digestive symptoms
Probiotics can help improve many digestive symptoms, including:
- constipate
- diarrhea
- nausea
- Gas/bloating
- recent food poisoning
Your body has its own ecosystem, which includes all the bacteria and organisms that live on your skin and digestive tract - these are also called your microbiome (or microbiome). The number of bacteria in your body is estimated to be in the trillions.
Some of these organisms can improve your health—we call them the “good guys.” On the other hand, some of these organisms can cause harm to your health and body - we call them the "bad guys".
Like in any ecosystem, your body has a limited amount of resources (such as food) available to you, and good guys and bad guys are competing to survive. If there are too many of one type of bacteria, it becomes more difficult for other bacteria to live and survive.
If you've recently recovered from a bout of traveler's diarrhea or foodborne illness, it means your digestive tract has been thrown out of balance by too much bad stuff. In these cases, the bad guy is the infectious germ that makes you sick.
Non-infectious causes of digestive problems such as diarrhea and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are also related to an imbalance of digestive tract bacteria (also known as dysbiosis). If you have IBD, you may have an increased number of inflammatory bacteria.
Your gut (and your entire body) will function optimally if you have a good mix of different kinds of good bacteria. Taking probiotics can help restore the body's ecosystem and help the digestive tract recover from infectious or inflammatory bacteria.
What may surprise you is that probiotics can also help relieve constipation. Having the right mix of bacteria in your digestive tract can improve intestinal motility (the speed at which food moves through the intestines) and pain perception.
Studies have shown that taking probiotics can help improve the frequency and consistency of bowel movements and help relieve constipation symptoms.
Antibiotics can have a significant impact on your microbiome, while probiotics can help keep your system balanced. Have you ever taken antibiotics and experienced unpleasant side effects like diarrhea? Read on to learn how probiotics can help repair your ecosystem.
Recent course of antibiotics
Antibiotics are used to treat bacterial infections. Sometimes they are an important step in recovering from an illness.
What you may not know is that antibiotics don’t discriminate against the bad guys. One of the negative side effects of taking antibiotics is that they can also harm good people. This can make your digestive tract vulnerable. Probiotics can help restore the bacterial population in your digestive tract.
We often get sick from viruses like the common cold or the flu. In these cases, antibiotics will not help us recover. If you find yourself frequently sick from viral infections, probiotics can still play a role in restoring your health. Let’s take a look at how your digestive tract connects to your immune system!
always sick
Did you know that 70% of your immune system is located in your digestive tract? If you get sick frequently (even from viral infections), this may be a sign that you need probiotics.
Although bacteria in the digestive tract are considered "good," they are only beneficial if they remain in the digestive tract. Your body has several safety nets to ensure that bacteria do not enter your body through intestinal cells.
One of these safety nets are immune cells that recognize good people. Having a variety of good bacteria in your digestive tract means your immune system is active and working hard. When you do come into contact with a viral infection, your immune system is ready to take on the challenge.
Having the right types of bacteria can also help prevent your body from overreacting to infection. Are you familiar with the saying “too much of a good thing can be a bad thing”?
If your immune system overreacts, your body releases a stress hormone called cortisol. Cortisol acts on many different parts of the body and causes inflammation.
Research shows that using probiotics to restore ecosystem balance can help control immune responses in certain inflammatory diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis and ulcerative colitis.
Cortisol is also closely related to mood and emotional stress. Read on to learn how probiotics can impact your mood regulation!
mood swings
Are you familiar with the feel-good hormones serotonin and dopamine? They help regulate mood, sleep, food intake, and pain management. Both chemical messengers are produced by bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract. A bacterial imbalance means you're not producing the right amounts of these messengers, which can affect your mood.
When you don't have enough serotonin, your body releases cortisol. Too much cortisol can lead to anxiety, depression, mood swings, and irritability. This becomes a cycle, as stress (from the environment or emotions) stimulates the release of more cortisol, which worsens mood and irritability - yikes!
Recent research has been investigating whether using probiotics to alter the gut microbiome can help improve mood-related symptoms, and the results are encouraging! Probiotics have been shown to reduce stress-induced cortisol release and also improve anxiety and depression-related behaviors - yay!
