Over the last few years we are seeing the term “probiotics” being placed on various foods and being touted with many health benefits. Probiotics refers to live micro-organisms that interact with your existing bacteria in your digestive lining to produce a positive effect on your health, primarily your immune system.
The general research has been very promising that these probiotics can help reduce the length of an illness in people compared to placebo interactions. Those taking the probiotics also showed increase in biological markers for improved immune function. While the results from these early studies are very encouraging, the problem is that every individual strain of probiotic strain has different effects. Currently there is no consensus on which the best are and how much of any of them we need to be the most beneficial. So don’t believe the hype on why you need to buy one type over another. And realize the probiotic effects may be limited, so don’t think overdosing on them is protecting you extra from other poor diet and health practices. And just taking them in supplement form may do you no good, so it is best to get it in real foods so you at least get the other benefits from a healthy food.
So even though the research is not yet fully complete, it still might be beneficial to incorporate foods like yogurt with live bacterial cultures into your diet. Even if the probiotics don’t do anything for you, you still have eaten a nutritious food that has lots of other good benefits.
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