You may have heard that probiotics are good for you - and they are! Read more here about the pros of probiotics.
Most people only know probiotics as a kind of nutritional buzzword used to sell yogurt. But what are probiotics, and why are they so important? It turns out, they're some of the most important bacteria you can consume. And the good news is that they're also found in some of the tastiest foods around.
What Are Probiotics?
Your body is indeed home to a truly innumerable amount of bacteria. However, this isn't necessarily a bad thing! In fact, the majority of the bacteria that call your body home are helpful rather than harmful.
Indeed, gut bacteria are necessary for digestive health and can lead to numerous other health benefits.
At their core, gut bacteria are living microorganisms in the same way as other types of bacteria. Bacteria in general are not necessarily harmful – they're just microscopic organisms. Some types of bacteria can cause health issues when they replicate too rapidly in humans, but other types of bacteria are necessary for our survival.
So what are probiotics?
These are certain types of bacteria that you can consume which help your healthy gut bacteria stay in charge. Think of them as bacterial helpers that ensure that your microbiome never gets sick or hurt, even while you consume different foods and millions of microorganisms every day.
Probiotics for humans are usually made up of various beneficial bacterial species like:
- Lactobacillus
- Saccharomyces boulardii
- Bifidobacterium
Other types of yeasts are also variations of helpful probiotics. The good bacteria you can find in your gut helps to create a microbiome--a diverse community of different microorganisms that, when working together, can help keep your body healthy.
In a nutshell, probiotics can help your gut maintain a healthy balance of helpful bacteria and can also assist other areas like your mouth, urinary tract, lungs, and even your skin. By keeping your gut bacteria in balance, probiotics make it more difficult for harmful or neutral bacteria to take their place.
Benefits of Probiotics
The health benefits of probiotics are well-known thanks to scientific testing over the years.
They Balance Friendly Bacteria
First and foremost, probiotics prevent harmful bacteria from outweighing the helpful bacteria in your intestinal tract and other vulnerable areas across your body. "Imbalance" in this sense means that there aren't enough good bacteria, so your gut is filled with harmful bacteria that can lead to negative side effects.
Having an imbalanced microbiome can lead to health issues, including:
- certain food allergies
- digestive issues
- obesity
- mood changes
- mental health issues
- and much more
There's increasing evidence that your microbiome affects much more than just your digestive health. In fact, it may impact the types of chemical or neurological signals your brain receives, changing what you crave, how you think, and even how you behave.
In short, probiotics are super important since they help your body avoid those health issues.
Prevention of Digestive Issues
Digestive issues are one of the consequences of not having enough helpful bacteria in your intestines. Probiotics can increase the amount of helpful bacteria your intestines benefit from, staving off the symptoms or causes of digestive issues.
This is especially true if you take antibiotics. Since antibiotics don’t necessarily kill various types of bacteria, doctors will regularly prescribe probiotic foods and other medications to help balance your digestive system. This can prevent you from suffering from digestive issues over the long-term.
Probiotics Can Help Your Heart
Probiotics can lower LDL or bad cholesterol, and improve your blood pressure. Both of these effects will lead to better heart health and help prevent certain negative heart conditions, like heart disease or cancer; this is especially true when it comes to lactic acid-producing probiotics. These can break down the bile in your gut and lower your cholesterol as a result.
Reduced Allergic Reactions
Depending on the probiotics in question, some strains can reduce your allergic symptoms. Basically, scientists think that probiotics can potentially reduce inflammatory symptoms, particularly if you have a milk or dairy allergy. This may be because probiotics create a healthier digestive environment overall and streamline the digestive process.
Reduced Digestive Disorders
When it comes to common digestive disorders, like irritable bowel syndrome or Crohn's disease, probiotics can be an excellent help. Certain types of probiotic species like Bifidobacterium can calm down your gut and help your body fall into a healthier and gentler digestive routine, alleviating many of these digestive disorders.
Immune System Benefits
Don't discount the boosts to your immune system when you take probiotics! Sometimes, probiotics can increase your body's production of various natural antibodies. This makes your immune system a little more effective, particularly at defending your body against diseases it has already encountered before.
Are There Different Types of Probiotics?
Yes! There are multiple types of helpful probiotics, and you can find them in different foods and medications. Tons of plant-based meals have excellent probiotic content, including many of the most popular meals and we offer at Thistle. We also have a zingy and vibrant probiotic shot.
