Probiotics are Natural Foods

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A probiotic is a modern-day term that literally means for (pro) life(biotic). A probiotic is a food and not a medicine or therapeutic good. All natural or wild foods are probiotics in a diet because they meet the essential criteria of a probiotic, i.e.:

• The skin (or outer membrane) of the food (e.g. apple) is coated with diverse and abundant micro-organisms(both beneficial and pathogenic) that are in balance with nature
• The microbes on the food are always attached to a water molecule (e.g. mainly water vapour in the air). That is, a living probiotic provides the microbes in a liquid form
• The food diet is organic (not contaminated with modern-day chemicals) and nutrient and mineral dense (i.e. at least 70+minerals, including the trace minerals, such as iodine, selenium, boron, cobalt, zinc, etc.)
• The cells of the food are filled with negatively charged (-mV) natural water
• When the probiotic is a food supplement, then it is best provided as a fermented food or food composite (complete with beneficial microbes, minerals and other nutrients).

Early humans consumed a probiotic every day by eating wild or fermented foods. It was not until the advancement of agriculture that food was grown in unnatural conditions and this change in food production initiated the decline in availability of food with balanced populations of microbes and nutrient density. However, the human genome today is 99.9% the same as humans who walked bare-footed and ate wild foods about 10-20,000 years ago, and therefore the diet and lifestyle expectations of body organs and systems are basically the same.

For example, the rates of human diet and lifestyle changes can be appreciated in the following five Great Ages of human progress, and their approximate duration:

• Stone Age — The period lasted roughly 3.4 million years and ended between 4500 BC and 2000 BC with the advent of metalworking.
• Bronze Age — 2,500 years (advances in agriculture and loss of contact with nature)
• Iron Age— 500 years (advances in close settlement and technology)
• Industrial Revolution — 80 years of Britain’s economic development from 1760 to 1840 (advances in air pollution and loss of vegetation)
• InformationRevolution— 20 years, primarily from 1990-2010 (advances in medicine, radiation and chemical pollution)

Clearly, humans (Homo sapiens) have been around for a long time, and it is only since about 1910 with the advent of modern medicines, sedentary lifestyles and remoteness from nature that human disease rates have escalated (particularly since about 1970).

Our gut system is microbially designed to eat raw and wild foods, and survive in a natural environment. Is it any wonder that people get depressed and sick living in an unnatural environment of the Information Revolution?

The human gut comprises about 34,000+ species of microbes and in a healthy person the beneficial microbes outnumber the pathogenic microbes by about 4:1. This ratio is known as a microbially balanced gut and it is this balance that sustains the effectiveness of the immune system and disease suppression.

Microbes have always been part of plant, animal and human life: the microbes are part of our foods, they are part of our body (90% of the cells within humans belong to the microbes) and they are essential to all of life’s functions. The understanding of how microbes are essential to life is modern-day science, albeit microbe-rich, fermented foods have always played a role in folk remedies. In the Persian version of the Old Testament (Genesis 8:18) states, Abraham owed his longevity to the consumption of sour (fermented) milk. In 76 BC, the Roman historian Plinius recommended the use of fermented milk products for treating gastro-intestinal infections.

In the early 1900’s, the Nobel prizewinning scientist, Elie Metchnikoff, discovered a population of Bulgarian peasants with incredible longevity and suggested the probiotic concept of using microbes to supplement food and thereby modify the gut flora to balance harmful (pathogenic) microbes with useful (beneficial) microbes. It was known at that time that milk fermented with lactic-acid bacteria inhibits the growth of proteolytic bacteria because of the low pH produced by the fermentation of lactose. Metchnikoff had also observed that certain rural populations in Europe, for example in Bulgaria and the Russian steppes lived largely on milk fermented by lactic-acid bacteria were exceptionally long lived. Based on these facts, Metchnikoff proposed that consumption of fermented milk would seed the intestine with harmless lactic-acid bacteria and decrease the intestinal pH and that this would suppress the growth of proteolytic bacteria. Metchnikoff himself introduced in his diet sour milk fermented with the bacteria he called Bulgarian Bacillus and found his health benefited. The friends of Metchnikoff in Paris soon followed his example and physicians began prescribing the sour milk (raw food) diet for their patients.

About the same time, Henry Tissier, a French paediatrician, observed that children with diarrhoea have low numbers of bacteria with a peculiar Y shape in their stools. These bifid bacteria were abundant in healthy children and are now known as Bifidobacteria.

The modern term probiotics was first used in 1953 by Werner Kollath. Probiotics were then defined as microbially derived foods that stimulate the growth of other microorganisms (as opposed to antibiotics). In 1989, Roy Fuller suggested a definition of probiotics that has been widely used: A live microbial feed (food) supplement which beneficially affects the host animal by improving its intestinal microbial balance. Fuller’s definition emphasises the requirement of viability and integrity for probiotics and introduces the aspect of a beneficial gut effect on the host (e.g. plant, animal or human). It is important to note at this point in history, that the low consumption of microbes from nature was already having a noticeable effect of human and domesticated animal health; and the consideration of supplementing with additional microbes through fermented foods was a viable alternative to wild or natural, whole foods.

It wasn’t until the late 1990’s that the current definition of probiotics was developed by a committee of the World Health Organization (WHO) and Food Agriculture Organization (FAO).  The WHO and FAO developed the definition: Probiotics are live microorganisms that when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host. It has been unfortunate that pharmaceutical and government regulative bodies have interpreted this definition to mean a medical administration for the purposes of a so-called therapeutic effect. This twist in interpretation was only designed to seize control over a probiotic as a therapeutic good and not acknowledge that a probiotic is just a food, and nature’s way of sustaining life through the gut.

