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More than a probiotic!
Yes, we love our bugs! Friends, television ads, and even your physician have probably told you that probiotics are part of a healthy life. “Probiotics” is a fancy name for the friendly germs that live on our skin and in our digestive tract and enhance our digestion and our immune function. We acquire healthy bacteria as newborns and then add to the community over the course of our lives with our exposure to raw and fermented foods as well as germs normally present if we refrain from harsh anti-bacterial soaps and cleansers.
We need a healthy community of probiotics, but that isn't always easy to manage. The greatest assault to our internal probiotic community comes from antibiotics. When you take a course of antibiotics, your intestines take years to recover fully, if they ever do. Antibiotics, rightfully valued as death-defying miracle drugs, have become as commonplace as candy and even more hazardous. More than 100 million antibiotics prescriptions are written annually in the US, and it is estimated that more than 10% (or more than 10 million) are unnecessary. Necessary or unnecessary, if you've taken antibiotics, your probiotics needs some help. Additionally, all conventionally raised meat is a source of antibiotics affecting our food supply, groundwater, and ultimately ourselves.