Bifidobacteria is arguably the most common type of probiotic consumed, and you can find it in tons of healthy foods including yogurt and milk kefir, as well as various supplements!
Meanwhile, Lactobacillus is another helpful type of probiotic. It produces lactase, which is an enzyme that could break down lactose and help those with milk or dairy allergies. As the name suggests, it's often found in dairy products like yogurt. Additionally, you can also find lactobacillus in non-dairy forms in fermented and pickled foods, such as kombucha, sauerkraut, and miso!
You'll most often find probiotic strains like B. lactis, which is often found in various cheeses and other products like buttermilk.
Let's break down some of the best foods and drinks that give your body the probiotic assistance it deserves.
Probiotic Super Foods and Drinks
Yogurt
Naturally, yogurt is one of the best probiotic superfoods you can find. It's created by fermenting milk with friendly bacteria. In addition to probiotics, yogurt contains vital proteins and fats: key macromolecules your body needs to repair muscle tissue damage and burn for energy. Yogurt can also lead to improved bone health, which is especially important for women (who are more vulnerable to osteoporosis).
For those avoiding dairy, a lot of non-dairy yogurt makers make it a point to add probiotics to their non-dairy products, allowing you to still enjoy the benefits!
Kefir
Kefir is a specialized type of probiotic milk beverage. In a nutshell, manufacturers can add special "kefir grains" to cow or goat milk, and more recently, coconut milk and almond milk, too! These aren't cereal grains (so there's no need to worry about gluten) and are instead produced from probiotics and yeast types. Kefir has many of the same vitamins as regular milk, including vitamins A, B, C, D, and E. Kefir can be found in many healthy meal delivery services (including Thistle's!), as well as in supermarkets that carry organic or healthy beverages.
Kombucha
This is another type of fermented drink, although it's actually a type of green and black tea, making it a perfect probiotic beverage for tea lovers. You make it by fermenting certain types of bacteria and yeast together, then adding hot water. Kombucha offers many of the same probiotic benefits as cheese, with a few other vitamins and minerals, and without the dairy.
Miso
Miso is a traditional type of Japanese seasoning created by fermenting soybeans with a fungus called koji and a little salt for added flavor. Miso can also be found in other forms, such as being made from rice and chickpeas! In fact, chickpea miso has all the same benefits of traditional soy miso because of the naturally occurring culture in koji, all the while being a delicious soy-free substitute for those with soy allergies.
It's often found in Japanese breakfast foods like miso soup. Alongside plenty of excellent probiotics, miso offers additional nutrients like protein, fiber, vitamin K, copper, and manganese.
Fermented Vegetables
Kimchi is a traditionally Korean side dish of salted and fermented vegetables, and you’ll most commonly recognize it as bright red-covered lettuce chunks served along with your favorite Korean meals! It is also one of the probiotics that is made with lactic acid bacteria, and one of the dairy-free options for getting a healthy dose of the lactobacillus we mentioned earlier.
Another fermented vegetable favorite is kraut, most commonly known as sauerkraut, and most commonly seen as a staple of many German dishes! Kraut is another fantastic non-dairy source of lactobacillus, and it even has more lactobacillus than yogurt!
Honorable Mentions
While these are the most common fermented foods that can give you a boost of probiotic supplements and beneficial bacteria to your daily diet, a few honorable mentions that also support your gut health include tempeh (Indonesian cake made from fermented soy) and natto (a Japanese food made with fermented soybeans).
Additionally, while not a probiotic, artichokes can also support your digestive tract's flora as part of a probiotic diet with fructooligosaccharides (FOS). Bananas are also rich in prebiotic FOS, and contain pectin and resistant starch that further support digestion, which is why Thistle uses bananas very frequently!
Check out our meals at Thistle, we include many different probiotic ingredients, including tempeh, kimchi, miso, and our new probiotic shot.
Conclusion
A whole foods, high fiber meal plan like Thistle is rich in vegetables, whole grains, seeds, fruit, and beans with the addition of fermented, probiotic-rich foods all encourage good gut flora to eliminate pathogens and make for a happy, healthy digestive system. Check out what we can offer and let us help you maintain a healthy gut biome!
