Thanks to their residence in the intestines, they also help power 60 percent of the body’s immune system. But digestion is only part of what these high achievers accomplish.
Without them, you couldn’t digest any food. Linked end-to-end, they would circle the globe two and a half times. Scoop them up and they would weigh 2 to 3 pounds.
One hundred trillion bacteria cram inside the average Joe. But even so, it’s a job that requires mind-boggling numbers. They do this with some help from the mucosal barrier, which coats every inch of the gut’s 1,000-square-foot surface to form a slippery, protective layer. Good bacteria act as microscopic bouncers for the bowels, waving in desirable nutrients and slamming the door on dangerous viruses and killer bugs.
And it was the case for a great many tainted hamburgers before that. That was the case in Europe last spring, where contaminated vegetable sprouts killed 29 people and made nearly 3,000 extremely ill. While food brings nourishment, it can also be a Trojan horse for disease. Over a person’s lifetime, the GI tract handles roughly 60 tons of food. Because the gut is porous (that’s how it absorbs nutrients from food), it’s also vulnerable to invasion. The relationship between the gut and well-behaved bacteria is mutually beneficial. Here’s what you need to know to keep your little buggers happy and healthy for the long haul. (See the “Putting Probiotics on Your Side” below.) But just as planting seedlings won’t rejuvenate a deforested landscape overnight, probiotics can’t be relied on as a quick fix for a gut-destroying lifestyle. To balance the scales, many healthcare practitioners are turning to probiotics - infusions of good bacteria from foods like yogurt, kefir, miso, tempeh, kombucha and kimchi, as well as from supplements. Over time, the disparity can contribute to more serious problems, including inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome. A short-term imbalance can lead to diarrhea, bloating and gas. And when bad bacteria prevail, illness strikes.
But when stress, medications or a poor diet (among other factors) lay waste to these friendly flora, bad bacteria rush in to fill the void. Good bacteria spend their days destroying their harmful cousins, picking through undigested leftovers and micromanaging calories. (Random parasites, yeast and fungi make up a much smaller internal population to find out more about them, read “Little Bugs, Big Trouble”). Yes, bacteria, such as those from the genera Bifido-bacterium and Lactobacillus, account for a large majority of the 100 trillion creepy crawlies that call your body home, and they flourish in the dark, dank folds of the GI tract. But it’s the 500 or so species of bacteria residing in our gastrointestinal (GI) tracts that really make us tick.
#Natural probiotic insync skin#
Everyone’s skin swarms with an invisible smorgasbord of bacteria, and the mouth is a microbial wonderland. Others have fungi meandering between our toes. Some of us have herds of mites grazing on our eyebrows. Your body is a walking repository for microorganisms, and their cells outnumber yours 10 to 1. Ever get the feeling you’re not alone? Maybe it’s because you’re not.
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