Originally published March 11 2004
Probiotics work even when they're no longer alive
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
When it comes to probiotics, we've always been led to believe that the
organisms had to be alive in order to be effective. That's why probiotic
supplements are refrigerated at health food stores. But new research
from the University of California, San Diego, shows that even dead
probiotics are just as effective as live cultures in reducing the
effects of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). This research turns
conventional wisdom on its head. Suddenly, there's evidence that as
consumers, we don't have to fret so much over probiotic supplements
being exposed to heat during shipping or sitting on the shelves for a
few weeks or months.
But how could these probiotics work if they're
dead? The answer rests in the DNA of these probiotics: the DNA alone,
even when the organisms are dead, seems to trigger the immune system to
respond to IBD. So, technically, you could even cook your probiotics and
gain a health benefit from consuming them. Yogurt soup, anyone?
A synthetic form of bacterial DNA, when administered to mice bred to
model Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), reduces the harmful effects of
this serious intestinal disorder while enhancing the immune system.
And, because it's a man-made version of bacterial DNA, the synthetic
compound inhibits the "experimental colitis" in mice without imposing a
bacterial infection.
Affecting an estimated 1 million Americans, IBD includes two closely
related disorders that involve inflammation in the intestines -- Crohn's
Disease and ulcerative colitis.
In the study reported in Gastroenterology, the researchers gave the
ISS-ODN to mice that had developed experimental colitis, the mouse model
of human IBD.
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