Nutrition. Vitamins. You.
Spring brings more than sunshine and warmer temperatures. It also brings springtime allergies that may be keeping you from fully enjoying the new season. Here are some tips on how to promote overall respiratory wellness.
Not all probiotics are created equal! It’s important to understand the quality and purity behind your probiotic formulation. Here’s what you need to know about beneficial bacteria.
Antibiotics
Invite Health Podcast, Episode hosted by Jerry Hickey. Ph
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Antibiotics save lives. There’s no doubt about it. Antibiotics are drugs used to treat infections. But there are some issues with antibiotics. There are some side effects and toxicities that occur, many of them largely due to reducing the number of healthy bacteria in your intestines.
Bacteria and antibiotics
You have trillions of bacteria living with you. They vastly outnumber your own human cells. There are viruses, yeast bacteria and a whole zoo full of other bacteria living with you. Some of them are incredibly healthy and some of them are incredibly dangerous. However, when you have a balance and there’s enough of the healthy bacteria with certain strains and species involved, they help prevent the bad bacteria from acting out.†
When you take many antibiotics, they have what’s called a broad spectrum of activity. They kill many bacteria. Hopefully, they’ll kill the infection that they’re intended to kill, but that doesn’t always happen. However, they frequently kill off your good bacteria and what’s leftover can be really tough, dangerous bacteria, especially one called Clostridium difficile. It’s a very common cause of diarrhea in people who have used antibiotics, but it can also cause a severe form of colitis, which is severe inflammation of the lining of the colon that, in some people, will be terminal.†
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Study after study shows that when you use a high-quality probiotic, it helps prevent this problem with Clostridium difficile, which is a very common problem. Clostridium difficile can cause such severe inflammation in the intestines and specifically in the colon, that they actually have to remove part of the damaged colon.†
When an antibiotic kills off all your friendly bacteria and there’s just some nasty strains leftover, that’s a situation called dysbiosis. This means that you’ve shifted and damaged the balance of bacteria in your intestines. A lot of the leftover bacteria release toxins that inflame the intestines and lead to a condition called leaky gut syndrome. The lining of your intestines is supposed to be a really good barrier to keep things in the intestines from getting into the bloodstream. However, when there are certain strains of bacteria that release toxins that inflame the lining of the intestines, that lining is very thin and it becomes leaky, so now things that shouldn’t leave the intestines are exiting and getting into the bloodstream. This is dangerous. This leaky gut syndrome has been linked to certain autoimmune diseases, cancers and many other ill effects.†
How to help your intestines
There are a number of things that heal your intestines, but healthy bacteria and a good diet alone can heal your intestines. I always tell people to cater to your good bacteria in three ways.
Number one is a good diet. Healthy bacteria live on the ingredients in many fruits, vegetables and foods, like whole grains, cocoa and legumes. If you give sufficient supply of these foods, there are nutrients in them that will feed the good bacteria. Typically, this includes any good source of fiber, like green leafy vegetables, nuts, seeds, salads and vegetables. Plus, the good bacteria can change things in the food that then go onto protect you from viruses, certain cancers, heart disease, mental deterioration, etc.†
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A second way, and kind of a step up, is having fermented foods, like kefir, yogurt, tempeh, miso and natto. These foods give you bacteria.†
The next step up is the most powerful step you can take. This is if you choose certain probiotic strains that can amazingly improve your digestive health. If you’re going to take a probiotic supplement, you want to get a probiotic with at least two different bacteria and you want at least a billion of each. It would be good if there was a little food for the bacteria in there. They call this a prebiotic and it might be called chicory or fructooligosaccharides (FOS). That makes the probiotic bacteria more successful at culturing and growing in number, leading to better health.†
Tune into the full podcast episode for more details on the relationship between antibiotics and the digestive system.
Thank you for tuning in to the Invite Health Podcast. You can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or by visiting www.invitehealth.com/podcast. Make sure you subscribe and leave us a review! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at Invite Health today. We’ll see you next time on another episode of the Invite Health Podcast.
And just like that, we are ending one season and transitioning into another, which means it is fall allergy time for so many people. We’re going to focus on what you can do to support your immune system and respiratory system.
On today’s episode, we are going to talk about all of that hand washing you’re doing and all of those disinfectants you are using to keep the Coronavirus at bay. This is not a bad thing! But the problem is that it can impact your good bacteria and actually kill it off.
Invite Health Podcast, Episode hosted by Jerry Hickey. Ph
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In Part 1 of Restoring Your Aging Immune System, we discussed how your immune system becomes weaker with age, making you more susceptible to diseases and infections. If you missed that episode, click here to listen now! In today’s episode, Part 2, we will discuss what you can do to make your immune system stronger, including what supplements I take to help maintain overall health and wellness.
