Probiotics vs. Prebiotics 101
Estimated Reading Time: 7 Minutes
“Prebiotics? Yes, you read that correctly. I’m sure you have heard a lot about probiotics by now - including from me. But have you ever heard of prebiotics?
Keep reading to discover the difference between probiotics and prebiotics, what health benefits each of them provide, and where you can find them.
What are Probiotics?
Simply put, probiotics are the friendly gut microbes that are important for good health. The bacteria living in (and on) us play a major role in how our body responds to stress, the food we eat, and the environment in which we live.
Fun Fact: We have ten times more bacteria in our bodies than we do human cells!
All of these bacteria work to keep our human cells healthy. But what exactly can probiotic bacteria do?
Their main job is to maintain homeostasis or a healthy balance within your body.
When you’re sick, pathogenic (bad) bacteria enter your body and start to increase in number. This knocks your body out of balance and can create a variety of symptoms. Beneficial bacteria work hard to fight the pathogens off and restore your body’s balance so that you can feel better.
But beneficial bacteria do much more than keep pathogenic bacteria numbers from getting out of control.
Benefits of Probiotics
Probiotic or beneficial bacteria have many jobs and produce multiple health benefits. They can:
Support our gut lining
Promote weight loss
Improve IBS symptoms
Reduce LDL cholesterol
Reduce high blood pressure
Reduce the severity of eczema
Support our immune system and prevent infections
Help control inflammation
Regulate our mood
Improve our mental health
Support the digestion of food
Create certain vitamins
Breakdown and absorb certain medications
Yes, the beneficial bacteria that reside within each one of us are highly evolved and specialized - some may even call them intelligent. Here are just a few ways our beneficial bacteria innately spring to action on our behalf:
By reinforcing our sensitive gut lining, they offer anti-inflammatory effects. They do this by filling in the gaps that can form between our tight junctions to prevent toxins from leaking out into circulation. If these toxins were to escape, an inflammatory reaction (and potential food sensitivities) would result.
By favourably changing the gut’s environment, we experience the benefits of enhanced gut diversity. Studies show that more diverse populations of bacteria work to improve mental health, reduce anxiety, and lessen depression. It can even improve cognitive function.
We depend upon a healthy gut with a good balance of beneficial bacteria in order to make serotonin and dopamine. Both of these neurotransmitters work to regulate our mood. So, having a strong population of beneficial bacteria in our gut will naturally boost our mood.
By sending signals to your brain telling it you’re full and to stop eating, the microbes in your gut help regulate appetite. About 20 minutes after a meal, your gut microbes produce certain proteins that can suppress appetite.
Bottom line: Probiotics can help us maintain health in many different ways. Without a healthy and diverse microflora, we can start to experience many different disease states ranging from inflammatory conditions to digestive upsets to mood disturbances.
Where to get Probiotics
Probiotics can be found in supplement form and in certain foods.
Many people benefit from including a probiotic supplement to their regime. But not all probiotics are the same.
Though many types of bacteria can be considered probiotics, two specific types are commonly found in probiotic supplements: Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium.
When choosing a probiotic supplement, start by looking for these two words. Most (if not all) of the bacterial strains in a supplement will start with an “L.” or a “B.” This indicates that strain belongs to either the Lactobacillus or Bifidobacterium family.
You’ll also want to look for a probiotic that has many different strains. I tell my clients that this is the only time you want to see a long list of ingredients on a package! Why? Our guts contain hundreds of different species of bacteria, so providing it with many different strains will help support the existing strains you have.
Also, pick one that contains at least 5 - 10 billion Colony Forming Units (CFUs). And for added benefits, take your probiotic with a source of prebiotic fibre (see below). This can help the organisms take hold better.
Probiotics can be also be consumed. Consuming probiotic-rich foods can enhance the effects of a healthy diet. Humankind has known this for millennia, as our ancestors have been fermenting food and harnessing the power of live bacteria to preserve food for thousands of years.
Probiotic-rich foods include:
Sauerkraut
Pickles
Kimchi
Kefir
Kombucha
Yogurt
Sourdough bread
Tempeh
Miso
By eating some probiotic-rich foods regularly and/or taking a quality probiotic supplement, you will be helping promote a balance of healthy bacteria in your gut which can lead to improved overall health.
Remember, a variety of health conditions can stem from an imbalanced microbiome, including psoriasis, eczema, diabetes, Chron’s disease, candida, arthritis, and even cancer. In fact, more and more studies are now linking the balance (or imbalance) of bacteria living within us and our digestive system to our overall health.
Our microbes are so powerful, they can even influence what we eat! If you are a “sugarholic” or crave bread all the time, that’s your gut talking! The microbes or bacteria in your gut are sending signals to your brain asking for the food they love the most.
Unfortunately, such manic cravings do not serve our best health. If we give in, we can become unwell, mentally unstable, and start to see an increasing waist size.
