Probiotics are something you must have heard of and know they are good for you. But do you really know what they are, do you need them and how to add them to your diet? Here I will break it for you with simple words.
You could be eating the healthiest food, adding a lot of whole foods and super foods to your diet but yet be deficient in many vitamins and minerals. Sometimes our bodies don’t absorb certain nutrients very well. Which sucks because at the end what’s the point on giving up on a chocolate dessert or pasta to make room for a healthy version that won’t bring any benefits ?? Ugh! But don’t worry there is something you can do to increase your body’s absorption of all the good stuff. This is where probiotics come. In few words they improve the gut flora and from there on help the body absorb the nutrients and vitamins consumed with food.
High quality probiotics or foods that contain them not only help with digestive and immune system but all systems in our body. They help cell detoxification in a natural way, and make all the nutrients that we consume with food get absorbed from our body.
A lot of well familiar foods have probiotics and adding them to your diet can do a lot for your gut health and overall well being .Those live microorganisms as we like to call them “ good bacteria “ are already familiar to your body because they usually live in your gut. But with everyday stress, exposure to free radicals , taking medications and many other things that come with our busy lifestyle, those good bacterias could be insufficient. Working on adding probiotic rich foods will be just like a little health booster to make sure everything else in the body works in coherence.
Some of the foods you should add to your diet are:
Yogurt . The one with the best quality probiotic content is Bulgarian yogurt, you can find it at Whole Foods or Sprouts. If you wish to stay dairy free you can consume vegan yogurts, they have a good amount of probiotics too.
Kimichi. This traditional korean pickled cabbage is packaged with vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. And it is also an excellent probiotic. Consuming kimichi can help you maintain good digestion.
Fermented cabbage or Souercrout is one of the best source of probiotic. It is also rich in vitamin A, vitamin B1, B2, B6, vitamin C and E.
All fermented foods have probiotics in them. Like all
- pickled vegetables
- kambucha
- apple cider vinegar with the mother
- kefir
The difference is the specific bacteria they have and the concentration level.
Our digestive system contains a variety of probiotic bacterias, not just one! So you need to consume an assortment of foods rich in them in order to get the sufficient good bacterias.
If you have been taking antibiotics recently or you have been experiencing digestive discomfort definitely add some of those foods to your daily diet. If you wish to take a supplement you can do so, but if you have any medical issues I would recommend you to consult a health care provider. Probiotics are pretty harmless but just to be on the safe side.
And when choosing a probiotic supplement stay away from:
- One that has only one bacteria ( this is simply not enough)
- One that has too many bacterias ( this could indicate that you have a little bit of each bacteria but not enough so they can give the probiotic effect)
- Don’t buy products that are chewable, gummies, tablets, powders. Instead get a single coated capsules.
- Stay away from strains that say “soil – based”
I like to pick up once that stay in the refrigerator, they say “live”. This is one of my favorite kinds because it has pretty clean ingredients. And has the highest quality probiotics.
Ivelina Angel 