It can be overwhelming to learn everything about health and wellness, especially if you are just starting out. If you have recently taken up being more health-conscious in order to feel your absolute best, you may frequently come across two very like-sounding words: prebiotics and probiotics.
In your gut live bacteria that work to break down foods, minimize inflammation, and communicate with your immune system so that you can feel good all day long. Understanding how your gut works and listening to what it needs can help you to maintain a balanced microbiota (a.k.a gut bacteria).
If you’ve wondered what the difference between prebiotics and probiotics was, you’ve come to the right place!
What is a Prebiotic?
Prebiotics are compounds in food (mainly coming from fiber) that don’t get fully digested by your body but instead survive all the way through until they feed the probiotics in the gut. This is essential fuel for the probiotics, but it also gets turned into nutrients that support the body.
What is a Probiotic?
Probiotics are live microorganisms, such as beneficial bacteria or yeasts, that exist naturally in your body. These are considered to be good bacteria in the gut and help to maintain balance throughout your digestive system.
The Importance of Gut Bacteria
Bacteria in the gut can be split into two types: good bacteria and bad bacteria. If your microbiota is off-balance, you might begin to notice changes in your health, and it could be partially attributed to this imbalance.
Maintaining a balance of good and bad is essential for tons of different systems throughout your body — proper immune system functioning, assisting in irritable and inflammatory bowel syndrome, and even helping to manage feelings of depression and anxiety because of the gut-brain connection.
Gut bacteria provide nutrients to the body — it was found that gut bacteria provides up to half the daily requirement for vitamin K, as well as other nutrients like riboflavin, biotin, and folate.
If there is something awry in your microbiota, you might notice different physical and mental side effects like:
- Digestive issues like irritable bowel syndrome and constipation
- Autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis
- Fatigue even with good sleep and a balanced diet
- Unexplained feelings of depression and anxiety
- Issues with sleep like insomnia
- Skin rashes
Often, when there is not any other medical condition that could be causing these things, it’s time to look into your diet and the foods that you are eating. What you are consuming daily can heavily affect your gut health, which can then impact your overall well-being!
This is where the importance of understanding probiotics and prebiotics comes into play so you can work towards improving your health.
Probiotics
Now, you might be a little unsettled thinking that live bacteria are a part of how your gut works, but let us reassure you that these little guys have your best interests in mind. Probiotics are there to fight against the bad bacteria that enter your immune system.
Studies have been done to show that probiotics have a positive impact on restoring the microbiota after it’s been disturbed, help enhance the production of short-chain fatty acids, and help to lower cholesterol.
Not only do probiotics help to maintain the balance in the microbiota, but they also supply short-chain fatty acid to the cells lining the colon, which help to build a protective barrier from harmful bacteria. By consuming probiotics you are taking preventative steps towards protecting your intestinal health from disease.
Prebiotics
Just like every other living thing, probiotics need to eat and fuel themselves with nutrients so that they can function and do their job. This is where prebiotics come in. Prebiotics are types of fiber that cannot be digested by your body, but make for a nutrient-rich snack to the probiotics awaiting their arrival in your gut.
Prebiotics do provide fuel for the good bacteria inside of you, but they also have stand-alone functions that make them even an even better part of your diet. Prebiotics can help you to absorb calcium, impact how your blood sugar levels are affected by foods, ferment foods quicker, and help your bowels to get moving to help keep you regular.
It’s important that you maintain a healthy intake of prebiotics so that the probiotics in your body have something to nourish themselves with. If you think you might have issues that could be positively impacted by changing your intake of probiotics and prebiotics, all you have to do is try to eat more foods that contain them.
This might not be too difficult, considering many of the foods you may eat already contain prebiotics, and probiotic foods are marketed and clear to find in many grocery stores and recipes alike!
Gut-Healthy Foods You Should Be Eating
When it comes to gut health, the food you eat is probably the main influencing factor — what you put into your body will directly impact your gut.
Increasing foods naturally containing prebiotics and probiotics is the easiest way to improve your gut health, so just knowing your options might help to persuade you on your next grocery run or menu pick from your favorite food delivery service.
Foods With Prebiotics
Yes, you need to feed the probiotics that live inside of you, but you may notice that many foods containing prebiotics are ones that you already consume regularly. You don’t have to go rush out to buy prebiotic supplements just yet!
