Probiotics – The Bodies Internal Endangered Species
There are many advances in our health care we can be thankful for today. Before the 1900’s the top related causes of death were due mainly to contaminated food and water as well as an unfit housing and waste disposal system. Once we began to understand more about the invisible world full of bacteria, things like indoor plumbing and the sterilization of medical instruments were established. With the passage of time, we have become more and more conscience about our personal hygiene. The results are a wonderful decrease in infectious diseases.
On the other hand, while there has been a significant decrease in deaths due to infectious diseases, the introduction of penicillin in the 1940’s, new issues within the disease related causes of death cropped up. Instead of dying of many infectious diseases, death from serious chronic conditions has gotten out of control. People are not dying from poor hygiene, they are dying from the decrease and elimination of something else.
And this is where our discussion turns to the endangered internal species as a result of antibiotics. The sad truth of the matter is this – what kills the disease carrying bacteria, also kills our amazing probiotic bacteria friends.
While antibiotics have helped us eliminate so many diseases, the constant abuse of these medications, which includes prescribing them when people have colds and flues, which are virus related, not bacterial. Virus related illnesses are those that antibiotics cannot help. Instead, they simply kill off both good and bad bacteria inside your intestinal tract without any rhyme or reason.
With the misuse of antibiotics comes the introduction of the antibiotic resistant bacteria. This has created a cycle that keeps getting worse. Drug companies continue to manufacture and develop stronger antibiotics and the abuses such as mentioned above continue to happen. It is a never ending cycle that is become quite frightening when you dig deeper into the consequences.
So, where does this leave us? What is the solution?
Doctors are well aware of the physical consequences that result from antibiotics. So, why is it that along with our prescriptions for antibiotics, we are not then prescribed with probiotics to replace what has been lost through antibiotics?
As easy as it is to blame all the damages and destruction of our healthy flora in our intestines, fast food, soda, diet products, processed foods and the total lack of eating well-balanced meals are also to blame. And if these things weren’t bad enough, lack of proper amounts of sleep, emotional stress and even things we can not totally control like the environment, have all played a part in diminishing our good bacterial intestinal flora. And we have only ourselves to blame.
This leads us to the question of what to do next? The answer is simple.
Helping our intestinal tract is just a matter of introducing the probiotics our bodies have lost and continue to lose daily. It’s as easy as eating good unprocessed foods, organic fruits and vegetables if we can afford and acquire them. We can also add them by way of probiotic powders, probiotic liquids and probiotic supplements.
In the next article I’ll be talking about some of the more common foods that we can buy to encourage our healthy probiotic bacteria to grow and outnumber the bad bacteria.
Article by Kimberly Shannon. If you missed the first article on probiotics you can find it at our breast cancer support site.
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