The best way to repopulate our gut is by eating a diverse diet that contains a variety of probiotic and prebiotic foods. Such foods will promote the diversity and growth of beneficial bacteria so that you can start seeing some of the above-mentioned health benefits.
What are Prebiotics?
Technically speaking, prebiotics are the food that we feed our probiotics. Because our digestive systems cannot digest prebiotics, they pass through our stomach into the small intestine intact, where they become food for our microbiome.
Our gut microbes are alive, and they need to eat too. Their favourite foods are “prebiotics,” which include dietary fibre and resistant starch. The same fibre that keeps us feeling full slows down digestion and provides roughage that keeps us regular. Resistant starch helps promote healthy blood lipids. Both of these types of prebiotics (fibre and resistant starch) are linked with many health benefits.
Technically-speaking, a prebiotic has three qualities:
It needs to be undigested and reach the colon intact;
It needs to be digested by our gut microbes; and,
It needs to stimulate our health-promoting good gut microbes.
Now that we know what prebiotics are let’s dive into their health benefits.
Health benefits of prebiotics
Prebiotic fibre helps keep us regular by bulking up our poop. It gives it substance and form, so it’s not too runny or liquid. In fact, more fibre is often recommended to help with symptoms of diarrhea. Prebiotic fibre used to be thought of like a broom that sweeps food through our guts, but we’re learning more about its health benefits beyond this role.
For example, prebiotics can also help to maintain normal bowel structure and function, and even enhance blood flow to the cells of the colon.
Those are some of the health benefits of prebiotics themselves. But we get even more health benefits when our friendly gut microbes eat and digest them.
For one thing, our gut microbes use prebiotics to make short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). These SCFAs (like butyrate) can feed the cells of our colon to keep them healthy. SCFAs also inhibit the growth of bad gut microbes, and can even increase mineral (calcium and magnesium, for example) absorption. These effects are all linked to the slight acidity caused by the acids in those SCFAs.
Dietary fibre also binds to healthful phytonutrients (phyto = plant). These phytonutrients are lost when the fibre is removed from the food. But, when we eat the prebiotic fibre, our gut microbes release these phytonutrients so we can absorb and use them.
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Where to get prebiotics
Dietary fibre and resistant starch are the main sources of prebiotics.
Prebiotic fibre is found mostly in plants; both fruits and vegetables.
Resistant starch is any starch (a type of carbohydrate) that goes through most of our digestive tract without being digested. It’s not broken down by our digestive enzymes because it’s “resistant”... until it gets to our gut microbes in the colon. Resistant starch is found in starchy foods like whole grains and potatoes.
One of the big differences between fibre and resistant starch is that all of the fibre we eat is undigestible. All of it reaches our colons. Resistant starch, on the other hand, is just a small percent of the starch we eat. Most starch is digested and absorbed along our digestive tract, and that part is not considered to be prebiotic. Only the small amount of starch that is resistant to digestion and makes it down to the colon to feed our probiotics is prebiotic.
Prebiotic fibre is found in fibrous fruits and vegetables. It’s essentially what’s removed when we make juice - the pulp. It’s one of the reasons why eating whole fruits and vegetables is more healthful than replacing them with juice.
Here are some great sources of dietary fibre:
Onions
Asparagus
Bananas
Berries
Pears
Resistant starch is found in:
Whole grains (e.g. oats)
Potatoes
Cornmeal
Seeds
Legumes
Green bananas
Starches can be made resistant by cooking and cooling these foods before eating them. The cooling process allows the starches to re-shape themselves into a structure that is harder to digest (i.e., more resistant). In other words, the amount of resistant starch in a food increases each time it’s cooked, cooled, and reheated.
CAUTION: For some people, increasing resistant starch is a good thing. But for those struggling with SIBO (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth), resistant starch can be problematic. If you’d like help figuring out whether or not you have SIBO, contact your Naturopath or Functional Medicine Practitioner. And if you do, be sure to receive an appropriate diet from your nutritionist.
Conclusion
Prebiotics are fibre and resistant starches that feed our gut microbes. And when we feed our gut microbes, they help keep our gut healthy and have other health benefits, too.
As always, I welcome your thoughts and value your feedback. Let me know what you think by dropping me a line or commenting below. And if I can help you or a loved one with your nutritional needs, make an appointment to see me today!
[REFERENCES]
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/14598-probiotics
https://www.westonaprice.org/podcast/69-improve-your-microbiome/
http://neurotrition.ca/blog/your-gut-bugs-what-they-eat-and-7-ways-feed-them
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/juicing-removes-more-than-just-fiber/
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/resistant-starch-colon-cancer/
https://extension.psu.edu/prebiotics-how-to-feed-your-good-bacteria
https://www.monash.edu/medicine/ccs/gastroenterology/prebiotic/faq