Consider what you already eat, and then how you might incorporate some of the things on the list below into your favorite dishes.
As mentioned above, prebiotics are fiber that the human body can’t break down, but that the live bacteria in your gut can. Fiber helps the body with digestion and cholesterol levels, so it’s an essential nutrient that our body needs.
Prebiotics are found in many fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain foods.
Some prebiotic foods to consider include:
- Garlic
- Onions
- Bananas
- Oats
- Apples
- Asparagus
- Legumes and beans
- Leeks
- Soybeans
- Tomatoes
Probiotic-Rich Foods
Many foods do naturally have probiotics in them as well, but some of the more popular ones you might already know of are yogurt and kombucha. While the latter is a heavily fermented drink that might not be for everyone, there are plenty of yogurts with live cultures that you can look into to get a good chunk of probiotics from. Adding yogurt into your breakfast or snack routine not only helps your gut, but it tastes pretty good, too!
Other fermented foods are rich in probiotics and can be added as a side to many recipes or snacks:
- Kimchi: a salad-type mix of salted and fermented vegetables, primarily cabbage
- Kefir: this can be dairy or non-dairy, but it is fermented milk made from a symbiotic culture
- Sauerkraut: fermented cabbage that is popular in European dishes as a side to sausage
- Tempeh: fermented soybeans that have been packed together tightly — a great meatless alternative for protein
- Pickles: pickles that are unpasteurized and not made with vinegar are a great source of probiotics!
Many brands now also offer probiotic smoothies and drinks that make it easier for you to get good bacteria into your body. Including some of these foods into your diet can be helpful in maintaining a healthy balance, but if you aren’t positive you are getting enough, there are alternative options.
Are Prebiotic and Probiotic Supplements Worth It?
Supplements for both probiotics and prebiotics exist, but is it really worth it to drop loads of money on them? While they might be helpful for those who know they aren’t getting enough probiotics or prebiotics in their diet, how hard is it actually to get the right amount per day?
Probiotic Supplements
Some people simply may not enjoy eating fermented foods like kimchi, sauerkraut, and kombucha, and may only rely on probiotic foods like yogurt to get their daily intake. This is fine! Probiotics naturally occur in your body but the addition of them in foods helps to assist in your daily immune and digestive functioning. There are plenty of probiotic supplements that you can choose from if you are unsure that you are getting enough in your diet.
Probiotics contain live bacteria that are meant to help a specific part of your body. There are many strains of bacteria that make up probiotics, so figuring out which one will help you most can ensure that the bacteria you are consuming is going to work for what you want it to. This is helpful to know when you are choosing a probiotic supplement, as not every probiotic supplement will contain the support-specific bacteria that you are looking for.
One of the main issues with probiotic supplements is that they often don’t come with fibrous food sources, which are needed to then fuel the bacteria. That means, if you aren’t eating enough prebiotic food sources, the supplements that you are using will have nothing to feed and thrive off of.
If you are wondering whether or not a specific supplement would be beneficial to you, you should consider consulting with your primary healthcare professional.
Prebiotic Supplements
Prebiotic supplements are out there and they do exist, but it’s important to note that with a healthy diet, you are most likely getting enough prebiotics to feed the good bacteria inside of you.
You don’t need to rush out to buy any of these supplements as long as you are making sure the foods you are choosing will supply you with them. You can find prebiotics in foods like fruits and vegetables, as well as whole grains, so it’s fairly simple to incorporate them into your dishes.
If you are worried you aren’t getting enough in your diet and still want to try out prebiotic supplements, you should talk to your doctor to figure out where you may be lacking.
Can You Take Too Many Prebiotics or Probiotics?
Like with all things in health and food, moderation is key. Maintaining a balance is going to be essential when it comes to your gut health.
From your diet alone, you get many different nutrients that help your body to function, but your gut is a part of your body that experiences most of what gets consumed. If you are putting in foods that are going to feed the bad bacteria in your body (think processed sugars), you are going to need to even it out somehow.
Probiotics come in different strains, so if you are consuming multiple different strains, then you are probably going to be benefitting various parts of your body. In this sense, you are doing your body good by consuming many different probiotics.
If you are consuming too many probiotics, you might experience gas, bloating, or diarrhea, though this is very unlikely to happen for most people.
If you are consuming too many foods with prebiotics, you might experience things like bloating and cramping.
A recommended amount per day is around 5 grams of prebiotics, but if you overload your system with them, your body might not have time to prepare and adapt to them. Starting off slow and introducing your body to prebiotics can help to limit any drastic change and resulting reaction to that change.
Prebiotics rarely cause issues for people, but if you are someone who experiences irritable bowel syndrome, they might end up causing more symptoms, like diarrhea and constipation.
You know your body, so you should be able to tell when something is feeling off. If you are attempting to consume more of either probiotics or prebiotics, you should pay attention to how your gut is reacting to the dietary changes. There is a reason you’re told to trust your gut!
How Thistle Can Help
So now that you have a better understanding of what prebiotics are and what probiotics are, maybe it’s time for you to consider them more as you curate your next few meals.
Finding meals that incorporate them doesn’t have to be hard. With plenty of ingredients out there that are probably already very familiar to you like garlic, onions, tomatoes, pickles, and even tempeh, it just takes a bit of imagination (or a set meal plan) to ensure that they are making their way into your body.
If you are someone who’s a little too busy to craft homemade meals everyday but are still looking for nourishing options at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, consider using Thistle to help ensure you are getting what you need daily.
At Thistle, we provide healthy and delicious plant-based meals for all times of the day, as well as snacks and cold-pressed juices. For those of you who need a little guidance when starting off eating plant-based, we are happy to help there, too! Our meals are nutritious and well thought out to make sure you are receiving the vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and prebiotics your body needs to thrive.
We incorporate probiotic and prebiotic foods into our meals so that you can get the necessary intake needed to maintain proper gut health. From breakfast to dinner to the snacks in between, we offer food that will satisfy your tastebuds, help sprout inspiration in your own kitchen, and contribute to your overall well being.
Get started with improving your gut health when you sign-up with Thistle today!
Sources:
Gut Bacteria in Health and Disease | NCBI
Contributions of Intestinal Bacteria to Nutrition and Metabolism in the Critically Ill | NCBI
It can be overwhelming to learn everything about health and wellness, especially if you are just starting out. If you have recently taken up being more health-conscious in order to feel your absolute best, you may frequently come across two very like-sounding words: prebiotics and probiotics.
In your gut live bacteria that work to break down foods, minimize inflammation, and communicate with your immune system so that you can feel good all day long. Understanding how your gut works and listening to what it needs can help you to maintain a balanced microbiota (a.k.a gut bacteria).
If you’ve wondered what the difference between prebiotics and probiotics was, you’ve come to the right place!
What is a Prebiotic?
Prebiotics are compounds in food (mainly coming from fiber) that don’t get fully digested by your body but instead survive all the way through until they feed the probiotics in the gut. This is essential fuel for the probiotics, but it also gets turned into nutrients that support the body.
What is a Probiotic?
Probiotics are live microorganisms, such as beneficial bacteria or yeasts, that exist naturally in your body. These are considered to be good bacteria in the gut and help to maintain balance throughout your digestive system.
The Importance of Gut Bacteria
Bacteria in the gut can be split into two types: good bacteria and bad bacteria. If your microbiota is off-balance, you might begin to notice changes in your health, and it could be partially attributed to this imbalance.
Maintaining a balance of good and bad is essential for tons of different systems throughout your body — proper immune system functioning, assisting in irritable and inflammatory bowel syndrome, and even helping to manage feelings of depression and anxiety because of the gut-brain connection.
Gut bacteria provide nutrients to the body — it was found that gut bacteria provides up to half the daily requirement for vitamin K, as well as other nutrients like riboflavin, biotin, and folate.
If there is something awry in your microbiota, you might notice different physical and mental side effects like:
- Digestive issues like irritable bowel syndrome and constipation
- Autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis
- Fatigue even with good sleep and a balanced diet
- Unexplained feelings of depression and anxiety
- Issues with sleep like insomnia
- Skin rashes
Often, when there is not any other medical condition that could be causing these things, it’s time to look into your diet and the foods that you are eating. What you are consuming daily can heavily affect your gut health, which can then impact your overall well-being!
