Building and maintaining a healthy immune system can be a matter of life and death!

By Fred Pescatore, MD
Scientific Advisor, Essential Formulas

I’ve said it before: A healthy gut is central to a healthy life, long life! Nevermore so than at this point in human history. We need to keep our gut healthy so we can keep our immune system robust- it is that simple.

Most of you know by now that the gut produces up to 80% of our immune system cells. There is even a medical name for it called “Gut Associated Lymphatic Tissue” or GALT. If your gut isn’t healthy, how can you possibly be?

What’s the best way of keeping your gut healthy and, therefore, your immune system optimized? Diet is rule number 1! The second is taking a high-quality probiotic.

Numerous studies demonstrate that probiotics optimize the immune system and may play a vital role in helping prevent a whole variety of health issues, including enhancing brain health, lowering cholesterol, maintaining a healthy mood, and even helping to maintain a healthy weight.

But, the quality of the probiotic product you choose and the type of bacteria it contains is critical to its effectiveness.

Probiotics are live bacteria that help keep your gut healthy. These “good bacteria” help digest food, process and manufacture important vitamins, manage and eliminate toxins, and kill harmful bacteria. In essence, we need these beneficial bugs to survive.

However, the probiotics living in your gut can be disrupted, harmed, or even killed by any number of factors. Some of the things that can wreak havoc on the levels of good bacteria naturally present in your gut include:

• antibiotics

• steroid drugs

• oral contraceptives

• excess stress

• poor diet

• serious illness

And the worst offender of all—sugar—destroys good bacteria even faster than antibiotics do. Considering the average American consumes between 22 and 47 teaspoons of sugar each day, our guts can’t keep up.

That’s why everyone needs probiotic supplements—to boost your supply of good bacteria and help get your gut and your immune system back on track.

The easy steps to find a quality probiotic

So what’s a consumer to do? Here’s my three-step plan to ensure you’re taking the highest-quality, most effective probiotics.

1. Remember that bigger is not better when it comes to probiotics. A lot of probiotic products you see in pharmacies, health food stores, and vitamin shops try to wow you with the number of colony-forming units (CFUs) they deliver. But billions of CFUs are not suitable for you. Ingesting too many of any one type of bacteria can trigger an autoimmune response and cause complete havoc in your body.

2. The most important thing is getting the right bacteria—and not too many of the same kind. That’s why you should look for products with multiple strains of probiotics. With trillions of different types of bacteria cells in your body, a supplement that only has a single strain (or even just a few) won’t be much help.

3. Choose a probiotic that also contains prebiotics, which is basically “food” for probiotics. Prebiotics make probiotics more effective and longer-lasting.

Continue reading the Essential Formulas website.
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