Probiotic? Prebiotic? What’s the difference? Are they useful?

A probiotic is a supplement or food containing live bacteria that provides a health benefit. A prebiotic is food for the bacteria.

Ingesting live healthy bacteria of a preferred strain can be beneficial, sometimes. A medical intervention or condition that decimates the gut flora, as we like to call it, will leave us in difficulty until the gut is repopulated with these little friends who are greatly missed when not in place to help with the passage of waste through the colon. They give their all for our benefit, at least the good ones do. So, an active repopulation effort is very worthwhile.

The bacteria in our system are not all to be welcomed home. But normally the good outweigh the bad.

A probiotic can also solve a problem by producing what the body does not produce or does not produce enough of. The most obvious example is lactose intolerance. The body does not produce sufficient lactase; a bacterium can produce lactase to make up the difference.

The bacteria in our bodies can be classified in three different groups, the beneficial, the harmless and the pathogenic, those that cause diseases. The diseases caused by pathogenic bacteria include cholera, diphtheria, leprosy, syphilis, tuberculosis, typhoid fever and food poisoning, to name a few.

Studies supporting the claims of probiotic efficacy are many. A symptom of lactose intolerance is diarrhea. A probiotic, added to milk, reduces the incidence of diarrhea in children. It also appears that strengthening gut flora gives generally positive results in situations where groups congregate for long periods, such as schools, with more apparent benefit for the young.

The natural benefits have resulted in efforts to improve nature. We now have GM bacteria.

But what of GM modified bacteria? Genetically modified, that is. The development of GM bacteria is a large and ever growing part of the pharmaceutical industry. The hope is that the GM bacteria will do its good work as designed and not become a rogue or pathogen. These GM bacteria are in a sense drugs and the initial results are very promising. The most studied and therefore the most modified bacteria are Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus, both found in fermented milk products.

So, some strains of gut bacteria are useful and many are hyped and oversold.

Read the label and head for a .gov web site.

John Oram