Keep Your Gut Happy and Healthy For Overall Great Health

What Does the Colon Do?

The colon's job is to reabsorb moisture and to escort both waste products and toxins out of the body. Ideally, the large intestine will have already broken down some of these toxins and waste products. The intestines cannot do their jobs without the proper intestinal flora as found in probiotics like Activated You Advanced Restorative Probiotic.

There's more, though. An overabundance of bad bacteria can cause a condition called SIBO, which stands for small intestine bacterial overgrowth. With your small intestine full of the wrong kind of bacteria, your body won't be getting as many nutrients from the foods you eat. This, in turn, can cause a wide variety of symptoms that are seemingly unrelated to your digestive system.

What Happens When You Don't Have Enough Beneficial Bacteria?

Many people believe that all bacteria is bad bacteria. They couldn't be more wrong. A battle is constantly being waged in our bodies between good and bad bacteria. When we don't have enough beneficial bacteria in our digestive systems, also called "healthy gut flora", many problems can begin.

If there is an imbalance of bacteria in your gut, certain issues like bloating, heartburn or even irritable bowel syndrome can occur. Seemingly unrelated conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes can develop too.

Since about 70% of your immune system is located in your gut, healthy flora will allow you to bypass everyday annoyances like the common cold as well as staving off autoimmune disease like lupus.

On the other hand, bad bacteria produce substances called endotoxins which can enter your bloodstream and cause fevers and many other ailments, including death.

Where Do Our Good Bacteria Go?

Assuming we were born with a perfect colony of the good "bugs", where did they go?

Beneficial flora need something called prebiotics to be happy and multiply. There are no prebiotics in junk food. Prebiotics come from the indigestible part of a variety of whole foods like oatmeal and bananas. If you aren't eating healthy foods with lots of fiber, you aren't giving your flora what they need.

Too much alcohol consumption can also destroy or disrupt your colonies. Not only does too much alcohol irritate your stomach and make your liver work overtime, it can disrupt the balance of your gut colonies too.

However, studies have shown that intake of probiotics after drinking, quickly helps the liver recover and protects the balance in gut flora. It may even ease a hangover.

The worst culprit of all is antibiotic use. These drugs are miracle life-savers if you have an infection, but they don't distinguish between good and bad bacteria, killing them all.

How do we keep our good colonies of bacteria healthy?

Something you can do to quickly increase your healthy bacteria is to start taking a supplement like Advanced Restorative Probiotic. This will flood your body with the good bacteria, which will quickly outnumber the bad ones.

Remember to eat more healthily and to give your flora a lot of probiotics to grow on. Start incorporating these foods into your diet. Even if you only enjoy eating one or two of them, try to add them daily. Apples are one of the prebiotic foods. Maybe the old saying "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" was referring to your gut health.

Sometimes antibiotics are unavoidable. When you need to take them, though, make sure you increase both your prebiotic intake and your supplemental probiotic intake to quickly bring yourself back to normal.

Physicians throughout history have known the importance of a healthy gut, but somewhere along the way, it stopped being emphasized. The connection between intestinal flora and many of today's chronic illnesses is not often talked about. Since it is such an easy thing to keep your gut flora happy and healthy, however, why not do it and avoid future illnesses?