Wellness :: The Importance of Probiotics for Your Health

After studying nutrition and health for almost twenty years now and completing my Masters in Nutrition through the University of Bridgeport two main points have stood out to me about one’s health and achieving a healthy life.  For me, being healthy means you can do the things you want to do in life at an intensity that you would like to do it at.  Our health is the foundation for enjoying life to it’s fullest and the two very important aspects of being healthy is staying hydrated and our digestive system.

After reading F. Batmanghelidj, M.D. book “Your Body’s Many Cries for Water” in my masters program, it reiterated the importance of water for your overall health.  He notes that if you are feeling thirsty – your body is way past being hydrated.  I would really recommend this book for anyone who suffers from allergies (he says most allergies are connected to being dehydrated), arthritis, and other aches and pains.

But today’s post is about the importance of taking care of your digestion.  To put it simply, if your body is unable to digest the foods you eat properly – this could be due to a loss of digestive enzymes that comes with age, eating the wrong types of foods for your body – you could be allergic to gluten or dairy, eating low nutrient dense foods and so many other reasons.  So if your body isn’t digesting food properly, you aren’t absorbing the nutrients and thus your body will be lacking in certain vitamins and minerals and you can understand how that wrecks havoc on our immune system day after day, year after year.

Digestion starts the moment we put food in our mouth and start to chew where it then goes to our stomach to be store, liquefied and processed by the acidic gastric juices.  Once it is thoroughly broken down it passes into the small intestine which is essentially the first line of the digestive defense because it safeguards against the absorption of toxic molecules.  That is why a healthy intestinal wall, one coated primarily with “friendly” bacterial microorganisms, provides the protective lining that is necessary to keep damaging substances out of the body’s circulation while letting helpful ones in. (Source: Alternative Medicine by Burton Goldberg, pg. 24).

Supplementing with a probiotic such as Align helps provide you with digestive support 24/7 and is a great way to maintain digestive balance.* I had a chance to try out the Align product that includes the clinically studied B. infantis 35624 probiotic.  The first couple days you will experience a little discomfort as your body is getting adjusted to these healthy probiotics but after a few days I felt good and actually felt like I had more energy.  Maybe this has to do with my body not using as much energy to digest my food due to the help of the healthy bacteria?  I am not sure exactly, but I look at taking these digestive probiotics as insurance towards one’s health.  I have a friend who recently started working out and eating better because as she said “I am doing all this for my future.”  Meaning she wants to be able to move around and do the things she wants when she is older and taking the steps now to make sure that is what her future will hold.  Of course we can’t control everything – but we do have control over what we eat day after day to provide us with the best chance of quality of life in our current and future lives.  That is a great motivator for me as well!

Having one’s health is key to enjoying yourself fully!  Take care of what you put in your body and look into adding a probiotic supplement like Align as an insurance towards your future health.  Prevention is always best!

* This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease

You can find  Align Probiotics product offer at Target.com. Head to Target and save 15% on Align Probiotic products using Target’s Cartwheel app. Offer ends 7/19.

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.