Probiotics are your digestive system’s first line of defense against pathogens. There's a critical balance between good (beneficial) bacteria and bad bacteria (pathogens) that is determined by factors that are largely within your control.
Diet and lifestyle choices are the two biggest factors in connection with this. The diet and lifestyle choices that lead to obesity and diabetes can further harm good bacteria populations within the digestive system; these illnesses are just two examples of many.
Changes in the balance of good bacteria regulate/modulate other activities and systems within the body. In other words, your entire chemistry hangs in the balance of what is going on in the microbiome (the small world of bacteria inside of the digestive system). This is well-known and is stated in a great many authoritative medical books.
What is not as well known is that negative emotional and psychological effects occur in the body as a result of pathogenic overgrowth and the proper healthy balance of good bacteria.
It’s hard for many people to grasp that important lifestyle changes will improve their personal health. It’s even harder for most people to implement those changes. In fact, this is hard for all of us. What makes matters worse is that we are bombarded with conflicting information about these issues coming in from many sources.
People will tend to believe things that already fit into their lifestyle ideas. If you are a wine drinker, or if you feel that you need animal protein every day, you will be able to find many articles that will support your views.
The sheer volume of false information that is written and sitting on the internet waiting for well-meaning readers is limitless. For all you know, my writing may be nothing but false information as well.
But here’s the difference: I’m only going to state the very obvious things we need to do as our part in order to ensure our good health.
- Eliminate processed foods. Processed foods can harm good digestive bacteria. In addition to that, processed foods of all types can disrupt the endocrine system, the immune system, and many other body systems and organs. Many books have been written on how processed foods play a big role in a variety of cancers. There are usually other cofactors in the rise of cancer, but processed foods are high on the list of causes.
- Make sure that if you have to do a cycle of an antibiotic treatment that you simultaneously, or shortly afterwards, take a larger than usual dose of effective probiotics. The purpose of this would be to try to repopulate any of the good flora (probiotics) that may have been destroyed by antibiotics as collateral damage.
- The following is the hardest step: Cut down on protein and/or consider eating no animal protein at all. Even though we can adapt and eat a small amount of animal-based foods, we do not need to. It has become a custom. It is a habit. We are addicted to concentrated protein. It's hard to see the addiction because it’s different from other addictions. We become chemically addicted to protein matter. We feel cranky, angry, hungry, weak, or anxious, or experience a host of other negative feelings, if we are involuntarily deprived of it. Without a doubt, we eat too much protein. It’s recommended every day, but people do not place limits on eating it. In this day and age, people still feel the need for animal protein of some kind in every meal. This is a total distortion of what the human diet is meant to look like.
To summarize this, I won’t condone the eating of flesh foods and tell people the secret of how to do it safely. I will just say that you can eat flesh foods and be incredibly healthy, but you are absolutely better off without them in the long term. You don’t need them. You won’t get sick or have deficiencies because you did not eat enough protein that was from flesh foods.
What we need are calories from a diet of a broad spectrum. This is simple chemistry. No matter how much evidence there is to prove that we are omnivorous but ideally herbivorous, someone will argue that we are carnivorous. I completely disagree.
Perhaps I appear to be preaching as I advocate a plant-based diet, but I am not. I am just trying to state scientific information correctly. I am trying to state what medical people have failed to teach the government. The government then fails to create the proper protective rules and guidelines. As a result, sicknesses caused by unhealthy diet and other choices, such as lack of exercise, are the cause of endless suffering.
Does this tie into probiotics? Yes—in a big way. The chemistry and microbiology of your body are intertwined. Your happiness is tied in with your immune system and your white blood cell count. Your immune system is tied in with the system that controls your emotional state. Either one of those entities can knock the other one out.
Huge numbers of salespeople are selling false information to create abstract problems with even more abstract solutions.
The drug industry takes advantage of, and the medical industry tries to manage, the healing marketplace. All the while, 70% to 90% of the problems that we face as a species would simply go away if humans changed their diets and their relationship with the earth. Your physical health is directly tied to the way we treat the earth—how clean we keep it, and how we handle the fragile relationships with all the animals. We destroy too much life for food, and the end result is that a major part of the world population is still malnourished and sickened by what they consume.