Probiotic As A Vehicle Of Preventing Disease And Promoting Health

Examples of probiotic organisms

Describe about the Probiotic as a Vehicle of Preventing Disease and Promoting Health?

Lilly and Stillwell in the year 1965 coined the term probiotic that is actually derived from a Greek word meaning ‘prolife’.  Probiotics have been defined and redefined over the years. Focussing on the impact of Probiotics on health, we can define it as viable and specific microorganisms in definite concentration, used as a dietary supplement or adjuvant to modify the host gut microflora by colonising and thereby imparting its beneficiary role in providing a balanced nutritional and microbial condition and thereby improved immunity (Mine, 2014).

From the endpoints of health and disease, several microbes of different genera and species have been studied and are being used as Probiotics. Mostly naturally occurring microbes are used and the research on the efficacy on genetically modified microbes is still on therefore its usage is limited.  Presently, bacteria and yeast are being mostly used as Probiotics. The most commonly used bacteria in preparation of Probiotics are the group of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) which include the species of Lactobacillus, Enterococcus and Streptococcus; others are Escherichia coli, Bifidobacterium, Propionibacterium, Bacillus and Bifidobacterium. The most commonly used yeast is Saccharomyces cereviseae (Moore, 2011).

Health benefits of Probiotics are enlisted below:

Treatment for lactose intolerance(Rauch and Lynch, 2010

Increased vitamin B12 production

Development of enhanced immunity

Resistance against pathogenic organisms

Improved bowel condition

Treatment of IBS (irritable bowel syndrome)

Reduced risk of Colon cancer

Reduced vaginal infection

Reduced incidence allergic diseases

Reduced release of cancer associated faecal enzyme

Help in significant reduction in cholesterol levels

Promotes better health

Criterias for selecting a microorganism as a probiotic strain are:

Should have a beneficiary role on the host

Should have colonisation potential in the host gut epithelium

Should have the ability of insitu survival and to stabilize intestinal microflora

Should not have any toxic effect on the host (Reid, et al 2006)

Should have the ability to produce antimicrobial substance against pathogenic microbes

Should have high efficacy level

Should have the ability to form stable population number in food products

Should not produce any toxic products in the food preparation

Should have long term viability throughout its shelf life in food preparation

Probiotics are now widely used in the preparation of fermented foods. It finds its vast usage in diary fermentation industry for preparation of cheese, yoghurt and even ice creams. Yogurt is yet another popular food item, and according to the research studies ranks first among the probiotic foods items. Apart from the diary products, there are other probiotic based fermented foods relished around the world. Some of them are Miso, traditionally of Japanese origin, delicious probiotic rich soup. Kefir, another fermented diary product made from goat’s milk and kefir grains, makes it an excellent probiotic drink. Kombucha, a type of fermented tea is excellent in reducing weight and energising an individual. Other fermented delicacies include tempeh, kimchi, natto green pickles, poi and even microalgae finds its way in preparation of smoothies (Beena Divya et al. 2012).

Health benefits of Probiotics

Apart from the use of probiotics in fermented foods, they are also widely used in non-fermented food products like in fruit and vegetable based drinks, a few examples of which are non-fermented blackcurrent juice, carrot juice, green coconut water, probiotic banana puree, noni juice and others. Some non-fermented soy based foods are also available like soy based frozen desserts. A number of non-fermented probiotic food items and drinks are also obtained from cereals like oats, rice, maize and others.

Sometimes probiotics are often confused with prebiotics. Prebiotics are completely different from probiotics as it does not involve any viable microorganism and is actually a non-digestible dietary fibre, which positively effects the health of the host by providing favourable condition in the colon, enhancing the intestinal flora growth and survival and thereby preventing any bowel disorders, colon cancers, improper lipid metabolism and inadequate mineral absorption. The most common form of probiotic found is inulin, which is readily available in various vegetables like garlic, onion, and asparagus. Probiotics and prebiotics when used together have a synergistic effect on the health of the host and are together termed as synbiotics. So more stress is given on use of synbiotics for enhanced health benefits and people are encouraged to include them in their daily food choices (The Role of Prebiotics and Probiotics in Human Health, 2013).

It has been observed from various research studies that the visible impact of probiotics on health is dependent on its daily usage (Soll, 2010). Even today, there are no universal or national standards to determine the exact safe dose of probiotics to be used in the food products. Though several studies and research work has documented probiotics to be safe and non toxic to humans but there still remains a chance that in some individual some strains of probiotic might have a negative impact. Therefore, before incorporation of a new probiotic into food product, its safety as well as its efficacy should be carefully assessed by the food industry.

Many dieticians and nutritionists help the patients to recover from their disease by prescribing them probiotic foods or supplement as a daily basis (Albuquerque,et al 2013). Dieticians sometimes recommend probiotics as a medicine for losing weight (Fragkiadakis, et al 2010) and for the improvement of oral health. Along with this nutritionist and dieticians recommend probiotics for improving vaginal health, to treat ulcers, urinary tract infection or UTI and protect against traveller’s diarrhea.

