Preventing and Treating Food Poisoning with Probiotics

If you’ve ever suffered from food poisoning (or foodborne illness) you probably know that absolutely horrible feeling when you’d do almost anything to stop the stomach cramps, diarrhea and vomiting.

Food borne illness is caused when parasites, bacteria, viruses or toxins contaminate food through unhygienic food handling techniques, insufficient cooking, inadequate refrigeration or excessive age. Typical cases clear up within 24 – 48 hours, but in very serious cases the food poisoning can lead to organ failure, paralysis, neurological impairment, blindness, stillbirths and even death.

The good news is that many instances of food poisoning can typically be treated at home without the need for antibiotics. Probiotics and a healthy gut micro biome have been shown to PREVENT many cases of foodborne illness; taking probiotics can also treat food poisoning and help sufferers feel better quickly.

Probiotics are the friendly or health-promoting microbes (including both bacteria and yeasts) that typically live in healthy person’s digestive tract. These health-promoting organisms assist in maintaining a strong intestinal lining. This lining in turn helps to prevent harmful substances from crossing from the digestive tract and into the blood stream, where they can cause greater harm.

The large majority of the body’s immune cells are located in the digestive tract and are assisted by the probiotic microorganism that live there. Certain types of probiotic microorganisms can recognize the presence of harmful pathogens and communicate with the immune system, alerting it to the attack. They can provoke or stimulate the body to initiate an immune response to fight off threats.

More here