Food "Allergies" and Intolerances - Therapeutic Probiotic

Normal gut flora maintains gut wall integrity through protecting it, feeding it and insuring normal cell turnover. When the beneficial bacteria in the gut are greatly reduced, the gut wall degenerates. At the same time various opportunists, when not controlled by damaged good bacteria, get access to the gut wall and damage its integrity, making it porous and "leaky". For example, microbiologists have observed how common opportunistic gut bacteria from families Spirochaetaceae and Spirillaceae due to their spiral shape have an ability to push apart intestinal cells braking down the integrity of the intestinal wall and allowing through substances which normally should not get through. Candida albicans has this ability as well. Its cells attach themselves to the gut lining literally putting "roots" through it and making it "leaky". Many worms and parasites have that ability as well. Partially digested foods gets through the damaged "leaky" gut wall into the blood stream, where the immune system recognises them as foreign and reacts to them. This is how food allergies or intolerances develop. So, there is nothing wrong with the food. What is happening is that foods do not get a chance to be digested properly before they are absorbed through the damaged gut wall. So, in order to eliminate food allergies, it in not the foods we need to concentrate on, but the gut wall.

Healing the gut wall - probiotics
In order to heal the gut wall apart from the appropriate diet we need to replace the pathogenic microbes in the gut with the beneficial ones. The fermented foods in the diet will provide some probiotic microbes. However, an effective probiotic supplement is essential in most cases. There is a plethora of studies accumulated about benefits of probiotic supplementation for most digestive disorders, as well as many other health problems. The market is full of probiotics in the form of drinks, foods, powders, capsules and tablets. Majority of them are prophylactic, which means that they are designed for the fairly healthy people, they are not designed to make a real difference in a person with a digestive disorder and a "leaky gut". These people need a therapeutic strength probiotic with well-chosen powerful species of probiotic bacteria. A therapeutic probiotic will produce a so-called "die-off reaction": the probiotic bacteria kill the pathogens in the gut, when these pathogens die, they release toxins. As these are the toxins which give the patient his or her unique symptoms, their release makes these symptoms worse, which is called the "die-off reaction". This reaction can be quite serious and must be controlled. That is why patient should need to start the therapeutic probiotic from a very small dose, then build the dose very gradually up to the therapeutic level. Once on that level, the patient needs to stay on it for a few months: how long - depends on the severity of the condition. Once the symptoms of the disease are largely gone, the patient can start gradually reducing the daily dose to the maintenance level or can stop altogether.