As you may have noticed, there's been a huge surge of awareness in the
last couple years at the importance of consuming enough probiotics
(friendly bacteria) in your diet, whether those probiotics come from
fermented (cultured) foods like yogurt, kefir, kombucha, kimchi, and other fermented veggies, or whether they come from supplements too.
We've
already talked extensively in this newsletter about how probiotics have
dramatic beneficial benefits to your health, most importantly, your
digestive system and your immune system. Balancing your gut flora and
crowding out the "bad bugs" with more of the good bugs (aka, probiotics)
is vastly important to over 150 different health conditions in your
body, going above and beyond just your digestive system and immune
system.
However, one of my friends recently asked me this:
"Mike,
I just realized that I'm taking a probiotics supplement daily, and also
drinking kefir, eating fermented veggies (kimchi or kraut), and also
drinking a greens drink that also contains probiotics. I feel GREAT, but how do I know if I'm getting TOO MUCH probiotics?"
This
is a great question! Here's my take on this, compiling information
that I've researched and also other experts on the topic...
First
of all, there's actually pretty much zero studies on whether you can
take "too much" probiotics, because the average person doesn't get
nearly enough in today's modern world with an overly processed and
sterilized food supply, so "too much" is almost never a problem.
The
fact is, nobody really knows if "too much" even exists when it comes to
probiotics. And I've seen some authors and others question that maybe
we shouldn't take "too much" since we don't know what too much is.
However, I disagree with them, and here's where you have to use some standard logic about science, so here's my conclusion...
Throughout
all of human history (up until the last 60-100 years or so), humans
always ate VERY LARGE amounts of live bacteria in pretty much everything
we ate. I'd estimate that our ancestors consumed at least 10x the
amount of live bacteria than even avid probiotics consumers do today.
We
just simply didn't have a "sterilized" food supply in the past that's
been canned, processed, pasteurized, packaged, and with added chemicals
like we do in today's industrialized food supply.
Quite simply,
everything our ancestors ate contained a LOT of bacteria, and this
wasn't just the purposely fermented foods that are rich in probiotics.
Our
ancestors also ate a certain amount of dirt on a lot of our foods
throughout human history simply because good methods of thoroughly
cleaning foods (other than rinsing with water) weren't always available
like today. Even just getting a tiny amount of fresh dirt on your root
vegetables that you pulled out of the ground can give you billions of
live bacteria. This was beneficial to our ancestors.
And since
refrigeration was pretty much impossible throughout most of human
history in parts of the world, fermented foods have a LONG history as a
method of preservation, which means humans ate large amounts of
fermented foods (WAY more than most modern humans), especially in
certain times of year when fresh foods weren't available. Fermented
dairy and fermented veggies have a long history of being staples in so
many parts of the world throughout history. In fact, you can read my
article on kefir vs yogurt here and how natives of the Caucasus mountains in eastern Europe routinely live to over 100 years old drinking fermented dairy regularly throughout their lives.
So,
the way I see it is even for those of us that might end up getting 100
Billion probiotics or more per day from a combination of a glass of
kefir, a bottle of kombucha tea, a greens drink, or a probiotic
supplement all combined together, I'd be willing to bet that ancient
humans probably got well over 1 Trillion probiotics per day in everything that they ate, since the food supply back then wasn't sterilized like it is today.
In
that case, even the most prudent probiotic eaters who take supplements
and also eat fermented foods probably still don't come close to the
amount of probiotics eaten by our ancestors.
We live in a
germophobic culture these days where we're taught from childhood to fear
bacteria, despite the fact that 99% of bacteria is beneficial for our
health... and yet there's 100 Trillion estimated microbes in our guts
(10x the number of cells in our body) that are linked to almost every
aspect of our health.
That's why I personally will NEVER take
antibiotics unless I were to end up having some sort of life threatening
infection in the future from an accident of some sort. Antibiotics can
permanently disrupt the balance of your gut flora, and permanent disruption to your gut flora balance doesn't sound like a good idea to me. You can even read this article which shows that antibiotics use can increase your belly fat, among other problems.
And remember one of the most important things about your gut bacteria...
It's
those friendly gut bacteria (probiotics) that help to crowd out
pathogenic strains that could get you sick. This is one way that
probiotics help keep you from getting sick.
The other way is
simply that good gut bacteria also form a barrier in your intestinal
lining to prevent pathogens from escaping into your bloodstream. It's
when pathogens escape into your bloodstream that you're more likely to
get sick. This is why some people are more likely to get food poisoning
than others despite eating the same food as others that might have
contained some pathogens. This is also why some people never get sick
at all from exposure to harmful germs whereas others get sick from every
little thing that they're exposed too.
The people that have
good gut flora balance (from eating large amount of probiotics) have
that "microbial barrier" in their gut that doesn't allow pathogens to
get from your digestive system into your bloodstream.
There's a great new documentary that I watched recently called Microwarriors: The Power of Probiotics
that I think is a great thing to watch for every family. I think
seeing things in a movie format is a lot more powerful for some people
than just reading articles and will make some people take probiotics
more seriously.
So to summarize about whether consuming "too
much" probiotics is possible... I think we've established that our
ancestors consumed a MUCH higher quantity of probiotics naturally than
even the most avid fermented foods consumers eating a modern diet and/or
supplementing with probiotics ever could.
Make sure to read this
article below... I show you my exact daily plan I've come up with in
order to get a huge variety of probiotics from different sources...
remember that VARIETY of strains is just as important, if not more
important, than just sheer quantity of probiotics.
Daily example plan to PROTECT your gut from pathogens, get perfect digestion, and more.
Also,
keep in mind that although I eat a good daily ration of fermented foods
in the form of grass-fed kefir, fermented veggies such as kimchi or
kraut, as well as yogurt a couple times a week and kombucha on occasion
too, I also personally "top off" my probiotics intake with what I feel
is the most powerful probiotics supplement I've found to date here.
I
strongly feel that it's my close attention to probiotic intake (as well
as close attention to levels of vitamin D) that create the immune
system such that I never get sick, and never have digestion issues
either. Even this past winter, I can remember quite a few flights where
sick people right behind me were coughing and sneezing all over the
back of my head, and I never got sick from it. I also visited several
friends on trips that had sick kids or the whole family was sick, and
almost everybody got sick except for me.
Coincidence? Maybe. But I think it's those little "microwarriors" in my gut protecting me!
Make
sure to start focusing DAILY on your probiotic intake of both fermented
foods and probiotic supplements, and it's quite possible that you find
that you stop ever getting sick, and that any digestion issues you have
start to go away fully.
Here's to letting those little "microwarriors" protect your health!
Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer