If you are in touch with the health world you have probably heard the term probiotics and wondered what it means.  We have put together this article to help you understand what probiotics are, what their uses are, and what benefits you will receive from them.  That way you will be able to know how to make your body healthier and impress your friends with your knowledge.

What Are Probiotics

Probiotics are a collection of bacteria and yeasts that are good for your body.  The probiotics are introduced to the body live to be the most effective.  Contrary to popular belief, we actually need certain bacteria in our body to help keep it functioning properly.  Many probiotics are naturally found in the body but can also be found in foods.

Here is a short list of foods that contain probiotics:

• Miso Soup
• Pickles (sour)
• Sauerkraut
• Soft cheeses
• Sourdough Bread
• Yogurt

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The Benefits of Probiotics

Probiotics have a wide array of benefits that you can find simply by eating them.  Most of the benefits are related to your body working properly and some of them are related to curing regular ailments.  Here are some of the benefits of probiotics

Processing Food

Probiotics are used in your gut to help break down food and keep it moving along.  Without probiotics, or without the proper balance, it takes a longer time for food to move through your body.  If it can move at all.  Maintaining the proper balance will help keep your metabolism in peak operating condition.

Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease are never fun things to have but you can help to reduce their impact on your body by maintaining the proper level of probiotics.  Probiotics help the body break down food , prevent infections and get rid of smelly flatulence that comes with this disease .

Yeast Infections

While some yeast is probiotics, probiotics themselves can help you to combat yeast infections.  They do this by helping the body return to the proper yeast concentration.  Yogurt is one of the best probiotics to help with yeast infections.  It can be taken orally or applied directly to the yeast infection.  Applying directly to the yeast infection is the most effective method of correcting the imbalance.

Bad Bacteria

In general, the job of probiotics comes down to ridding the body of bad bacteria.  It does this by boosting the immune system, providing vitamins, and introducing the good bacteria into the system.  This benefit alone can help you with a variety of conditions.  This could help to fight colds and sicknesses along with treating infections and other immune problems.

Skin Conditions

There is recent evidence that shows that probiotics can help with your skin conditions such as eczema.  A lot of skin conditions, including acne, come from your body being exposed to bad bacteria.  While probiotics won’t help prevent all skin conditions, it should help a lot of them.

Recent explorations in the world of probiotics have been exploring the use of topical probiotics, a cream that simply can be rubbed on.  This is a great way to deliver probiotics directly to your skin condition.  In combination with your standard skin treatments, these probiotic creams could be miracle workers.  While they are still being developed and researched, scientists say that they show great promise.

Chemotherapy Side Effects

One of the many side effects of chemotherapy is a reduced immune system.  In fact, many people become seriously sick or die from the reduced immune system that chemotherapy creates.  Because probiotics boost the immune system, scientists, and medical experts have been experimenting to see if they can help cancer treatment patients have a higher quality of life.  Early tests are promising.

If the studies continue on the path they are taking, probiotics may replace antibiotics during chemotherapy because of the increased danger of antibiotics with the weakened immune system.

Probiotics are a part of the body that has gone under-researched throughout the years.  It wasn’t until recently that we started to investigate into the world of good bacteria and yeast.  Now that we have, we are continually finding new benefits to using probiotics.  The list of things that probiotics are being tested as a treatment for is long.  If you have tried probiotics, let us know how they have done in the comments down below.