stomach going on when we're stressed or despondent are signals being sent from the brain towards the stomach. We are actually at the present discovering that the stomach in fact sends considerably more information towards the brain than will be the reverse. Keeping a healthy stomach will be necessary to keeping our mind working properly.

There is additional information the brain is not the organ that completely manages our emotional behavior. There are neurons in the brain that produce neurotransmitters like serotonin which involve depression, violent behavior plus mood control. But also there are neurons inside the intestines that also manufacture serotonin, and the greatest levels with this potent neurotransmitter will be here, and not the brain. This might be the key reason why antidepressant medications frequently are ineffective in treating depressive disorders, since they raise serotonin amounts just in the brain. Better diet may really be a better treatment for depressive disorders.

Maintaining a healthy digestive track is more important than we perhaps traditionally have supposed. But keeping it from harm's way is not easy. Considering the amount of sugar in addition to processed foods that most people devour, we put those good bacteria that keep us in good physical shape under constant attack. Highly processed food products actually destroy these bacteria that defend us and feed pathogenic agents and harmful yeast.

That is where probiotics show up. Our food regimen over time has gone from conventionally fermented foods that fuel our gut flora to unhealthy food that kill those same invaluable bacteria. Reversing this trend to go back to fermented foods will give you so many health improvements such as preserving a more healthy balance of microbes within a digestive tract. But they are among the better cleansing agents we have available to us, which means we're ridding our system of a variety of toxins.

Having said that, when choosing probiotic foods what we are looking for is not always that clear. Many commercial versions of probiotic kefir or yogurt don't have live cultures, or are loaded with sugars. Pasteurized versions are also not 100% effective, as they destroy a lot of the naturally occurring helpful probiotics. So get your hands on alternatives that don't contain additional sugars, synthetic colorings, low calorie sweeteners and high fructose corn syrup.

Among the food products you should look for are:

1. Yogurt. Search for "live and active cultures" on the label.
2. Sauerkraut. This really is a great probiotic food, but be certain it is unpasteurized.
3. Miso soup. A long-time well-liked breakfast food in Japan, it normally includes in excess of 160 bacteria strains.
4. Kefir. As stated earlier, read the ingredient contents disclosure.
5. Soft cheeses. Several fermented soft cheeses, such as Gouda, have probiotics which are hardy enough to survive the gastrointestinal tract journey.


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