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We at ZUKAY Live Foods live and love probiotics. Why? Well, we love being healthy, and personally, we just marvel at nature's complexity and ability to create symbiotic relationships that you'd never think about.
At the heart of probiotic theory is the fact that you NEED certain bacteria and yeasts in your digestive system to thrive – mainly certain strains of lactobacilli, bifidobacterium, and the yeast Saccharomyces Boulardii (as well as some other bacteria as well). You've had them in you since you were born, and they've tried their best to keep you as healthy as possible. They help you digest many foods, they produce vitamin B, and they help keep away bad bugs that could hurt you. In a perfect world, these bacteria happily make your digestive system their home, and in doing so, keep your digestive system working well.
But it's not a perfect world. There are many things in modern day life that work to hurt these good bacteria, and many of them are unavoidable. Stress, alcohol, lack of sleep, refined sugar, chlorinated public water, and most especially antibiotics are constantly hurting these little guys we rely on so much.
For generations, perhaps unknowingly, various cultures have eaten naturally fermented foods like yogurt, raw milk cheeses, sauerkraut, kim chee, miso, and other fermented vegetables as digestives to help keep themselves healthy and vigorous. When made properly and not pasteurized, all these foods use cultures of lactobacilli and bifidobacterium (both good bacteria) to turn the naturally-occuring sugars into lactic acid through the process of lacto-fermentation, which then preserve the product and turns it into a probiotic.
So what can probiotics specifically do for you? While the FDA has not formally ruled on probiotics or formally accepted the below benefits, studies of probiotic bacteria and yeasts have generally been found to have these effects on people:
- Increase Digestive Health
- Increase Immune System Functionality
- Decrease Allergies and Asthma Severity
- Decrease the Negative Digestive Effects of Antibiotics
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