For years people who have been suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome have found probiotics to be a rather hot topic.
In case you didn’t know, IBS is a disease which causes acute abdominal pain and constant changes in your bowel habits. In more recent years, people who are either suffering from it or want to prevent it have increased their intake of probiotics, hoping that they could balance their gut bacteria in order to improve in their symptoms.
As a chronic disease, those suffering from IBS will also experience bloating, passing gas, constipation and uncontrollable diarrhea. This disease affects between 7% and 21% of individuals around the World and for some reason is three times more prone to affect women than it does men.
Experts have yet to find a unified cause of IBS. There are, however, many factors involved that lead to being affected by this disease, like infections, food sensitivities, intestinal inflammation, brain-gut interaction, carbs malabsorption and bacterial overgrowth.
There are also certain foods that can offset the disease, and if you add stress to the mix, then you have all the ingredients to make an already terrible disease even more painful.
More recently, several studies have been conducted by renowned institutions and organizations regarding the link between IBS and Probiotics and their positive impact.
IBS is directly linked to changes in the gut flora, more precisely people suffering from IBS have much lower amounts in their guts of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, and higher amounts of Streptococcus, E. coli, and Clostridium which are incredibly harmful to us.
Moreover, more than 84% of people suffering from IBS have gone through bacterial overgrowth in their small intestines, leading to severe worsening of their symptoms.
Those changes in the gut flora are what causes IBS symptoms to get a more damaging momentum increasing inflammation, sensitivity to gas, and interfering with digestive motility.
Probiotics can help you by inhibiting and/or preventing the continuous growth of the bacteria which causes the disease, enhancing the immune system, fighting off inflammation, slowing our bowel movements, reducing the gas production, balancing the gut flora, and preventing massive gas build up.
Now, there are certain things you may want to keep in mind when choosing a probiotic supplement to help you with your IBS, as some of them may contain ingredients that could actually make your current symptoms worse than they already are.
Nevertheless, probiotics are incredibly healthy and beneficial when it comes down to help you fight off your IBS.