Probiotics are nothing but friendly and helpful microbes which can be used in combating with bad or harmful microbes. The probiotic bacteria are able to ferment our food stuffs and can produce various types of byproducts. If a patient or a healthy individual is prescribed with  probiotic then it will help the individual to promote a healthy life while it also control the infection.

Recent studies and research suggests that probiotic foods can improve the human health along with immunization. A study reports that, some healthy worker were fed with probiotic supplement, Lactobacillus reuteri in a regular basis and some were not. After some time they were observed whether they fall sick or not.  So it was revealed that those who were treated with probiotic statistically less likely to report about sickness but those who were not treated with probiotic were reported to produce illness or fall sick. Probiotics are reported to control and prevent diarrhea. Bifidobacteria spp, Lactobacillus reuteri, Lactobacillus GG and S. boulardii are the examples of probiotic which are reported to cure diarrhea. One research showed that Lactobacillus salivarius can reduce the growth of H. pylori in, in vitro condition as it can produce high amounts of lactic acid(Cean et al., 2015). By the random use of antibiotic the microflora of gut becomes affected and the person may suffer from reduction in appetite. Probiotic bacteria are used to reduce the loss of intestinal microbial flora by regenerating the flora.

Criterias for selecting a microorganism as a probiotic strain

Probiotic is a wide and fast growing business which may have annual global sales of about $42 billion by the 2016 (Ebm et al., 2013). There are various kinds of Probiotic food is available in the market but not all of them are actual Probiotic food supplement. Some of them are verified by the scientific evidence. There are so many example of probiotic food but the main fact behind this is that some of them do not contain the same effect which is being expected from a probiotic food. Like having yogurt on a regular basis does not give the adequate effect which is expectable. It would be very difficult decision to be made by the consumer to choose the best probiotic food or supplement from a so much options. The recommendation of buying the best probiotic product is that, to buy from a trusted company those shares readily all the information with the health care professionals as well as with the consumers.

In general probiotic foods as well as probiotic supplement are considered to be a great health booster but it has some mild kind of side effects. The side effects mainly include bloating and mild gas. Some probiotic can adversely affect the metabolic pathway such as the carbohydrate metabolism or it can overstimulate the immune system. Therefore it can be recommended that any immune-compromised people with bowel problem should not consume any kind of probiotic. In case of pregnant ladies, infants and young children the probiotics should be given cautiously as there can be some side effects for the use of probiotic. But in case of premature infants it’s better to avoid the probiotic supplement.

The common difference between live culture and probiotic are nothing but the live culture of bacteria includes only the bacterial culture suspension but the probiotic defines a bacterial culture within a food or supplement (Smith, 2012). The live bacterial culture, the bacterial cell remains alive but in case of probiotic the bacterial culture remains in dried and stabilized condition. Therefore in probiotic the bacterial or microbial culture used remain alive but in the dormant state and they start to grow when ingested and reach in the body system which are moist. Live bacterial cultures often associated with food supplement and generally not contain any kind of health benefits bur the probiotics are microbes which has been typically tested for beneficial effects on health.

There are different kinds of probiotics available in market but they are not same in terms of function. As the probiotics are defined in terms of the genus, species and strain like genus includes Lactobacillus, species includes rhamnosus; strain includes GG (Smith, 2012). These kinds of specificity actually say about the specification of the probiotic product. The probiotic product can be strain specific as the degree of specificity should be essential in describing the function. For example, the way in which Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG act that can be different from the way of L. rhamnosus GR-1.

Bifidobacterium can be used as a probiotic but it is known that Bifidobacteria have been isolated from bacteremia patient and it is also known as to cause endocarditis. L. plantarum, Lactobacillus paracasei, L. casei, L. rhamnosus and different species of lactobacilli are found to cause endocarditis (Quigley, 2011). There is also a chance of production of d- lactate along with the development of lactic acidosis. Bifidobacterium sp. and L. acidophilus are found to convert conjugated bile acid into secondary salts, which is nontoxic to our system. But in case of a person suffers from small bowel syndrome the conjugated bile acid can accumulate and can lead to malabsorption. Antibiotic resistance is another concern related to the probiotic treatment. This situation can take place when antibiotic-resistance gene are transferred from pathogenic bacteria to probiotic. Therefore there are many issues related to risks for the probiotic treatment.

According to the NHS trust there are certain strains found in the bacterial genus which represent good evidence for use as probiotic that it can check Clostridium difficile diarrhoea and antibiotic associated diarrhoea. Therefore, if the probiotic containing this strains of bacteria are provided to the patients the negative effects can be reduced and along with this it will also prove to be cost effective.

Conclusion

This assignment concluded that probiotic proves to be very effective medicine which promotes health as well as immunity. Probiotics act without any side effect. It is nothing but some friendly and helpful bacteria provided with food supplement used for boosting health. But there is some area where probiotics should be used cautiously.

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