So you're wondering, what are prebiotics? Think of prebiotics as a group of natural food nutrients that feed and support your good gut bacteria, in turn, giving you a healthier digestive system.
You won't get many of them in a fast food burger and fries but you will get them in the carbohydrate food group which includes whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.
Eating them will provide you with many health benefits, which is an amazing fact since they don't get digested, nor do they have any calories.
What they do supply you with is powerful and important nutrients that feed the probiotics in our digestive tract, and that's where the magic happens between probiotics and prebiotics.
Probiotics are a term used to identify microbes in our digestive tract known as the good, or "friendly bacteria", and yes, there is unfriendly, or "bad bacteria" living right along side the good.
Every minute of every day, there is a battle going on between the good and bad bacteria in our intestines.
Most of us will hopefully have a healthy ratio of about 80/20 in favor of the good bacteria.
If that gets reversed, you could be in for some painful digestive symptoms or even disease.
This is where prebiotics come in to help.
By feeding the probiotics, which are the good bacteria, you can give them the competitive edge and make them stronger, outnumbering the bad guys, which in turn keeps you healthy.
What's the big deal, this isn't anything new! Neither pro - or prebiotics are new inventions of the nutrition and food industry.
Ancient Egyptians fermented food over 2000 years ago so they had probiotic supplements back then.
Prebiotics are in some of our most common fruits and vegetables.
The excitement is in the more recent discoveries about how these two "biotics" work together and how we can have control over the consequences of our digestive health.
Scientific researchers are investigating how prebiotic nutrients may be able to stop the bad bacteria called pathogens, to stop sticking to our intestinal wall, lower blood sugar and cholesterol, control our weight, dispose of waste faster, help with inflammatory bowel disease, and even lower colon cancer rates.
Very exciting news indeed.
The probiotic rage, and myth You may have noticed a lot of foods advertising they have probiotic supplements added to them over the years.
The thought was that the more probiotics you added into your system the better off you would be.
Well, after many years of studies it turns out that probiotics alone can't do much in terms of added health benefits.
The jury is in and the tests show that probiotics need the nutrients provided by prebiotics to make them grow...
in other words, as important and necessary as probiotics are, they are not self-supporting.
What are prebiotics? - the missing key Just like probiotic supplements became very popular, now it's the prebiotics that we see coming full force onto the market and as with any product there will be good quality ones made and not-so-good.
How will you know? As with food, the more natural the better, is a good rule to follow.