This is where the importance of understanding probiotics and prebiotics comes into play so you can work towards improving your health.
Probiotics
Now, you might be a little unsettled thinking that live bacteria are a part of how your gut works, but let us reassure you that these little guys have your best interests in mind. Probiotics are there to fight against the bad bacteria that enter your immune system.
Studies have been done to show that probiotics have a positive impact on restoring the microbiota after it’s been disturbed, help enhance the production of short-chain fatty acids, and help to lower cholesterol.
Not only do probiotics help to maintain the balance in the microbiota, but they also supply short-chain fatty acid to the cells lining the colon, which help to build a protective barrier from harmful bacteria. By consuming probiotics you are taking preventative steps towards protecting your intestinal health from disease.
Prebiotics
Just like every other living thing, probiotics need to eat and fuel themselves with nutrients so that they can function and do their job. This is where prebiotics come in. Prebiotics are types of fiber that cannot be digested by your body, but make for a nutrient-rich snack to the probiotics awaiting their arrival in your gut.
Prebiotics do provide fuel for the good bacteria inside of you, but they also have stand-alone functions that make them even an even better part of your diet. Prebiotics can help you to absorb calcium, impact how your blood sugar levels are affected by foods, ferment foods quicker, and help your bowels to get moving to help keep you regular.
It’s important that you maintain a healthy intake of prebiotics so that the probiotics in your body have something to nourish themselves with. If you think you might have issues that could be positively impacted by changing your intake of probiotics and prebiotics, all you have to do is try to eat more foods that contain them.
This might not be too difficult, considering many of the foods you may eat already contain prebiotics, and probiotic foods are marketed and clear to find in many grocery stores and recipes alike!
Gut-Healthy Foods You Should Be Eating
When it comes to gut health, the food you eat is probably the main influencing factor — what you put into your body will directly impact your gut.
Increasing foods naturally containing prebiotics and probiotics is the easiest way to improve your gut health, so just knowing your options might help to persuade you on your next grocery run or menu pick from your favorite food delivery service.
Foods With Prebiotics
Yes, you need to feed the probiotics that live inside of you, but you may notice that many foods containing prebiotics are ones that you already consume regularly. You don’t have to go rush out to buy prebiotic supplements just yet!
Consider what you already eat, and then how you might incorporate some of the things on the list below into your favorite dishes.
As mentioned above, prebiotics are fiber that the human body can’t break down, but that the live bacteria in your gut can. Fiber helps the body with digestion and cholesterol levels, so it’s an essential nutrient that our body needs.
Prebiotics are found in many fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain foods.
Some prebiotic foods to consider include:
- Garlic
- Onions
- Bananas
- Oats
- Apples
- Asparagus
- Legumes and beans
- Leeks
- Soybeans
- Tomatoes
Probiotic-Rich Foods
Many foods do naturally have probiotics in them as well, but some of the more popular ones you might already know of are yogurt and kombucha. While the latter is a heavily fermented drink that might not be for everyone, there are plenty of yogurts with live cultures that you can look into to get a good chunk of probiotics from. Adding yogurt into your breakfast or snack routine not only helps your gut, but it tastes pretty good, too!
Other fermented foods are rich in probiotics and can be added as a side to many recipes or snacks:
- Kimchi: a salad-type mix of salted and fermented vegetables, primarily cabbage
- Kefir: this can be dairy or non-dairy, but it is fermented milk made from a symbiotic culture
- Sauerkraut: fermented cabbage that is popular in European dishes as a side to sausage
- Tempeh: fermented soybeans that have been packed together tightly — a great meatless alternative for protein
- Pickles: pickles that are unpasteurized and not made with vinegar are a great source of probiotics!
Many brands now also offer probiotic smoothies and drinks that make it easier for you to get good bacteria into your body. Including some of these foods into your diet can be helpful in maintaining a healthy balance, but if you aren’t positive you are getting enough, there are alternative options.
Are Prebiotic and Probiotic Supplements Worth It?
Supplements for both probiotics and prebiotics exist, but is it really worth it to drop loads of money on them? While they might be helpful for those who know they aren’t getting enough probiotics or prebiotics in their diet, how hard is it actually to get the right amount per day?