Resources:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22424233/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26695080/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16517616/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10024217/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19091823/
You may have heard that probiotics are good for you - and they are! Read more here about the pros of probiotics.
Most people only know probiotics as a kind of nutritional buzzword used to sell yogurt. But what are probiotics, and why are they so important? It turns out, they're some of the most important bacteria you can consume. And the good news is that they're also found in some of the tastiest foods around.
What Are Probiotics?
Your body is indeed home to a truly innumerable amount of bacteria. However, this isn't necessarily a bad thing! In fact, the majority of the bacteria that call your body home are helpful rather than harmful.
Indeed, gut bacteria are necessary for digestive health and can lead to numerous other health benefits.
At their core, gut bacteria are living microorganisms in the same way as other types of bacteria. Bacteria in general are not necessarily harmful – they're just microscopic organisms. Some types of bacteria can cause health issues when they replicate too rapidly in humans, but other types of bacteria are necessary for our survival.
So what are probiotics?
These are certain types of bacteria that you can consume which help your healthy gut bacteria stay in charge. Think of them as bacterial helpers that ensure that your microbiome never gets sick or hurt, even while you consume different foods and millions of microorganisms every day.
Probiotics for humans are usually made up of various beneficial bacterial species like:
- Lactobacillus
- Saccharomyces boulardii
- Bifidobacterium
Other types of yeasts are also variations of helpful probiotics. The good bacteria you can find in your gut helps to create a microbiome--a diverse community of different microorganisms that, when working together, can help keep your body healthy.
In a nutshell, probiotics can help your gut maintain a healthy balance of helpful bacteria and can also assist other areas like your mouth, urinary tract, lungs, and even your skin. By keeping your gut bacteria in balance, probiotics make it more difficult for harmful or neutral bacteria to take their place.
Benefits of Probiotics
The health benefits of probiotics are well-known thanks to scientific testing over the years.
They Balance Friendly Bacteria
First and foremost, probiotics prevent harmful bacteria from outweighing the helpful bacteria in your intestinal tract and other vulnerable areas across your body. "Imbalance" in this sense means that there aren't enough good bacteria, so your gut is filled with harmful bacteria that can lead to negative side effects.
Having an imbalanced microbiome can lead to health issues, including:
- certain food allergies
- digestive issues
- obesity
- mood changes
- mental health issues
- and much more
There's increasing evidence that your microbiome affects much more than just your digestive health. In fact, it may impact the types of chemical or neurological signals your brain receives, changing what you crave, how you think, and even how you behave.
In short, probiotics are super important since they help your body avoid those health issues.
Prevention of Digestive Issues
Digestive issues are one of the consequences of not having enough helpful bacteria in your intestines. Probiotics can increase the amount of helpful bacteria your intestines benefit from, staving off the symptoms or causes of digestive issues.
This is especially true if you take antibiotics. Since antibiotics don’t necessarily kill various types of bacteria, doctors will regularly prescribe probiotic foods and other medications to help balance your digestive system. This can prevent you from suffering from digestive issues over the long-term.
Probiotics Can Help Your Heart
Probiotics can lower LDL or bad cholesterol, and improve your blood pressure. Both of these effects will lead to better heart health and help prevent certain negative heart conditions, like heart disease or cancer; this is especially true when it comes to lactic acid-producing probiotics. These can break down the bile in your gut and lower your cholesterol as a result.
Reduced Allergic Reactions
Depending on the probiotics in question, some strains can reduce your allergic symptoms. Basically, scientists think that probiotics can potentially reduce inflammatory symptoms, particularly if you have a milk or dairy allergy. This may be because probiotics create a healthier digestive environment overall and streamline the digestive process.
Reduced Digestive Disorders
When it comes to common digestive disorders, like irritable bowel syndrome or Crohn's disease, probiotics can be an excellent help. Certain types of probiotic species like Bifidobacterium can calm down your gut and help your body fall into a healthier and gentler digestive routine, alleviating many of these digestive disorders.
Immune System Benefits
Don't discount the boosts to your immune system when you take probiotics! Sometimes, probiotics can increase your body's production of various natural antibodies. This makes your immune system a little more effective, particularly at defending your body against diseases it has already encountered before.
Are There Different Types of Probiotics?
Yes! There are multiple types of helpful probiotics, and you can find them in different foods and medications. Tons of plant-based meals have excellent probiotic content, including many of the most popular meals and we offer at Thistle. We also have a zingy and vibrant probiotic shot.
