Bacteria Prevention Treatment Little Rock AR

By Sara Altshul

Billions of one-celled beneficial bacteria call your blood, bones, and vital organs home. There they wage war against the harmful bacteria in your gut, mounting a constant defense to protect their turf and, coincidentally, your health. Called probiotics, these helpful bacteria play an essential role in many of the gut’s life-supporting metabolic functions.

Probiotics not only prevent harmful bacteria from multiplying and causing disease, they also enable the body to absorb and use such crucial minerals as calcium, zinc, and iron, and they help manufacture thiamin, riboflavin, and vitamins B6, B12, and K. Probiotics may also stimulate mucus formation, which enables helpful microbes to cling to and colonize the gut’s walls (primarily in the colon) and reinforce the barrier that keeps harmful invaders out.

Only about 1 percent of the bacteria we harbor potentially provoke disease. In a healthy body, the beneficial bacteria keep the dangerous ones in check by competing with them for food and muscling them out of spaces to occupy. In addition, some good bacteria produce a mild acetic acid solution—healthy for our guts but toxic to harmful bacteria.

This triumph of good over evil in our internal bacterial world enables us to enjoy vibrant health. But should something upset the system, dysbiosis can occur, allowing disease-causing bacteria to get a toehold and multiply.

Even subtle changes in the number of good bacteria in the gut can produce a host of common symptoms and result in an obvious lack of wellness, according to S.K. Dash, PhD, a probiotic researcher and author of A Consumer’s Guide to Probiotics (Freedom Press, 2005). The result: digestive problems, including diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and indigestion. Other problems can include lowered immune function, frequent bouts of infectious disease, urinary tract infections, and prostatitis—even fertility problems and an increased risk of cancer, notes Dash.

Many holistic health practitioners see excellent results with probiotics therapy. Mitch Kennedy, ND, frequently prescribes them to his patients from his Avon, Connecticut clinic, Health With Nature. “I have successfully used probiotics to shorten the duration of common colds, viral respiratory infections, sinus infections, urinary, bladder, and prostate infections, and diarrhea—both viral and infectious ‘traveler’s’ types,” Kennedy reports.

When good bugs go AWOL
The balance of your internal bacterial population can tip in an unhealthy direction for many reasons—including stress, a poor diet, various drugs, and chemotherapy, says Sheryl Berman, PhD, dean of the School of Natural Health Sciences at Bastyr University in Kenmore, Washington.

According to many experts, antibiotics top the list for creating bacterial chaos. Although certainly life-saving at times, these drugs not only kill their intended target, harmful bacteria, they wipe out the beneficial ones, too. “Almost any antibiotic will cha...

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