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Probiotics: Good Bugs For Our Gut

I attended a fantastic four day seminar last week called Boulderfest 2004: The Latest Findings in Nutritional Medicine and Spiritual Healing, and came away, although practically brain dead, with tons of good information - cutting edge stuff from researchers, medical doctors, naturopaths and osteopaths from all over the world. And, lest we get too serious here, there was an interesting guy on Thursday, a chiropractor, who, after his palms started to bleed, noticed that he could heal his patients from a distance. But, I think what stuck with me most was the subject matter of the speakers on Friday, who offered the latest thoughts and studies on bowel health. (I know none of you will be too surprised at my interest in our large intestine!)

First of all, just some random information that you might find interesting and to suck you into what you might think will be a possibly uninteresting subject:

1) We normally have 2 to 3 pounds of bacteria in our GI tract. Hopefully, the good bugs will outweigh the bad bugs.

2) On a normal day, we create 2 to 4 liters of gas per day, most of which is expelled at night. What? OK. I will give you some time to think about that one.

3) Babies born via C-section have entirely different microflora that those of us born vaginally. The dominent microflora of the vaginal birth baby is lactobacilli and will include other biotics that happen to be in the birth canal and the vaginal/skin/rectal surfaces of the mother, including many different kinds of normal and healthy yeasts and bacteria. This is actually good. The C-section baby will acquire its first microflora from the hospital ( eg. staph aureus) and from the skin of the mother. This could lead to a less robust immune system and higher levels of allergies later on.

Dr. Plummer has performed several clinical trials involving hundreds of subjects at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge - all rigorously scientific and utilizing the usual Placebo- Double Blind-Controlled study method. Because I fear I will lose you to yawns and People Magazine, I won't go into great detail about the results, but let me just say this: In every study, the administration of a probiotic product called HLC (human lactic commensals) Intensive manufactured by a company called Pharmax, significantly reduced the harmful pathogens in the small and large intestines of the people who were studied. The subjects chosen had a variety of problems; some just had an overgrowth of harmful candida from a dose of antibiotics, others had h. pylori, gastroenteritis, travellers diarrhea, inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome and even colon cancer. ("Probiotics have been shown to prevent or cure colonic tumours in animal studies.")

And, here's a scary thought for you to ponder: We are becoming resistent to all of our antibiotics. "Resistence to antibiotics is probably the biggest problem facing human healthcare in the 21st century." (Dr. Plummer) And the resistence occurs in our gut. Vancomycin, I believe, is the last and most powerful antibiotic that will work against resistent bacteria and many of these uncooperative bad guys are already thumbing their nose at vancomycin.

What will we do when no antibiotic works? Well, if you prepare your gut with probiotics taken on a regular basis, the bad bugs will be crowded out by the good bugs, and will just slip off their attachment sites on the gut lumen, "teflonized" by the probiotic. They will then plunge helter-skelter down the slippery water-slide of your colon, be absorbed (along with any heavy metals you may have hanging out) into the feces and out into your toilet where with a flourish of a flush you can say bye-bye forever.

Teflonize your gut day after day by colonizing it with massive numbers of beneficial bacteria and you will remain healthy. Which brings up another awful subject: The dangerous pathogens, chemicals etc. we are finding in sewage, and how we certainly hope none of this escapes into our drinking water. But enough bad news for today.

However, if there is a silver lining here, it is this: If we take probiotics on a regular basis and, according to what I heard last week, you and I will be healthier. Probiotics are very safe for everyone, even tiny babies.

Because of the rigorous research performed on the efficacy and strength of the Pharmax HLC product, I am recommending this one for now. I know there are many probiotics on the market today, (Primal defense seems to be enjoying its day in the sun. . .) but I don't know their track record, how strenuously they have been studied, the viability of the bugs, etc.

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