Health Tip

Consider a better way to boost immune system health in your gut and improve regularity with this health tip from Natural Health News -

Depending where you live and whether or not you pay tax on food, Activia will cost you about $30 each month.

One bottle of high potency, high quality acidophilus/bifidus capsules will cost you about one third to one half this amount. Find it here. And a lactose free product is available too.

Plus you won't have so much packaging to recycle.

The Importance Of Intestinal Bacteria

Intestinal Bacteria, also known as Gut Flora are organisms
that live in our intestines and keep us healthy by
performing several important functions. The average human
has about thirty trillion microorganisms in their stomach,
with about five hundred different species. They perform as
much work as any of our major organs, but are never
mentioned as something we need in order to stay healthy.

Our feces are about sixty percent bacteria, which is why
doctors ask for a sample when we have an intestinal problem.
This is the most non-invasive manner in which tests could be
done to find the reason for the upset stomach.

When babies are born they have no bacteria in their system,
however their body quickly picks up bacteria from the mother
and surrounding environment, and within a few months their
body builds up the healthy bacteria. Babies born by
cesarean deliveries are likely to take a longer period of
time to build up these bacteria as compared to babies born
normally.

The bacteria in our stomach perform various different roles
such as fermenting, maintaining a healthy resistance level,
fighting the harmful bacteria, creating vitamins, and
helping us store fat. Firstly they break down
carbohydrates; as a result our body can absorb the nutrients
from it. With no bacteria in our intestines, we would not
have been able to break down a lot of food that we eat, and
therefore would need to eat more to remain healthy.

These bacteria also prevent the harmful bacteria from
growing in our digestive tract. Due to the competition in
the tract between several classes of bacteria for space, the
bad bacteria are not able to survive because the useful
bacteria do not permit them to take up any space. Humans
without any intestinal bacteria are much more likely to be
exposed to diseases as compared to those with normal levels.


These bacteria are also helpful in building up our immune
system so we don't fall sick. Due to a tolerance for healthy
bacteria that we develop in our childhood, the immune system
is proficient in battling the bad bacteria, therefore leaving
behind only the good bacteria. These bacteria are also
helpful in preventing all sorts of allergies and
inflammatory bowel disease.

However, these days the excessive usage of antibiotics and
other medicines is upsetting our digestive system, as the
medicines are not been able to distinguish between the
different types of bacteria in our body and wipe out both
the bad bacteria and the good. This is one of the main
causes of diarrhea and other illnesses of the bowel. While
we may not be consuming antibiotics with intent, a lot of
the dairy and meat we consume currently contains
antibiotics, which are given to the animals to prevent
illnesses. The use of probiotics is now increasing to help
the good bacteria thrive in the gut, since probiotics are
able to help the bacteria in their functions by fighting
harmful bacteria and boosting the immune system.

It is important to know that not all bacteria are bad for
us, and that our body has many millions of bacteria in it
that are actually helping it stay healthy.

Stopping Pneumonia

High quality probiotics do help many health issues, preventing secondary infection related to antibiotic use and ploy-antibiotic use of fluroquinolones, by maintaining health gut bacteria necessary for immune function. Other methods must be relied on when overuse of acid blockers reduces gastric HCl (hydrochloric acid). The acid acts to fight bacteria and help in protein digestion to give you the necessary nutrition to support your body while you're fighting off infection.

Another excellent way to fight pneumonia is the use of vitamin A. This can be by oral administration or in IVs for critically ill persons. The dose is very high for a short duration, either three days or seven days, with dose adjustment based on time used.

Vitamin A acts to protect the mucous membrane lining of the respiratory tract.

Probiotics 'may stop pneumonia'
Probiotics could be used to protect critically ill patients from developing pneumonia, according to scientists.

The friendly bacteria can block the colonisation by dangerous bugs of the airways of ventilated patients, the Swedish study concluded.

The probiotic solution performed just as well as normal antiseptics used to keep pneumonia-causing bacteria at bay, the journal Critical Care reported.

Being more natural it could pose fewer side effects, the authors said.

Friendly bugs

The probiotic bacterium Lactobacillus plantarum 299 is normally present in saliva and is also commonly found in fermented products like pickles and sauerkraut.

Although rare, some patients are allergic to the antiseptics normally used to prevent ventilator-associated pneumonia, namely chlorhexidine.

There is also a very small risk of the pneumonia-causing bacteria developing chlorhexidine resistance.

Pneumonia is a common complication in patients on breathing machines and occurs when harmful bacteria from the mouth, throat or breathing tube are inhaled into the lungs.

This is a plausible idea. But we need much larger trials that focus on clinical outcomes to prove it is an effective and affordable treatment
Bob Marsterton of the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy

Swabbing the mouth with chlorhexidine is widely recommended to reduce the risk ventilator-associated pneumonia in critically ill patients requiring mechanical ventilation.

