Probiotics, Friendly Microorganisms That Improve Health
The bacteria that lives in the intestinal tract can affect digestion, weight gain, mood and how the body absorbs medicine. UBiome, a Silicon Valley startup, has built a company around sequencing gut bacteria — which the founders think one day will become as common and as medically necessary as a blood test. But it’s a long road to that future, especially with a test that asks people to swab their toilet paper.
by Vincent Pedre, M.D.
Founder: Pedre Integrative Health
NYC’s Leading Gut Health Expert
Many patients arrive in my office with gut imbalances that manifest in all sorts of ways, including weight gain, chronic inflammatory diseases, fatigue, and skin conditions like eczema. These gut imbalances result from numerous culprits. Chief among them are chronic stress, a high-sugar processed-foods diet, other dietary extremes, certain diseases, and specific gut insults, including unfavorable bacterial infections, parasites, and yeast.
Those problems aren’t as far-reaching as they might seem when you consider how much of your health begins in your gut. An out-of-whack gut can result in allergies, autoimmunity, weight gain, acne, skin rashes, yeast infections, hormonal imbalances, fatigue, depression and even accentuate the way you sense pain.
One way I help restore a patient’s gut to balance is with “probiotics.” The term, derived from Latin, means “for life.”
Among their numerous health benefits, research shows these friendly microorganisms help prevent bowel diseases, improve your immune system, reduce traveler’s diarrhea, help you maintain a healthy weight, heal various skin conditions, improve bloating and other uncomfortable GI symptoms, and even boost your mood, helping to reduce the effects of anxiety and depression. […]
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