What Are the Advantages of Taking a Probiotic?

Do you have stomach problems? Are you hoping to boost your metabolism and strengthen your immune system?

If so, you should consider taking probiotics. After all, there are a ton of benefits to taking probiotics.

In this article, we’ll talk about what probiotics are, when you should take them, and the advantages of taking a probiotic.

What Are Probiotics For?

Probiotics are a kind of bacteria. But not the kind that leads to sickness, infection, or disease. Probiotics are the good kind of bacteria which help make you healthier. Probiotics live mostly in your stomach and help digest and break down your food.

Your stomach has a certain amount of probiotics that you increase with a mix of diet changes and supplements. Foods that are rich in probiotics include:

• Yogurt
• Kefir
• Sauerkraut
• Tempeh
• Kimchi
• Other fermented foods

One of the main problems for many people is that most of the fermented foods that are rich in probiotics are an acquired taste. So if you’re not a huge fan of tempeh and kimchi, consider a probiotic supplement. You get the benefits of probiotics in a concentrated form, without the taste of fermentation.

What Are The Advantages Of Taking Probiotics?

The main benefit of probiotics is that they help improve your gut health. The overall health of your digestive system is important because your stomach is what supplies the rest of your body with the nutrition it needs. The healthier your gut is, the healthier you will be.

There’s plenty of studies out there that show that supplementing your stomach’s current probiotic levels with probiotics from supplements helps improve your overall health. That’s simply because your body has access to more nutrition which means it can satiate all of its health needs. Let's take a look at some of the advantage of taking probiotics and how they can help your body remain healthy.

1. Probiotics Can Help Boost Your Immune System

Like I said earlier, your gut health is intrinsically linked to your overall health. So, if you want to strengthen your body, probiotics are a great place to start.

But how does our gut microbiome affect our health? Multiple studies show that a healthy gut microbiome can help promote our innate and adaptive immune responses. In nearly all instances, probiotics and a healthy gut have shown a positive effect on both the treatment and prevention of intestinal diseases, allergies, eczema, and even viral infections (1).

2. Probiotics Can Help Improve Mental Health

Our mental health is arguably one of the most important aspects of our overall health. When our minds don’t feel healthy, it’s near impossible to get anything done.

Believe it or not, your gut health can actually help keep your mind healthy. Research suggests that taking probiotics and maintaining a healthy gut microbiome can improve how we handle stress and sadness (2). Reactivity to emotions can be hard to deal with, and a healthy gut may help us better handle our emotions.

Also, those suffering from illnesses such as major depressive disorder may see improvements in their symptoms (3). A healthy gut just could mean a healthy mind after all!

3. Probiotics Can Help Improve Symptoms of IBS

Up to 15% of people in the United States suffer from Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It's a lifelong problem that can directly affects anyone's quality of life. If you have IBS, there is no way to remove the discomfort from your life permanently.

However, there are many ways to help manage the symptoms. Recent studies have found that probiotics can be a great way to manage the symptoms of IBS!

Some of the symptoms a healthy gut microbiome have been found to alleviate include bloating, abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and stomach rumbling (4).

4. Probiotics Can Help Assist With Weight Loss

One advantage to taking probiotics is its benefit for weight loss. This is because probiotics can help optimize your digestive system. The more efficient your digestive system is, the better it can utilize the calories, macronutrients, and micronutrients for proper everyday function ... helping with proper hormone production, metabolism, energy production and more! In some cases, individuals are able to actually burn more calories than before.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that you can stop eating right or exercising because probiotics are certainly not magic… But probiotics are a supplement that can be added to your routine and help with results.

So if you’re looking for an extra edge in weight loss, muscle growth, or just feeling better … you may consider taking probiotics.

When Is The Best Time Of Day To Take Probiotics?

There are different theories on when you should take probiotics.

Some experts make the argument that you should take them first thing in the morning. These people usually say that you should take them on an empty stomach.

The idea is that your stomach is empty so your stomach acid levels are at the lowest point during the day. Stomach acids are bad for probiotic supplements because they kill a lot of the good bacteria before they can start working.

Other experts say you should take them at night, with food. The idea is that, if you take your probiotic supplements with food, especially foods rich in good fats, they’ll be able to be better protected from the stomach acids in your body.

This protection allows more of them to survive long enough to start working.

As you can see, the two strategies are basically looking at the pros and cons and favoring some over the others. Some people say a lack of stomach acid is more important than protecting the probiotics with food, others are saying protecting the probiotics is more important than the amount of stomach acid your body is releasing.

The best strategy, however, is to simply follow the instructions on your supplement’s container.

The creators of your supplement probably know what’s best to do for their specific formula.

1st Phorm has a probiotic supplement that’s part of our Foundation Series, and we recommend that you take 1 capsule one or two times a day with 12-16 ounces of water.

Need Probiotics? 1st Phorm Has You Covered!

If you’re looking to promote healthy metabolism, strengthen your immune system, and improve digestion, you should consider probiotics. And if you’re looking at probiotics, 1st Phorm can help.

Our Probiotic supplement contains 8 billion CFU and can be used in conjunction with Micro Factor, Opti-Greens 50, or any other 1st Phorm Supplements to optimize your overall health.

If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us! We have a full team of NASM Certified Personal Trainers and Certified Nutrition Coaches that are happy to guide you to earning the best results possible. Just give us a call at 1-800-409-9732 or send us an email at CustomerService@1stphorm.com.

References:

(1) Yan F, Polk DB. Probiotics and immune health. Curr Opin Gastroenterol. 2011 Oct;27(6):496-501. doi: 10.1097/MOG.0b013e32834baa4d. PMID: 21897224; PMCID: PMC4006993.

(2) Steenbergen L, Sellaro R, van Hemert S, Bosch JA, Colzato LS. A randomized controlled trial to test the effect of multispecies probiotics on cognitive reactivity to sad mood. Brain Behav Immun. 2015 Aug;48:258-64. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2015.04.003. Epub 2015 Apr 7. PMID: 25862297.

(3) Schaub, AC., Schneider, E., Vazquez-Castellanos, J.F. et al. Clinical, gut microbial and neural effects of a probiotic add-on therapy in depressed patients: a randomized controlled trial. Transl Psychiatry 12, 227 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-022-01977-z

(4) Satish Kumar L, Pugalenthi LS, Ahmad M, Reddy S, Barkhane Z, Elmadi J. Probiotics in Irritable Bowel Syndrome: A Review of Their Therapeutic Role. Cureus. 2022 Apr 18;14(4):e24240. doi: 10.7759/cureus.24240. PMID: 35602835; PMCID: PMC9116469.