by Raine Saunders

Created on: August 13, 2009

There are many important components to maintaining good health. If there was just one thing you could do to alter your overall state of health for the better, stay out of the doctor's office, and avoid catching each and every virus or bacteria that make you sick enough to call up your boss and say, "I'm not coming in today", it would be to find a good daily probiotic supplement to take. Why?

Of course, eating a healthy diet and getting adequate rest are also really important. But your immune system, located in the intestinal tract, is the epicenter of health. It controls how the body deals with illnesses, bacteria, viruses, and disease. The most integral component of the immune system is healthy bacteria, or probiotics. This may be a new word to you, but it is so essential to health, learning its meaning and importance to your body's ability to function properly is more important than most people realize. If you fail to receive appropriate amounts of healthy bacteria along with proper diet and rest, problems will occur. The ratio of "good" to "bad" bacteria in your intestinal tract is ideally about 85/15%. We have trillions of bacteria in our digestive system, so this balance is very challenging to maintain - especially with the average Western or American diet.

Probiotics are the opposite of antibiotics. These living bacterial microorganisms are essential in assisting the body's naturally occuring flora to repopulate themselves. We have become so accustomed to doctors prescribing antibiotics for illness, we seldom stop to think what those medications are actually doing to the human body. While they may have immediate short-term effects we consider convenient because they allow us to return to our normal everyday activities, antibiotics effectively kill all bacteria in the body. The result is a weakened immune system that is rendered defenseless to other invaders which may come in the future. This includes any viruses as well as unfriendly bacteria that may have mutated into some other strain.

Probiotics prevent and offer protection against a wide-range of health problems. Studies also show that these friendly organisms can actually be responsible for helping to ward off serious diseases such as cancer, Diabetes, and heart disease.

The best way to obtain probiotics from good, healthy sources is to eat or drink raw dairy products such as milk, cream, cheese, butter, and traditionally-fermented foods like home-made yogurt from organic raw milk, kombucha,

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