Bifidobacteria is arguably the most common type of probiotic consumed, and you can find it in tons of healthy foods including yogurt and milk kefir, as well as various supplements!
Meanwhile, Lactobacillus is another helpful type of probiotic. It produces lactase, which is an enzyme that could break down lactose and help those with milk or dairy allergies. As the name suggests, it's often found in dairy products like yogurt. Additionally, you can also find lactobacillus in non-dairy forms in fermented and pickled foods, such as kombucha, sauerkraut, and miso!
You'll most often find probiotic strains like B. lactis, which is often found in various cheeses and other products like buttermilk.
Let's break down some of the best foods and drinks that give your body the probiotic assistance it deserves.
Probiotic Super Foods and Drinks
Yogurt
Naturally, yogurt is one of the best probiotic superfoods you can find. It's created by fermenting milk with friendly bacteria. In addition to probiotics, yogurt contains vital proteins and fats: key macromolecules your body needs to repair muscle tissue damage and burn for energy. Yogurt can also lead to improved bone health, which is especially important for women (who are more vulnerable to osteoporosis).
For those avoiding dairy, a lot of non-dairy yogurt makers make it a point to add probiotics to their non-dairy products, allowing you to still enjoy the benefits!
Kefir
Kefir is a specialized type of probiotic milk beverage. In a nutshell, manufacturers can add special "kefir grains" to cow or goat milk, and more recently, coconut milk and almond milk, too! These aren't cereal grains (so there's no need to worry about gluten) and are instead produced from probiotics and yeast types. Kefir has many of the same vitamins as regular milk, including vitamins A, B, C, D, and E. Kefir can be found in many healthy meal delivery services (including Thistle's!), as well as in supermarkets that carry organic or healthy beverages.
Kombucha
This is another type of fermented drink, although it's actually a type of green and black tea, making it a perfect probiotic beverage for tea lovers. You make it by fermenting certain types of bacteria and yeast together, then adding hot water. Kombucha offers many of the same probiotic benefits as cheese, with a few other vitamins and minerals, and without the dairy.
Miso
Miso is a traditional type of Japanese seasoning created by fermenting soybeans with a fungus called koji and a little salt for added flavor. Miso can also be found in other forms, such as being made from rice and chickpeas! In fact, chickpea miso has all the same benefits of traditional soy miso because of the naturally occurring culture in koji, all the while being a delicious soy-free substitute for those with soy allergies.
It's often found in Japanese breakfast foods like miso soup. Alongside plenty of excellent probiotics, miso offers additional nutrients like protein, fiber, vitamin K, copper, and manganese.
Fermented Vegetables
Kimchi is a traditionally Korean side dish of salted and fermented vegetables, and you’ll most commonly recognize it as bright red-covered lettuce chunks served along with your favorite Korean meals! It is also one of the probiotics that is made with lactic acid bacteria, and one of the dairy-free options for getting a healthy dose of the lactobacillus we mentioned earlier.
Another fermented vegetable favorite is kraut, most commonly known as sauerkraut, and most commonly seen as a staple of many German dishes! Kraut is another fantastic non-dairy source of lactobacillus, and it even has more lactobacillus than yogurt!
Honorable Mentions
While these are the most common fermented foods that can give you a boost of probiotic supplements and beneficial bacteria to your daily diet, a few honorable mentions that also support your gut health include tempeh (Indonesian cake made from fermented soy) and natto (a Japanese food made with fermented soybeans).
Additionally, while not a probiotic, artichokes can also support your digestive tract's flora as part of a probiotic diet with fructooligosaccharides (FOS). Bananas are also rich in prebiotic FOS, and contain pectin and resistant starch that further support digestion, which is why Thistle uses bananas very frequently!
Check out our meals at Thistle, we include many different probiotic ingredients, including tempeh, kimchi, miso, and our new probiotic shot.
Conclusion
A whole foods, high fiber meal plan like Thistle is rich in vegetables, whole grains, seeds, fruit, and beans with the addition of fermented, probiotic-rich foods all encourage good gut flora to eliminate pathogens and make for a happy, healthy digestive system. Check out what we can offer and let us help you maintain a healthy gut biome!
Resources:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22424233/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26695080/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16517616/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10024217/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19091823/
