Best Probiotics for Gut Health
Research suggests the gut is tied closely to other bodily systems so it is important to keep your gut healthy. We put together our suggestions of the best probiotics out there.
It probably doesn't come as a surprise that in the health industry digestive health or gut health is all the rage. Research suggests that gut health is tied closely to your metabolism, and therefore if your gut is unhealthy, it can lead to obesity, diabetes, autoimmune disorders, and heart disease. Additionally, the gut is full of nerve endings that communicate with the brain (called the gut-brain axis), and studies suggest a link between anxiety, autism, and depression and an unbalance of bacteria in the gut. Not only is there an important distinction here, but gut health can impact several other systems of the body, like the previously mentioned disease on the list: the heart.
Sometimes even if you are doing all the right things, it may be difficult to restore balance in your gut. There are several ways to improve the health of your gut, it doesn't always come down to what you eat. Exercise and stress management are alternate modalities to improve one's microbiome. And as with everything, there are antagonists that inhibit the growth of healthy bacteria like chronic stress or antibiotics. The good news is there are ways to combat these two factors and that is with probiotics.
Dr. Gregor Reid authored the official World Health Organization's definition, which is: "live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host." With the lenient restrictions on the supplement industry in the United States, not all probiotic supplements (or even food and personal care items) can fall under this definition. For instance, kombucha or yogurt don't necessarily qualify as a probiotic according to this definition – although that shouldn't deter you from eating these types of food as they do have their respective benefits, just be sure to keep an eye out for products with loads of sugar.
Now for the good part, the two probiotic products we recommend everyone explore and try for themselves.
Just Thrive Probiotic
The two of the founders of Just Thrive worked closely with Dr. Simon Cutting, a probiotic expert at London University Royal Holloway, and Kiran Krishnan, a microbiologist with 15 years experience in the nutrition and supplement industry, to develop this spore-based probiotic. The company stands by its formulation and guarantees "the survivability of [their] probiotic strains through the stomach and upper digestive system." The product contains a patented strain called Bacillus Indicus HU36®. As mentioned before, stress is a lifestyle factor that lends to an imbalance of free radicals and antioxidants in the gut. This patented strain produces antioxidants in your intestines to combat this disturbance caused by oxidative stress.
Seed Synbiotic
Our other suggestion is Seed Probiotic. This company has an impressive group of scientists that make up their Advisory Board. The company is hyper-focused on probiotics and how they affect systematic health beyond the gut (even applying their probiotic studies to help save the bees). Instead of merely calling their product a "Probiotic" they opted to call it a Synbotitic due to the synergistic nature of probiotics and prebiotics. The product further breaks down its benefits by laying out each bacteria by genus, species, and strain; then they categorize each of these by how they impact overall health. These categories include: Gastrointestinal Immune System, Anti-Oxidative Stress (covered this before), and Cardiovascular Health. If I haven't convinced you yet that they take their probiotic seriously, they delve even deeper on their website. Survivability, Quality Control, Biofermentation, In Vitro Testing... you name it they probably discuss it in detail.
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*Be sure to order the FEMALE daily Synbiotic for that lucky lady in your life.