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Maintaining Optimum Health with Bifidus
From UAS Laboratories
There are over 24 species of Bifidus bacteria. A select few play a major role in human intestinal tracts. Bifidus or bifidobacteria are a type of friendly culture found in the guts of warm-blooded animals including humans. Bifidus plays a major role in maintaining lower or large intestinal flora. They are responsible for normalizing lower intestinal ecology. This function is responsible for keeping pathogenic cultures in check. It is also widely believed by many researchers that bifidus bacteria may play a role in promoting colon health and maintaining normal cholesterol level.
Nutritional Requirements
Bifidus rely on foods that have been greatly pre-digested as a source of nourishment. They do not break down normal carbohydrates but thrive on substrates such as fructooligosaccharides. Neither the human body nor pathogenic cultures can utilize fructooligosaccharides. Bifidus thrives on it. Therefore bifidobacteria share a compatible relationship with humans where they provide us with good health while we give them nourishment.
Of the 24 different species of bifidus, 3 are considered normal inhabitants of the human gut. They include Bifidobacterium breve, Bifidobacterium infantis and Bifidobacterium longum. One that is commonly found in low-cost, low quality supplements is Bifidobacterium thermophilus (or Thermophilus) which is found in chickens, cattle and sewage.
When we are born, we do not have friendly cultures in the intestine. We get them from our food including mother's milk. Bifidus can make up of 25% of the intestinal flora of a child! Babies who are not breast-fed have about 10% of the total bifidus found in their guts of the breast fed counterparts.
Bifidus counts typically become lower as children age. Bifidobacterium goes from #1 to #3 most prevalent bacterium in the body. Other friendly cultures become more prominent as children move from mother's milk to solid foods. Scientists believed this to be a normal healthy transition. About the mid 1980's, Mitsuoka and other prominent bifidus researchers brought much new research to show that bifidus can play a large role in maintaining good health in even mature adults. He discovered that a strong correlation existed amongst individuals with large quantities of bifidus in their intestines and their overall health and longevity.
Studies have shown that after antibiotic therapy, an individual wanting to maintain positive bifidus growth should take numerous doses for a substantial period of time, or the culture may not actively take hold in the intestine and grow. Good advice from you doctor may be to supplement on an ongoing basis to maintain good growth. Bifidus longum has been shown to help fight E. coli in mice and is believed to do the same in humans.
Other benefits of bifidus include the manufacture and assimilation of thiamin, riboflavin, vitamin B & vitamin K in human intestines. Bifidus is also responsible for removal of bile salts in the large intestine, which may be on of the mechanisms responsible for lowering cholesterol.
Maintaining Optimum Levels
Bifidus is responsible for good health, thus care is needed to keep levels of bifidus adequate in the intestine. Surgery on intestines, or kidney, liver or disease of any of these organs can take a toll on Bifidus populations. Drugs such as penicillin or tetracycline and most antibiotics destroy bifidus in the gut (Rasic & Kurmann 1983).
In addition to maintaining food flora in the intestines and keeping down pathogenic cultures, bifidus also helps to clean up metabolic byproducts. These include ammonia, bacterial toxins and steroid metabolites (Hidulca & Eidan, 1988). This of course helps with many digestive disorders including diarrhea (Mitsuoka, 1982).
An adjacent benefit is proper maintenance of pH levels in the bowel. This, along with lowered pathogenic cultures and the aforementioned "clean-up" activity of bifidus is what researchers conclude leads to improving colon health. (Mitzutami, Mitsuoka, Hashimoto, Hidaka, others, 1983).
Due to the selectivity of FOS (not used by pathogenic cultures) it is a choice nutrient of bifidus and good for acidophilus (Hidaka et. al 1986, Mitsuoka et. al, 1987). Initial tests with FOS not only show significant increase of Bifidus and acidophilus, but decrease of unfriendly cultures (Hidaka et. Al, 1987).
H. pylori, v. Probiotics
Much research is blazing in the field of study of a pathogenic culture called Helicobacter pylori. Many ulcers are believed to be due to this annoying bug. Much research is being conducted to see how cultures such as acidophilus and various bifidus strains may inhibit this culture. More research is on the way, as we speak at major universities nationwide, Probioplus DDS and DDS Plus is at the front of this research and the results are very promising. Stay tuned!
-References available upon request.
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