Gut health
The bowel is the largest contact point to the outside world. Everything we eat or drink, whether healthy or possibly even toxic, eventually arrives at the bowel after travelling through mouth, oesophagus and stomach. During an entire lifetime the digestive system has to process around 40 tons of food and about 60.000 litres of fluid. Located mainly within the large intestine, many trillions of different microorganisms ensure that vital nutrients and substances reach their destination. Together these gut bacteria form the gut flora that is known in specialist jargon as intestinal microbiota. Most harmful and unusable substances are excreted through the anus as faeces. Remaining toxic substances are transported via the small intestine to the portal vein and the detoxification centre of body, the liver, where they are degraded. This is how the ideal digestive process would look like, but there are many different problems along the way that gut and liver may be faced with. Suboptimal nutritional habits (too much sugar and too much industrially processed food) and harmful environmental toxins and even some medicines (like antibiotics) can turn a purring gut motor into a stuttering scrap-box.
Jump-start digestion
Nowadays it is not possible to evade all environmental impacts like for instance noise or exhaust fumes. However, each individual can have a positive impact on the digestive system with the right lifestyle. A diverse, regional and seasonal dietary plan, avoidance of constant stress and regular resting phases as well as regular physical exercise and renouncing smoking and excessive drinking support our digestive system and the well-being of its microbial inhabitants. Annoying sufferings like constipation, diarrhoea, flatulence then almost have no chance. The only exception there is if aggressive pathogens have been allowed to become part of the game.
How to keep your bowels healthy:
- Ensure you have regular bowel movements without laxatives
- Eat plenty of vegetables, rice and potatoes, and little sugar and fat
- Avoid preservatives in food
- Drink 2 litres of fresh water every day
- Do plenty of exercise in fresh air
- Learn how to compensate for stress and frenetic activity, whether it is at work and in your leisure time
- Consume active gut bacteria every day to compensate for the loss which occurs due to poor nutrition and stress
- Avoid taking medication unnecessarily
Pro bios means ‘for life’
As early as 100 years ago, the famous Russian doctor and Nobel prize winner Dr. Ilja Metchnikoff said: “Death lies in the bowels”. He had discovered that ethnic groups in the Caucasus who consumed products made with lactic acid fermentation (= probiotics) were healthy and resistant to illness, and lived to a great age.
Now we know why! The bowels contain the body’s best developed defence system. This is where the immune cells are formed which keep our organism free of toxins and foreign bacteria and viruses. In healthy bowels there are three times as many immune cells than in the spleen, bone marrow and the lymph nodes put together.
All of them contribute to our defensive forces, but can only be produced in the bowels when sufficient healthy bacteria constantly process the chyme (partially-digested food) so that it does not start to ferment or rot. In a healthy person, many billions of intestinal bacteria work on a daily basis to ensure that our digestion works and that we feel really well.
Irritable bowel syndrome
Only a few years ago, irritable bowel syndrome was often still being dismissed as “delusion”; for there are no organic indications for the disease. Meanwhile it has become clear that irritable bowel syndrome is a dysfunction of the gut. The causes of this dysfunction are highly diverse: A colonisation of the gut with the “wrong” bacteria can lead to the formation of gases. This occurs when gas producing bacteria have the upper hand and repress other bacteria which are important for digestion. Additionally, this miscolonisation can also lead to an impairment of the gut’s barrier function; the gut becomes permeable, which ultimately leads to a so called “leaky gut”. The protective function of the gut decreases; components and metabolic products of bacteria enter the body and activate the immune system, ultimately leading to inflammation. If bacteria also excessively produce gases from food components, this leads to bloating, a feeling of pressure in the belly, and flatulence. Additionally, constant stretch stimuli combined with hypersensitivity of the gut’s nervous system (visceral hypersensitivity), lead to frequent tummy aches.
80% of all immune cells lie beneath the gut mucosa
Cleansing and regeneration
An essential element of lastingly eliminating toxins and putrefying bacteria from the digestive system is the presence of a wide variety of intestinal bacteria strains. High-quality synbiotics such as OMNi-BiOTiC® consist of billions of active little helpers which have varying tasks: the production of vitamins and enzymes as well as repulsing physiologically undesirable microorganisms and the protection of the sensitive mucus membranes of the gut.
