Colon health is of vital importance, as the colon has the important job of absorbing the necessary nutrients from your food and then in turn eliminating waste from your body.

Young woman eating yogurt

Your body is susceptible to many different kinds of bacteria.

This bacteria can create extensive problems for you colon and your digestive system in ways such as diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome or even ulcers.  Some of these conditions can be counteracted or at least improved if you have some healthy bacteria.  This healthy bacteria can be in the form of probiotics.

Probiotics are dietary supplements or foods that contain beneficial or good bacteria, which is like the bacteria normally found in your body.

Probiotics can be taken as a vitamin supplement or they can be found in such foods as yogurt, fermented and unfermented milk, some juices and soy drinks.  As colon and digestive health has become so popular, there are now specific foods that contain probiotics, such as Dannon’s Activia yogurt.

Research has been shown that probiotics may help:

• Treat diarrhea, especially following treatment with certain antibiotics
• Prevent and treat vaginal yeast infections and urinary tract infections
• Treat irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
• Reduce bladder cancer recurrence
• Shorten the duration of intestinal infections
• Prevent and treat inflammation following colon surgery
• Prevent eczema in children

Additionally, probiotics are vital to proper development of the immune system, to protection against microorganisms that could cause disease, and to the digestion and absorption of food and nutrients.  For example, when you take antibiotics, you are essentially ridding your body of all of the bacteria.  In turn this may rid you of good bacteria, while on antibiotics you may become more susceptible to yeast infections, diarrhea or cramping.  In using a probiotic, you may be able to counterbalance the bacteria and stay healthy.

You can obtain probiotics mostly from your foods, as explained above mostly dairy products of yogurt and milk.  However, you can also buy probiotics in tablet or powder form.

Probiotics are sustainable within your body. Once they are ingested, in whatever form, they will sustain themselves in your intestine until they are destroyed by antibiotics or some other matter.  There is no recommended daily intake of probiotics, especially since they are able to sustain for longer periods of time than a normal medication may be able to.

Probiotics can be given to children and infants.  In fact, some of the baby formulas may already contain probiotics.

There are many kinds of probiotics that may have different benefits.  Depending on the type of probiotic, you will have to determine the best time of day to take them.  Some may be taken before meals, some at bedtime and some with water.  For example if the probiotics are taken before eating, they may not be ingested in the right time to be actually implanted in the intestinal tract.  To learn this, you will either read the directions on the supplements you purchase or you can consult your physician for the right direction for you.