What’s more closely linked to mental health than a good night’s sleep? Serotonin is not only responsible for regulating mood, but it also plays an important role in regulating our sleep cycles. Let’s discuss how your microbiome can help you get the sleep you need to get the best sleep possible.
difficulty sleeping
We've already covered how serotonin can help improve your mood, but it's also closely linked to sleep.
Have you heard of tryptophan? It is an amino acid found in high-protein foods, most notably turkey. Tryptophan is digested by our gut bacteria to produce serotonin. Serotonin is then used to make melatonin.
Melatonin is a hormone produced by the brain in response to darkness, and it helps control your circadian rhythm - or your sleep/wake cycle. More information about sleep in my article: Do Pistachios Help You Sleep? Yes!
Studies have found that having more of the right kinds of bacteria in your digestive tract (remember those good bacteria?) can increase the amount of serotonin produced from the tryptophan you eat. More serotonin equals more melatonin, which means better sleep!
Next, we'll discuss the relationship between your weight and digestive health. Let’s take a closer look!
weight gain
Did you know obesity is an inflammation? Remember the role of the gut microbiome in controlling inflammation? This means that even obesity and weight gain may be a sign that you may need a probiotic supplement.
The study examined the relationship between the types of bacteria found in the digestive tracts of overweight and normal-weight study participants. Overweight individuals had more Firmicutes and fewer Bacteroidetes compared with non-obese participants.
An imbalance in bacteria causes obese people to release more energy from food and tend to store more energy as fat. This means that overweight individuals carrying the wrong type of bacteria may eat less food than normal-weight individuals but still have trouble losing weight.
People who are overweight are at greater risk of developing metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a group of conditions that occur together and increase the risk of heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes. Bacterial imbalances can lead to elevated cortisol, which can lead to metabolic syndrome.
There are many factors that lead to obesity. If you've been struggling to control your weight, this could be a sign that you have a bacterial imbalance. Probiotics can be a useful tool in helping you achieve optimal health.
skin condition
If you have a skin condition like acne, I’m sure you think you’ve tried everything to improve it. But have you tried probiotics? Most people don’t realize that your gut health is even related to the health of your skin.
Your digestive tract isn't the only place bacteria live in your body. Your skin is also an important part of your microbiome. Recent research has been examining the connection between bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract and bacteria on the skin.
One way probiotics help the skin is through the immune system. Remember the importance of probiotics in regulating immune responses? Probiotics help prevent the immune system from overreacting and causing inflammation. Research has been investigating the role of probiotics in helping treat inflammatory skin conditions, including:
- acne
- atopic dermatitis
- wine dregs
Probiotics also help improve the skin barrier and prevent dry and irritated skin. If you are using an acne treatment that causes dry skin, probiotics have been shown to improve compliance by improving this side effect.
Probiotics can also be used as a topical treatment for acne. The good bacteria in probiotics compete with acne-causing bacteria. Beneficial bacteria also produce compounds that prevent acne-causing bacteria from surviving.
If you are taking antibiotics to treat acne, probiotics will help restore your microbiome and prevent imbalances in the body, including yeast infections. Yeast infection is another sign that you may benefit from probiotics.
yeast infection
Remember that ecosystem we talked about? Your microbiome naturally contains yeast, but just like bad bacteria, when there are too many yeasts (also called fungi), your ecosystem becomes imbalanced. Yeast infections include:
- thrush
- vaginal yeast infection
- yeast infection on skin
It's common to get a yeast infection while taking antibiotics because there are fewer bacteria (good and bad) in your body, giving other organisms like yeast a chance to grow and multiply.
Studies show that probiotics help stop yeast from growing and can be used to treat yeast infections such as thrush.
focus
Probiotics do more than just solve digestive issues!
Your gastrointestinal tract is connected to your brain and immune system, which means your digestive health can affect your mood, skin, sleep, and risk of chronic diseases like metabolic syndrome.
Your road to recovery may require more than just taking probiotic supplements. As with any ecosystem, you have to look at the big picture. If you fertilize a plant but don't give it water, it still won't grow. But with the right environment, including water, sunlight, and fertilizer, your plant won't just grow - it will thrive!
