13/08/2025
Probiotics Are Your Body's Microbiome.
What if you found out your body is teeming with trillions of bacterial cells? While that’s enough to knock anyone off their feet, not all microbes are bad guys! And probiotics, which up levels of good bacteria and keep the bad ones in check, can help you with just that!
Probiotics has something to offer everyone and is good to know that probiotics can be a trusted ally in your corner. Bacteria Are Everywhere – Inside And Outside Your Body
Odd as it may seem, the human body actually has more bacterial cells than human cells.
Hundreds of different species of bacteria exist everywhere on your body – from your skin to your mouth, gut, va**na, oral cavity, intestines, colon, and even innocuous places like your belly button!
Some of them are good for you, while others may contribute to diseases or infections. By some estimates, you may have as many as 440 kinds inside your forearm, 150 variants behind your ear, and possibly thousands in your intestines!
These microbes, invisible to the naked eye, go quietly about their work, keeping your immune system in good health, regulating its function, and supporting other systems so they can operate normally.
They help you digest your food, protect you against the “bad” bacteria that cause diseases, and even help your body make vitamins like riboflavin, thiamine, and B12, and that all-important blood clotting vitamin K. They soldier away silently, running the ship, without your even being aware of it.
On the flip side, chronic health conditions like:
1. obesity,
2. diabetes,
3. atherosclerosis,
4. metabolic syndrome,
5. nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and cirrhosis have been linked with a microbiota imbalance, when the pathogens beat out the good microbes.
Such imbalances are also associated with allergic conditions, infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, and possibly even mental and psychological diseases. Having the right kind of bacteria and the right balance can make all the difference to your health. An infant, for example, may be able to fight off asthma or eczema due to an immune system strengthened by the presence of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, if he or she is fed breast milk which helps these strains thrive.
So how do you make sure you have more of the good kind of microorganisms that help your health and not the kind that do you in with a bad bout of diarrhea, yeast infections, or skin rashes? In a word – probiotics.
Probiotics: Bacteria That Keep Your Health In Good Shape
Probiotics are live bacteria as well as yeasts that help your health.
So what kind of bacteria do probiotics typically contain?
Specific strains of bacteria like Lactobacillus,
Bifidobacterium,
Bacillus,
Saccharomyces,
Enterococcus,
Streptococcus,
Pediococcus,
Leuconostoc, and Escherichia coli are among those that are being explored for their probiotic benefits.
You Start Collecting Probiotics Even Before You Are Born!
So the human microbiome is critical to not just our immunity but our nutrition and normal development, but where do these microbes come from?
Unknown to you, your quest to acquire probiotics begins right from when you are in your mother’s womb. Your body probably took on board some of your mom’s own strains of bacteria, picked up some more on your passage through the birth canal, and then topped it up further when you had breast milk.
So what exactly did you pick up?
As you grow up, your interaction with the environment, the food you eat, the lifestyle choices you make can all impact what kind of microorganisms thrive in your body.
Poor dietary choices like consuming inflammatory foods that allow the unfavorable microbes to thrive.
For instance, if you binge on sugary foods, they allow candida strains to flourish. When these yeasts overgrow in the gastrointestinal, urinary, and respiratory tracts, you could wind up with a pesky yeast infection!
Prolonged antibiotic usage which can kill the good bacteria along with the bad.
Aging can change your microbiota composition. While your microbiota is largely stable in adulthood after the initial variation in infancy and early childhood, as you grow older, the microbiota starts to change again.
The good bacteria in your body helps with nutrition, growth, and immune function. When your microbiota is out of balance, it can cause issues such as:
Skin problems like eczema, allergies, or rashes
Frequent illness or infections
Respiratory problems
Moodiness or the blues
Tiredness, fatigue, sleepiness
Digestive issues
Difficulty with weight loss, possibly due to metabolic disorders.
Make Probiotics Your Ally To Win Your Health Battle.
So how do you rally the troops and correct that microbiome imbalance in your body?
One way to do it is by getting in more of probiotic-rich foods – think yogurt, fermented yogurt drinks like Middle Eastern kefir, tangy, fermented cabbage sauerkraut or its spicier Korean variant kimchi, fermented soy-based Japanese staple miso, or the poster child for healthy probiotic tea, kombucha.
Let those good microbes do the hard work for you, but give them that extra support in the form of probiotics.
