Probiotics are products that get your body’s intestinal flora and fauna balanced. Where once they were only found in obscure health food stores and alternative medicine, they’ve moved into the mainstream world in yogurts at your local grocer.
One of the leading providers of probiotics for the health food market is Garden of Life; they’ve been leaders in the probiotics field for years. Their industry leading product is the Primal Defense Probiotics line, which comes in tailored mixtures of probiotic cultures for different dietary needs, with the broad spectrum Primal Defense Ultra line as their top end.
Those who sell probiotic cultures claim a lot of benefits, from improved digestion (by balancing out the biotic cultures in your intestinal tract, and balancing the pH of your endocrine system), to helping minimize problems with late onset diabetes (by helping clear the receptors that make you resistant to your own insulin) to boosting the immune system (by making your body in better balance with its own intestinal flora, it helps tune the immune system’s responses to other “threats” and keeps things in check.
While full on double blind tests of probiotics are still ongoing, the preliminary studies are quite promising. Studies conducted in Sweden showed that those on probiotic supplements missed an average of 10% fewer work days than the control group, independent of other factors such as age, gender and weight – in short, the benefits of probiotics were near universal across all spans and ages and health morphologies. While some of the more exuberant claims (such as mitigating type II diabetes) have not passed the clinical trials studies, the general consensus is that taken in moderation, at worst, they’re harmless, and they may do some good. (For example, the Swedish study is (barely) within the high end boundaries of the placebo effect.)
Most probiotic supplements use strains of bacteria from the Enterococcus, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Saccharomyces boulardii and Bifidobacterium families, and Primal Defense Ultra has all of them, and more – the entire cocktail of probiotics includes 13 species of bacterium in all, most included to help your body scavenge lactic acid before it can damage tissues, and to help repair the epithelial walls of the gastroinstestinal tract.
All of these are bacterium that can normally be found in natural foods and unprocessed vegetables, and all are quite happy living in your digestive tract. Primal Defense Ultra bonds them in a proprietary compound called UltraZorb, which is designed to protect the bacterium from the acids of the stomach, UltraZorb is also meant to help them be absorbed by the duodenum and colon.
Probiotic cocktails are worth looking into if you’re experiencing irregular bowel movements, digestive problems, or are having low energy during the day (a common problem when your blood pH levels get out of balance and your blood sugar starts yo-yoing). The supplements are easy to get at your local health food store, and we can recommend Primal Defense Ultra as a worthwhile addition to your dietary supplement needs.
