Would you try a free probiotic supplement?
This is an interesting question. I know some people, myself included, would never hesitate to say” yes!”, but I believe the vast majority of the people would answer “no” if ever asked. This astounds me. When it comes down to it, it has to be the lack of ‘common knowledge’ that exists about probiotics supplements in general to explain why people answer this way. But change is on the way. Everyday more and more people learn about the benefits of probiotics, and soon it wont be long until the masses learn about the overwhelming health benefits that come with taking probiotics.
So the first question that comes to mind is…
What Are Probiotics?
The short answer is, bacteria. If you poll most people and ask them if would rather have bacteria in their body or no bacteria in their body, they would probably choose the latter of the two. Not surprisingly though, because bacteria comes with a negative connotation. But, bacteria isn’t always a bad thing. Bacteria in fact, is vital to maintaining a healthy digestive system, and, a healthy body.
This “good bacteria” as you often hear it reffed to, comes in many different strands. Bifidobacterium and lactobacillus acidophilus are two of the popular ones. This bacteria resides in your gastrointestinal track, mouth and vagina. Lack of this good bacteria leads to unbalance in one’s body, which brings on health ailments such as yeast infections, sinus infections, ear infections, candida, lack of energy, stomach ailments, irritable bowel syndromes, eczema in children, chronic colds, suffering severe colds, weak immune system… the list is long and all too familiar. The common mistake is to treat these ailments individually, when actually there is a balance issue that needs to be addressed.
A Healthy Balance.
Most people have a hard time understanding that the human body needs to be in balance to be healthy. If you’ve investigated the relationship between ph balance and being healthy, you probably already know what I mean. But for those that don’t, let me explain that there are checks and balances that occur in many different ways in the body. When you don’t have the right balance, problems occur.
Good bacteria, which can be found in a probiotic supplement, when in proper balance provides necessary functions such as keeping in check unfriendly disease-causing bacteria, yeasts, fungi, and parasites. When this balance gets out of wack, these harmful agents take over, and cause all kinds of problems in the body, or at least weaken the immune system to the point it suffers it succumbs to other health issues.
What Causes This Imbalance?
One of the major players is antibiotics. While useful, and sometimes necessary for fighting off bad bacteria (colds, infections) in your body, it also destroys instances of good bacteria. Once good bacteria is eliminated, it’s extremely difficult to get it back to a normal healthy level, unless you take probiotics supplements or eat probiotic rich foods, thus leaving the door wide open for harmful agents such as yeast and molds to come through and flourish. Once these agents set up shop, chronic conditions such as tooth decay and periodontal disease, vaginal infections, stomach infections, respiratory infections, yeast infections, candida, etc. start to occur. From here your body will try and fight off these conditions, and sometimes it will, but the strain on your immune system is enormous.
A Plan Of Action
If taking a tally of all the actions that you take that help good bacteria in your body and ones that open the door for bad bacteria to flourish, the tallies in the bad bacteria column would most likely out number the ones in the good 5:1 or even more! It turns out a lot we do effects our body in a negative way. Besides antibiotics, little things like drinking alcohol and using certain mouthwashes can kill good bacteria, while eating a lot of white flour and sugar provide an environment perfect for yeasts and other harmful bacteria to flourish where the good bacteria used to be.
But antibiotics are by far the biggest threat to a proper probiotic environment. It’s like you have a garden, and want the vegetables you plant (the good bacteria) to flourish, but a weed starts growing, and you decide to get rid of it. Takign antibiotics would be like setting fire to the entire garden, and hoping the vegetables you plant grow back, while the weeds don’t. What ends up happening? As you can probably guess, the vegetables, completely destroyed, don’t grow back faster then the weeds, and the weeds end up taking over.
The best way to help your body is to…
Constantly give your body good bacteria, so that it always has “ammunition” for fighting the turf wars that are happening inside of your body. I first heard the advice from a respected alternative health adviser who told me he recommend taking a probiotic supplement every day to ensure you are providing your body the ability to balance it self out. This is what I do, and I would never consider doing otherwise. There’s just too much to lose by not doing it.
So it comes back to my question, would you take a probiotic supplement if it was free?
From time to time we are asked to recommend a probiotic supplement to our readers. To check out this month’s recommendation, check out: