Digestive Wellness: Strengthen the Immune System and Prevent Disease Through Healthy Digestion, Fourth Edition (32 page)

Has protective and therapeutic effect on vaginal infections

Benefits of Bifidobacteria Infantis

Helps treat colic, cradle cap, and eczema in infants and babies

May protect against bacteria that promote inflammatory bowel disease

Helpful to alleviate the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome

With L. acidophilus, reduces illness and deaths from necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) in infants

Has antitumor properties in test research

When used therapeutically, S. boulardii is useful for stopping diarrhea caused by traveling, antibiotics, AIDS, and severe burns. It has also been used effectively in people with Crohn’s disease, significantly reducing the number of bowel movements and diarrhea, and it has been used to help people with diarrhea-type irritable bowel syndrome.

S. boulardii helps protect against bacteria and bacterial toxins by preventing them from attaching to the intestinal mucosa or specific receptor sites. Studies have shown its effectiveness against disease-causing strains of E. coli, Clostridium difficile, cholera, and Entamoeba histolytica. Studies indicate that it may also be effective against salmonella, the main cause of food poisoning.

E. coli strain Nissle has also been used effectively in digestive diseases. It’s best been studied for its role in protection from inflammatory bowel diseases and irritable bowel syndrome.

Beneficial bacteria do not permanently stay in the gut, so we need to regularly get them from foods, such as yogurt or kefir, or use a supplement.

In healthy people, the composition of the intestinal population usually remains fairly constant, but it can become unbalanced by aging, diet, disease, drugs, poor health, or stress. Health problems resulting from unbalanced flora have now become widespread. Eating cultured dairy products and other foods can maintain colonies of friendly flora in people who are already healthy, but once disease-producing microbes get established, probiotic supplements may be necessary to rebalance the internal community. Until recently, it was believed that taking these supplements would cause the desired organisms to colonize in the gut; newer research indicates, however, that they probably don’t. Instead it is believed that these are transient residents in our digestive system. They “vacation” in our bodies for up to 12 days. Just like tourists who boost local economies, these visitors have a beneficial effect on our intestinal ecosystem. This makes a great argument for eating cultured and fermented foods and/or taking probiotics on a regular basis.

Bacteria manufacture nutrients for their own benefit, but we can reap the rewards. Pretty much any food that is cultured or fermented contains probiotics and increased nutrients. By having cottage cheese and yogurt rather than milk (see
Table 6.1
), sauerkraut rather than cabbage, tofu and tempeh rather than soybeans, and wine rather than grapes, we obtain higher dietary levels of such nutrients as vitamins A, B-complex, and K.

Table 6.1
Nutritionally Enhanced Dairy Foods

With or without knowledge of the scientific principles involved, people around the world have long recognized the health benefits of fermented foods. They have been used for thousands of years. Fermentation is a low-cost, efficient, and easy-to-use process that preserves foods without the need for refrigeration or other high-tech processes. Traditional sauerkraut has historically been eaten by Europeans to combat ulcers and digestive problems. Asian cultures serve pickled daikon radish and kimchi as condiments and drink a sweet rice beverage called
amasake
. Lactose-intolerant people worldwide have relied for centuries on cultured dairy products such as cottage cheese, kefir, and yogurt; in India, the fermented dairy drink lassi is a household staple, and in Israel, yogurtlike
leban
is served daily. Each year, Japan produces more than a billion liters of soy sauce to use nationally. In many African cultures, fermented cassava products, such as gari and fufu, comprise about 50 percent of the calories eaten each day.

Many foods are fermented or cultured with the use of lactic-acid-producing bacteria, such as Lactobacillus, Leuconostoc, Pediococcus, and Streptococcus. During the fermentation process, carbohydrates are converted into lactic acid and organic acids that are used in our bodies for energy production. The lactic-acid-producing bacteria also inhibit the growth of disease-causing microbes. L. plantarum, one of the most soothing of all probiotics, creates the acid that’s present in “sour” vegetables, such as sauerkraut. Leuconostoc mesenteroides is the main bacteria associated with sauerkraut and pickles. The Propionibacteriaceae family of bacteria provide the flavor and holes in Swiss cheese. The acetic-acid-producing bacteria, Acetobacter, change foods, such as apples and grapes, into vinegar.

Yogurt traditionally contains types of probiotic bacteria: Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptoccus thermophiles. Eli Mechnikoff won the Nobel Prize in 1908 for demonstrating that the bacteria in yogurt prevented and reversed bacterial infection.
He named L. bulgaricus after the long-lived, yogurt-loving peasants of Bulgaria. These “tourists” have a beneficial effect on our intestinal ecosystem by enhancing the production of bifidobacteria and having antitumor effects. L. bulgaricus also has antibiotic and antiherpes effects.

The traditional Japanese diet takes advantage of several fermented soy foods that have antibiotic properties. Miso paste, for example, contains 161 strains of aerobic bacteria, almost all of which compete successfully with the main food-poisoning agents E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus, and contains many lactic-acid-producing bacteria as well. Several microbes, including yeast and L. acidophilus, are used to brew health-giving soy sauce, also called shoyu or tamari. (In the United States, however, most soy sauce is manufactured with inorganic acids that break down the soybeans, rather than by fermentation with living microbes, so it doesn’t have the same benefits.)

Probiotic-Rich Foods

Certain herbs also promote the growth of friendly flora. Polyphenols provide the colors in fruits, vegetables, beans, seeds, nuts, and grain. Polyphenols like those in green tea, red wine, apples, onions, and chocolate have been shown to increase the number of beneficial intestinal bacteria such as lactobacilli and bifidobacteria while decreasing the number of disease-causing bacteria. A significant increase in beneficial flora was also found when an extract of the herb Panax ginseng was tested in vitro on 107 types of human-dwelling bacteria. While more research needs to be done, it appears that here is just one more reason to eat our veggies!