Our bodies are crazy complex beings, that can do amazing and unthinkable feats. But how often do we look within us for the reason as to why we are able to do these amazing things?
Many of us get sick throughout the year and to cope with that we pop some ibuprofen or visit our doctors for some antibiotics. Our sole intention in doing this is to become “healthy” again so that we may resume doing the things we love. But what is the effect that these medications are having on our immune systems and microbiomes as a whole?
Our Gut Microbiome is this… think of a bustling city on a Monday morning, where everyone is hurriedly trying to get to work. This at a microscopic level is our microbiome daily. Our microbiome consists of trillions of microorganisms (referred to as microbiota or microbes) of thousands of different species. This can include not only bacteria but fungi, parasites, and viruses. These many different microbes coexist peacefully in our body with the majority of them residing in our large intestine.
No one’s microbiota is going to be the same, your microbiota makeup is determined by your own DNA. You are going to have helpful and harmful microbes in your gut microbiome that can coexist peacefully most of the time. The reason for having a balance of the good and bad microbes is so that your body is less susceptible to disease.
How do we get an imbalance of microbes in our body you may ask? Imbalances come from many things including infectious illnesses, certain diets, or the prolonged use of antibiotics or other bacteria- destroying medications. Antibiotics and some medications can really destroy some of the microbes in our gut (causing an imbalance) to the point that it makes us more susceptible to getting sick again. Once an imbalance occurs, we need to balance our microbiome again, and one way to do this is through ingesting prebiotics and probiotics.
Probiotics are helpful to our bodies because they are either foods that naturally contain microbiota, or supplement pills that contain live bacteria. Prebiotics are fibers that feed the live bacteria in your gut. Many people don’t know this, but consuming probiotics doesn’t have much of a point as half of the new bacteria you are trying to add to your microbiome will die if you are not also feeding those bacteria with a prebiotic.
Foods that contain probiotics include yogurt and some fermented foods such as sauerkraut, kombucha tea, some pickles, and pickled vegetables (unpasteurized). Foods that contain Prebiotic fiber include legumes, beans, peas, oats, bananas, berries, garlic, as well as asparagus.
Some our favorite Pro & Prebiotics include Sarah's Day Body Bloom as well as J S Health Probiotic and Prebiotic supplements.
xx K&K