Good Bacteria Can Eliminate Sick Time Away From the Office

Last month, I told you about the one item you must bring when traveling, particularly abroad: A high-quality probiotic. Your gut flora is connected to your immune system; the health of your entire body is strongly influenced by the health of your gut.

One of the reasons why your gut has so much power is because of  the 100 trillion bacteria -- about three pounds worth -- that line your intestinal tract. The bacteria in your bowels outnumber the cells in your body by a factor of 10 to one. This extremely complex living system aggressively defends your body against outside invaders.

If you are eating the amount of sugar typical of the American diet (about 175 pounds per year), however, then you are feeding the "bad" bacteria, which are more likely to cause disease than promote health.

But the beneficial bacteria in your gut can help to boost the immune system, prevent allergic inflammation and food allergy, clear up eczema in children and heal the intestines from a variety of ailments. The reason you want to consider taking a good probiotic with you when travelling is that they are one of the best ways to naturally combat most causes of infectious diarrhea.

I put every new patient in our clinic on probioitcs and it is one of the few "supplements" I personally take. It is absolutely crucial to be on them if you take any antibiotics, as they help your body repair and restore the damage the antibiotics do to your gut flora.

Although I don't often recommend supplements, nearly everyone can benefit from probiotics. The trick about probiotics, however, is finding a good product, because there are many bad ones on the market. Many health food stores can direct you to some good brands. You do need to be careful here as many brands do not have what they claim on the label.

If you don't have access to a local expert to help you sort through and identify a good brand we have spent a number of years reseraching this area and can confidently recommend the Rebalanced Probiotic Plus, which is in our store for your convenience.