Probiotics for Travelers
Monday, May 23, 2011 at 08:19AM Guest Post by Gerard Guillory, M.D.
If you’ve had a vacation or business trip ruined by diarrhea and indigestion, you might want to bring a probiotic supplement on your next trip. A good supplement will help your body protect itself against the bacteria that typically cause “traveler’s diarrhea” and enable you to spend your trip seeing the sights instead of the bathrooms.
Probiotics are a combination of living, beneficial bacteria that occur naturally in the human intestinal tract. They are essential for maintaining healthy digestion. A growing body of evidence suggests that the use of probiotics can help treat and prevent a wide array of intestinaltract disorders, including traveler’s diarrhea.
Probiotics have been examined for their effectiveness in the prevention and treatment of such gastrointestinal disorders as antibiotic-associated diarrhea, various forms of bacterial and viral diarrhea, inflammatory bowel disease (ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease), irritable bowel syndrome, small-bowel bacterial overgrowth, and lactose intolerance. Probiotics may also help prevent the development of colon cancer.