Bengt Klarin and colleagues at the University Hospital in Lund, Sweden, compared the probiotic treatment with chlorhexidine in 50 critically ill patients.

Microbiological testing revealed both treatments appeared to be equally effective at preventing potentially harmful bacteria from flourishing in the mouth and throat.

In addition, a probiotic that adheres to mouth lining will be able to work around the clock, unlike antiseptics which wear off after a few hours, say the authors.

The scientists said bigger studies were now needed to investigate the feasibility of using probiotics in this setting.

Bob Marsterton, chair of the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy's working party on hospital acquired pneumonia, said: "This is a plausible idea. But we need much larger trials that focus on clinical outcomes to prove it is an effective and affordable treatment."

He said chlorhexidine highly effective, affordable and readily available.

Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/7708895.stm

Published: 2008/11/06 © BBC MMVIII

Food Allergy on the Rise

The increase in food allergy is good to make note of because of several factors.

One of course is the ever increasing level of environmental toxicity in air, water and food.

Food coloring, additives and flavorings also are known to contribute to this health concern. Over processed foods (including cereals and dairy) and the increased use of highly allergenic or GMO soy in formula, pesticide use and other GMO foods must be considered.

One issue that for the most part that is overlooked is the effect of the myriad of vaccines forced on children from birth to the teen years, on GI problems and allergy.

Over and over again I am amazed at just how the gut issues in infants and small children become more prevalent, how troubling acid antagonist drugs are thrown at them (leading to many more serious problems over time), and how the use of simple remedies like real food, enzymes and probiotics are ignored.

Even children's prescription drugs include many colorings, flavorings and artificial sweeteners - all known to impact developing gastrointestinal and immune systems.

I wonder when common sense will return to health care and mainstream medicine.

Food allergies increasing in US kids, study says By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer

ATLANTA – Food allergies in American children seem to be on the rise, now affecting about 3 million kids, according to the first federal study of the problem.

But experts said that might be because parents are more aware and quicker to have their kids checked out by a doctor.

About 1 in 26 children had food allergies last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday. That's up from 1 in 29 kids in 1997.

The 18 percent increase is significant enough to be considered more than a statistical blip, said Amy Branum of the CDC, the study's lead author.

Nobody knows for sure what's driving the increase. A doubling in peanut allergies — noted in earlier studies — is one factor, some experts said. Also, children seems to be taking longer to outgrow milk and egg allergies than they did in decades past.

But also figuring into the equation are parents and doctors who are more likely to consider food as the trigger for symptoms like vomiting, skin rashes and breathing problems.

"A couple of decades ago, it was not uncommon to have kids sick all the time and we just said 'They have a weak stomach' or 'They're sickly,'" said Anne Munoz-Furlong, chief executive of the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network, a Virginia-based advocacy organization.

Parents today are quicker to take their kids to specialists to check out the possibility of food allergies, said Munoz-Furlong, who founded the nonprofit in 1991.

The CDC results came from an in-person, door-to-door survey in 2007 of the households of 9,500 U.S. children under age 18.

When asked if a child in the house had any kind of food allergy in the previous 12 months, about 4 percent said yes. The parents were not asked if a doctor had made the diagnosis, and no medical records were checked. Some parents may not know the difference between immune system-based food allergies and digestive disorders like lactose intolerance, so it's possible the study's findings are a bit off, Branum said.

However, the study's results mirror older national estimates that were extrapolated from smaller, more intensive studies, said Dr. Hugh Sampson, a food allergy researcher at the Mount Sinai School of medicine.

"This tells us those earlier extrapolations were fairly close," Sampson said.

The CDC study did not give a breakdown of which foods were to blame for the allergies. Other research suggests that about 1 in 40 Americans will have a milk allergy at some point in their lives, and 1 in 50 percent will be allergic to eggs. Most people outgrow these allergies in childhood.

About 1 in 50 are allergic to shellfish and nearly 1 in 100 react to peanuts, allergies that generally persist for a lifetime, according to Sampson.

Some people have more than one food allergy, he said, explaining why the overall food allergy prevalence is about 4 percent.

Children with food allergies also were more likely to have asthma, eczema and respiratory problems than kids without food allergies, the CDC study found, confirming previous research.

The study also found that the number of children hospitalized for food allergies was up. The number of hospital discharges jumped from about 2,600 a year in the late 1990s to more than 9,500 annually in recent years, the CDC results showed.

Also, Hispanic children had lower rates of food allergies than white or black children — the first such racial/ethnic breakdown in a national study.

The reason for that last finding may not be genetics, said Munoz-Furlong. She is Hispanic and said people in her own family have been unwilling to consider food allergies as the reason for children's illnesses. "It's a question of awareness," she said.