Probiotic Supplements
Some people simply may not enjoy eating fermented foods like kimchi, sauerkraut, and kombucha, and may only rely on probiotic foods like yogurt to get their daily intake. This is fine! Probiotics naturally occur in your body but the addition of them in foods helps to assist in your daily immune and digestive functioning. There are plenty of probiotic supplements that you can choose from if you are unsure that you are getting enough in your diet.
Probiotics contain live bacteria that are meant to help a specific part of your body. There are many strains of bacteria that make up probiotics, so figuring out which one will help you most can ensure that the bacteria you are consuming is going to work for what you want it to. This is helpful to know when you are choosing a probiotic supplement, as not every probiotic supplement will contain the support-specific bacteria that you are looking for.
One of the main issues with probiotic supplements is that they often don’t come with fibrous food sources, which are needed to then fuel the bacteria. That means, if you aren’t eating enough prebiotic food sources, the supplements that you are using will have nothing to feed and thrive off of.
If you are wondering whether or not a specific supplement would be beneficial to you, you should consider consulting with your primary healthcare professional.
Prebiotic Supplements
Prebiotic supplements are out there and they do exist, but it’s important to note that with a healthy diet, you are most likely getting enough prebiotics to feed the good bacteria inside of you.
You don’t need to rush out to buy any of these supplements as long as you are making sure the foods you are choosing will supply you with them. You can find prebiotics in foods like fruits and vegetables, as well as whole grains, so it’s fairly simple to incorporate them into your dishes.
If you are worried you aren’t getting enough in your diet and still want to try out prebiotic supplements, you should talk to your doctor to figure out where you may be lacking.
Can You Take Too Many Prebiotics or Probiotics?
Like with all things in health and food, moderation is key. Maintaining a balance is going to be essential when it comes to your gut health.
From your diet alone, you get many different nutrients that help your body to function, but your gut is a part of your body that experiences most of what gets consumed. If you are putting in foods that are going to feed the bad bacteria in your body (think processed sugars), you are going to need to even it out somehow.
Probiotics come in different strains, so if you are consuming multiple different strains, then you are probably going to be benefitting various parts of your body. In this sense, you are doing your body good by consuming many different probiotics.
If you are consuming too many probiotics, you might experience gas, bloating, or diarrhea, though this is very unlikely to happen for most people.
If you are consuming too many foods with prebiotics, you might experience things like bloating and cramping.
A recommended amount per day is around 5 grams of prebiotics, but if you overload your system with them, your body might not have time to prepare and adapt to them. Starting off slow and introducing your body to prebiotics can help to limit any drastic change and resulting reaction to that change.
Prebiotics rarely cause issues for people, but if you are someone who experiences irritable bowel syndrome, they might end up causing more symptoms, like diarrhea and constipation.
You know your body, so you should be able to tell when something is feeling off. If you are attempting to consume more of either probiotics or prebiotics, you should pay attention to how your gut is reacting to the dietary changes. There is a reason you’re told to trust your gut!
How Thistle Can Help
So now that you have a better understanding of what prebiotics are and what probiotics are, maybe it’s time for you to consider them more as you curate your next few meals.
Finding meals that incorporate them doesn’t have to be hard. With plenty of ingredients out there that are probably already very familiar to you like garlic, onions, tomatoes, pickles, and even tempeh, it just takes a bit of imagination (or a set meal plan) to ensure that they are making their way into your body.
If you are someone who’s a little too busy to craft homemade meals everyday but are still looking for nourishing options at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, consider using Thistle to help ensure you are getting what you need daily.
At Thistle, we provide healthy and delicious plant-based meals for all times of the day, as well as snacks and cold-pressed juices. For those of you who need a little guidance when starting off eating plant-based, we are happy to help there, too! Our meals are nutritious and well thought out to make sure you are receiving the vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and prebiotics your body needs to thrive.
We incorporate probiotic and prebiotic foods into our meals so that you can get the necessary intake needed to maintain proper gut health. From breakfast to dinner to the snacks in between, we offer food that will satisfy your tastebuds, help sprout inspiration in your own kitchen, and contribute to your overall well being.
Get started with improving your gut health when you sign-up with Thistle today!
Sources:
Gut Bacteria in Health and Disease | NCBI
Contributions of Intestinal Bacteria to Nutrition and Metabolism in the Critically Ill | NCBI
