Your good health and disease resistance may begin with the friendly bacteria in your digestive tract. Your body normally contains 10 times as many bacterial cells as body cells, and friendly bacteria are an essential, functioning part of your immune system, according to "Nutrition and Immune Function." Food-borne probiotics found in yogurt not only help alleviate lactose intolerance, protect you against cancer in your intestinal tract and lower your blood cholesterol, they also enhance your immune system, according to Eleanor Whitney and Sharon Rolfes in "Understanding Nutrition."
Function
The reaction of your immune system to invading organisms changes in the presence of probiotics. Whether friendly bacteria compete with harmful bacteria to limit their numbers or somehow calm an overreaction of the immune system to allergens or invading micro-organisms, they help maintain a balance or homeostasis in the intestines, according to the Mayo Clinic. This balancing act can be thrown off by the use of antibiotics that kill friendly bacteria or by invading disease-causing bacteria. An interesting phenomenon is that certain cells in the digestive tract connect with the immune system. By introducing either friendly probiotic bacteria in food or unfriendly invading pathogenic bacteria, you can affect the immune system's defenses, according to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
Regulation and Stimulation
Gut-dwelling microbes are not passive inhabitants of your intestine. They generate signals that interact with your immune system, says "Nutrition and Immune Function." Children raised in environments with bacterial exposure, including foods containing lactobacillus bacteria, develop fewer immune dysfunctional diseases than children raised in a more sterile environment. The authors suggest that early stimulation by certain bacterial signals may regulate the development of your immune system.
Antibody Responses
Probiotics, or friendly bacteria, can regulate antibody production, at least in animals, and probiotics have the ability to stimulate the immune system in the intestine, possibly by direct interaction with T-cells of the gastrointestinal tract, according to "Nutrition and Immune Function."
Future Roles
Food-borne alternatives to pharmaceuticals may help control human pathologies. Future research may investigate the possibility of using probiotics to control immune dysfunctional conditions, such as chronic inflammation and allergies. Supportive evidence from both animal studies and human clinical trials is being investigated by researchers.
References
- "Nutrition and Immune Function"; Philip Calder, et al; 2002
- "Understanding Nutrition, Ninth Edition"; Eleanor Noss Whitney and Sharon Rady Rolfes; 2002
- Mayo Clinic: Probiotics: Bacteria That Offer Health Benefits; June 8, 2009
- NCCAM: An Introduction to Probiotics; August 2008
- University of Michigan Health System: Probiotic Microbes Could Be a Key to Good Health; March 6, 2006