Probiotic Bacteria for the Immune System
Research shows that a healthy person has hundreds of strains of bacteria in their intestines, including strains of yeasts and viruses. A number of things can cause a decline in the number of these strains. These bacteria are intimately involved with controlling the immune system. About 70% of your immune cells come in contact with your digestive tract and there is an interaction between them and gut bacteria. If you don’t have sufficient quantities of healthy bacteria (the Probiotic-types), the harmful bacteria will confuse and active the immune system. This is implicated in many harmful things.
One is leaky gut syndrome. Toxins released by the bad bacteria inflame the lining of the intestines and you develop a leakage, where toxins from the intestines and possibly bacteria and viruses themselves leak into the blood stream and wreak havoc. In fact, leaky gut syndrome has been implicated in conditions such as systemic lupus and even rheumatoid arthritis. So, when you have sufficient, healthy bacteria your immune system is kept under control and they very quickly heal the lining of your stomach and intestines.
Probiotic numbers decline for a number of reasons –
You can obtain healthy bacteria or Probiotics from fermented foods like yogurt, kefir or a supplement. The strains of bacteria decline as we age, also. The journal Nutrients reviewed four different studies of people in their 60s and 70s. Researchers looked at a particular strain of bacteria called Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis and found, within a few weeks, it strengthened the activity of natural killer cells. In Part 1, we discussed how natural killer cells lose their strength as we age. This particular stain of Probiotic bacteria improved the strength of the natural killer cells in these studies.
In the journal of Dairy Science, researchers studied Lactobacillus plantarum; this is another beneficial strain of Probiotic bacteria. It reduced the incidence of upper respiratory tract infections in adults. It also reduced how long participants had the infection and the intensity of the symptoms. It also reduced pro-inflammatory cytokines and enhanced natural killer cell activity. This is what becomes dangerous in infections like Ebola or COVID-19. Pro-inflammatory cytokines over activate the immune system and make it attach your own organs.
In the journal of the American Geriatric Society a study was published by Mcmaster University of Ontario of 209 nursing home residence, aged 65 and over, from 14 different nursing homes. Taking the strain Lactobacillus rhamnosus reduced the number of infections with a virus by 45% over a six month period. This shows just how important probiotic bacteria can be to enhancing and directing your immune system.
Fiber and Prebiotics for the Immune System
There are also a lot of things in fiber that feed the good bacteria. This is why following a fiber-rich diet is so important. Fiber is a starch that you cannot digest or absorb. It is found in vegetables, whole grains, and seeds and nuts. When you put fiber and good bacteria together in a supplement, it is called a prebiotic with a probiotic. A prebiotic is simply the food for the probiotic bacteria. The probiotics work with the fiber to release a bunch of different things, including acids like lactic acid and propioic acid that benefit the digestive tract. Deeper down the intestines you actually release butyric acid; there is an interaction between good bacteria and good foods and the release of butyric acid. These three acids give energy to our immune cells and to our digestive tract so they can function properly. But the butyric acid also heals the lining of the intestines very rapidly and improves the absorption of minerals, such as calcium and magnesium.
Additional Methods to Enhancing A Good Diet
Cocoa has been shown to be great for brain health, specifically the circulation to your brain, and for heart health. But the active ingredients in cocoa have to be activated by probiotic bacteria otherwise it does not work. Another example is Green tea which has a vast majority of benefit; These benefits cannot be demonstrated unless probiotic bacteria is activated. Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cabbage and kale must also be activated in order to reap the benefits of their components.†
Older individuals make less Vitamin D when exposed to the sun. Normally, to make Vitamin D, the cholesterol from the sun is irradiated by ultraviolet radiation coming from the sun and it goes to a precursor of Vitamin D that is stored in your liver called 25-hydroxycalciferol. When released, it lasts about two weeks in your bloodstream which is the type of Vitamin D that your doctor is measuring. It is really a precursor to Vitamin D. Then, it must go to your kidneys to be activated. You require the mineral Magnesium for this. Then it becomes 125-hydroxycalciferol, which is the active version of Vitamin D.†
Your immune cells – your T and B-cells – have receptor sites for Vitamin D. Just like immune cells release Melatonin to be activated, there are receptor sites for Vitamin D to be activated. T-cells activate different parts of the immune system and coordinate the fight against an infection. Plus, at the end of an infection, they tone down the immune response. B-cells make antibodies. If you lack vitamin D, there is less chance that an immune cell will be properly activated.†
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Thank you for tuning in to the Invite Health Podcast. You can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or by visiting www.invitehealth.com/podcast. Make sure you subscribe and leave us a review! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at Invite Health today. We’ll see you next time on another episode of the Invite Health Podcast.
