Probiotics: Why Everyone Should Be Careful with Antibiotics

Let's first define probiotics. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), probiotics are live cells in the human colon ingested and elicit beneficial effects to the host. In this definition, live cells are explained to be all forms of living organisms other than the basic human (or animal) cell components, and the beneficial effects are those effects that enhance good health.

Live cells in the human colon include facultative and obligate anaerobes, which depend on fermentation to achieve their metabolic requirement. These microorganisms include such bacteria as Lactobacillus, Bacillus, Streptococcus, and others. These microorganisms help in digesting some of our food components that are generally regarded as prebiotics, or even other common foods to give byproducts that are useful for body development and defense.

Another way probiotics helps in the body is to generate antibodies that will fight any similar bacteria which might invade the body system. Presence of microorganisms in the colon enable the body's defense mechanism to be activated which will later develop to acquired immunity for the individual. Finally, presence of probiotics enables the colon to have its barrier properties against unwanted solids to enter the blood stream and cells enhanced. The barrier is enhanced by the microorganisms clinging into the mucus of the colon thereby forming a barrier to the colon porosity.

Now you can imagine why you should not destroy the microorganisms in your colon. People who do not have strong probiotics experience some bad health with easy development of colon cancer, difficulty in maintaining the colonic microbial balance, and easing the attack by other microorganisms (some bacteria produce chemicals called bacteriocins that fight other bacteria) in your body system. Destroying the good bacteria (or probiotics for that matter) also means that you will lack some of the essential chemicals they produce to give your body a healthy outlook.
But most of us do destroy these probiotics by unnecessarily taking the antibiotics. Not a few times do we have people rush into taking antibiotics in order to reduce some pain, or just cure some bacterial infection. Though it is recommended that health must be maintained and that all forms of illnesses must be treated, sometimes just doing the right things is what is required for a healthy lifestyle.

In order to maintain the required balance of probiotics in your colon, one thing for sure is to avoid a lot of antibiotics. That means you should resort to antibiotics if and only if you don't have any other way out. The other thing you ought to do is to have a lot of prebiotics. These foods are those that are not digestible either completely or partially by our digestive juices and enzymes but can be broken down by these probiotics. Such foods include bananas (components of banana), a lot of vegetables and fruits. These prebiotics will encourage the growth of probiotics and thereby give you a lot of wealthy life.

And when it is necessary, one should be given a prescription of probiotics so that the overall balance is maintained in the colon. Being given ingestion of probiotics might come from a medical expert or just from consuming a food that is rich in these probiotics. One of such foods is the yoghurt.