You know you should be taking probiotics for your health, but a new concept, prebiotics, might be unfamiliar. What’s the difference?
Probiotics are the actual bacteria that colonize your gut and help keep your system balanced. They aid digestion and bolster the immune system. You can eat them in foods such as yogurt where they colonize your gut through digestion, or you can take supplements.
Prebiotics are undigestible foods, such as the skin of an apple, that travel through your digestive system, fermenting as they go. When it reaches the large intestine, the fermentation process encourages the growth of beneficial bacteria in your gut.
There are plenty of benefits when you reintroduce beneficial bacteria to your gut, but you don’t want to forget about nourishing bacteria that are already present. Prebiotics work with your natural flora to foster bacteria already living in your digestive system.
Increasing prebiotic fiber intake helps support your immune system, increase bone density, and foster brain health among many other benefits. Our modern diet of processed foods and foods high in sugar decrease the amount of beneficial fiber we get day to day. This diet causes chronic digestion issues, but it also reduces your body’s natural flora.
Let’s look at a few benefits of reintroducing prebiotics to your diet.
1.Improved Digestion
Your gut bacteria is a unique environment. Millions of bacteria help aid in digestion, and without them, food doesn’t digest. You can ingest probiotics all day long, but if you don’t foster their natural environment, those little bacteria aren’t going to flourish.
Think of it like this. You wouldn’t plant seeds in your garden and then leave out the water, would you? Sure they might sprout with the dew, but the seedlings aren’t going to be healthy or thrive. Most likely, they’ll die off after a few days.
Your gut bacteria need the same kind of treatment as a garden. You have to give them what they need to thrive. Prebiotics stimulate the growth of your gut’s native flora and help them thrive.
They also balance good bacteria with bad. The gut flora also regulates toxins in your digestive system, so if those colonies are healthy, they’ll do a better job of keeping inflammation down in your digestive system.
The other benefit is that you’ll be able to use the fiber you’re consuming. Fiber isn’t something your body can digest normally. However, prebiotic fiber ferments, and your body can use it rather than passing it directly through the system undigested. Better prebiotics, better gut flora, better digestion, and improved bowel movements.
[nextpage title=“Next” ]2. Enhanced Immune Function
We know there’s a link between your health and your digestion. How else is the body going to eliminate large quantities of toxins?
Prebiotics improve the quality and frequency of your stools. The reduce the risk of inflammation responses (including allergic reactions) and improve overall health. When your gut flora flourishes, the healthy digestive environment allows your body to handle the digestion of things it couldn’t before.
Your gut begins eliminating toxins more quickly and more efficiently. Stools don’t hang around in your lower digestive tract waiting for elimination. Prebiotics also lower the natural pH of your gut which inhibits the growth of foreign bacteria.
Finally, if taken over time, they can help your body process nutrients more efficiently, so your body gets more of what it needs.
[nextpage title=“Next” ]3. Lower Inflammation
Inflammation is an immune response to a foreign invader. Inflammation causes so much of your discomfort. Regularly consuming prebiotics help the body react better to outside contaminants and lower your risk of inflammation.
When your immune system is healthy, and your body is more efficient at processing and eliminating toxins, you experience less immune response to everyday toxins. Some conditions such as leaky gut or cardiovascular problems are nothing more than the body’s tissues overreacting to things that the weakened system can’t balance.
Balancing the gut’s process eliminates many of the body’s stressors, making it more efficient and better able to handle attacks that require an immune response.
[nextpage title=“Next” ]4. Reduced Heart Risk
Cardiovascular disease is one of the biggest killers of all time. One player in cardiovascular disease is cholesterol, which reduces the body’s ability to pump blood efficiently through the vascular system.
Introducing prebiotics helps reduce the amount of cholesterol. It also reduces the inflammation associated with heart disease. Prebiotics can also regulate the amount of minerals and electrolytes found in your body, which in turn can affect your blood pressure.
Finally, prebiotics can reduce glycemic levels and lower insulin response. When your body’s resistance to insulin is lowered, you’re better able to digest food and use the nutrients for your entire body’s health.
[nextpage title=“Next” ]5. Help With Weight Loss
Increasing fiber intake helps you feel more full while assisting your body’s elimination of toxins. Prebiotic fiber regulates your appetite and helps you feel fuller longer so that your body can digest each meal efficiently.
Specific prebiotics can alter the composition of gut flora to your body’s benefit. The more efficiently food moves through your system, the less likely your body is to store fat for later. It doesn’t feel starving because you’re using food nutrients much more efficiently and you’ll shed some of your body’s emergency stores of fat.
Taking prebiotics also triggers healthier decision making. When your brain receives more of the nutrients it needs, you’re better able to make healthy decisions in the long run.
[nextpage title=“Next” ]6. Protection Of Bone Health
Prebiotics improves your body’s ability to absorb nutrients from food. Vital minerals such as magnesium, calcium, and iron are difficult for the body to absorb fully. Prebiotics streamlines that process so your body can absorb more of the minerals it needs.
So much of the minerals we consume pass through the digestive system without being undigested. The more healthy flora is working in your large intestine, the more minerals will make their way to the parts of your body that need them.
Bones are vital for the structure of the body and prebiotics helps your bones get the minerals they need to rebuild and repair.
[nextpage title=“Next” ]7. Hormone Regulation
The brain-gut relationship is relatively new, but most scientists agree that our gut flora has a profound effect on our hormones and moods. Individual nutrients facilitate the chemicals you need to produce certain moods. If your body isn’t getting enough, you aren’t going to maintain those chemicals.
Some foods produce inflammation, but prebiotics has the opposite effect. They can support your body’s production of neurotransmitters like serotonin. Some of these neurotransmitters depend solely on the foods you eat to begin production. If you’re consuming the right amounts of prebiotics, in the form of berries, oats, onions, and garlic for example, your body can get to work making those transmitters.