However, there are major differences in probiotic products on the market and the only true probiotics are food or food supplements that are microbially and nutritional diverse and abundant. Most probiotics produced by pharmaceutical companies are in a powdered form and do not satisfy the requirements of a food probiotic (listed in paragraph one above). It is further ironical that government regulative agencies for medicines list only about 50 microbe species for a probiotic when the gut survives on 1,000’s of species. These species come from the natural environment and the 50 or so species listed by government health agencies are an only fraction of the food probiotic requirement.

Probiotics are a Natural Food

Humans have traditionally consumed probiotics as wild collected or organic food and as part of fermented foods with specially added active live cultures, such as in yogurt, soy yogurt, or as special food (nutrient dense) cultures (diverse and abundant) supplements. Also, most people who understand the nature of probiotics know that a probiotic is a whole, natural food or fermented food.

It has only been since about the year 2000 that modern day science community and the media slightly lifted themselves out of the dogma of the germ myth and grasp the importance of gut biology in human health.  However, they have not fully grasped and accepted the concept of microbial balance in nature that produces harmony and coherence for the flow of life energy and cellular information.

The plant, animal and human systems are designed to be self-healing and self-regulating systems. These life systems develop, grow and survive essentially from the input of balanced biology, nutrient dense food, natural (structured) water, gasses (oxygen, nitrogen, etc.) sunlight energy and physical activity. A probiotic food is part of this natural life affirming process. A probiotic, does not directly produce a therapeutic or health effect on life. The functions or systems of the body perform this role, albeit that probiotic food provides the basis of a balance in biology and a nutrient source for the gut biology to initiate and sustain these bodily functions (e.g. immune system). Claims by pharmaceutical companies that probiotics (as a medicine or therapeutic good) produce therapeutic effects are misleading, and these claims dismiss the vital role of whole, and natural foods (e.g. an apple).

Humans have become so disconnected from physical contact with nature and the daily habit of eating natural foods that their gut biology has become unbalanced or dysfunctional. Also, living in an unnatural environment (i.e. bombarded with electro-magnetic energy of technology) changes the gene expression of these people and this has a cascading effect of changing the balance of gut biology. This leads to the wrong signals being sent to the immune system and possibly causes the onset of auto-immune diseases.

The significant loss of food integrity since about 1970 and the massive accumulation of chemicals in the environment (air, water and soil) during this period have significantly degraded human health to the point whereby pregnant women are passing onto their babies in the womb, poor gut biology and toxins. This has possibly given rise to the escalation in autism, allergies, and behavioural issues; along with increasing incidence of childhood diseases, such as obesity, cancer, diabetes, auto- immune diseases, etc.

In many respects, this trend in sickness, the emergence of superbugs and infections; and increasing medical intervention is driven by the following:

• People have handed over responsibility for their health to their doctor or the People have lost the incentive and initiative to secure their own (and family) wellbeing
• Increasing consumption of synthetic and unnatural foods (i.e. fast foods) and particularly the consumption of sugar/ carbohydrates and grains at toxic levels. Food processing now involves denaturing raw food (e.g. milk) to the point where it has lost its natural values for health
• The loss of access to organic, raw and wild foods, and particularly the taste of sour Most modern day children has only tasted sweet foods and consequently baulk at the taste of naturally sour, probiotic foods
• The contamination of food with chemicals that block essential metabolic functions that are critical to the hormone, nervous, cardiovascular, respiratory, lymph/immune, digestive and reproductive systems
• The loss of physical contact with nature (e.g. natural flowing water, the ocean, the forests, wildlife, etc.)
• The concept (myth) of the germ and the emergence of super cleanliness practices that produce super bugs (mainly in hospitals). This is indicative of a culture driven by the dogma of medical science around germs and genes, and this misinformation is driving a wedge between people and their health and wellbeing.

Flaws in Probiotic Science

An unfortunate outcome of the emergence of large pharmaceutical companies into the development of probiotics, is their focus on single microbe species, e.g. genera of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria, and some probiotic yeast. Microbes do not operate in nature as single species. Gut biology operates along the lines of the following two basic principles:

• Cooperative activity to achieve cohesion or harmony in supporting all functions in the body. The gut has thousands of species rather than hundreds of species.
• Balance of microbial species and populations to sustain the predominance of beneficial microbes for natural disease suppression through immune system support

However, guidelines adopted by government health regulation agencies view microbes through the tainted glasses of the germ myth, and prescribe the following:

1. The bacteria should be capable of surviving the passage through the stomach and ideally multiply in the intestinal tract. This is a statement that does not acknowledge how beneficial microbes survive stomach acid and reproduce in the intestinal tract.
2. Individual strains of bacteria can be characterised by their DNA and RNA and these strains should be tested to determine their ability to provide health benefits. Scientists subject these bacteria to tests in the laboratory (in vitro), animal studies and often clinical studies with humans. This statement is based on an ignorance about the diversity and function of microbes in the gut, and the principles of cooperative activity among the 1,000’s of species of gut microbes and the fact that gut microbes strive for balance and collaboration. Besides, the body is a self-regulating and self-healing system that is highly dependent of gut functionality. We are the cure.
3. For probiotics to provide a health benefit, they must be alive when they reach the intestinal tract. Quality production and packaging techniques are needed to make sure the bacteria can be concentrated, stored and shipped without killing them. Probiotics are alive and may confer a health benefit on the host. This statement has no basis in science as all wild food ingested is covered with both living and dead microbes and it is the beneficial microbes that mainly survive the pathway to the intestinal tract. However, a microbe has a life of somewhere between 20- 80 minutes and therefore their life in a waterless, foodless environment of a probiotic capsule or powder is highly problematic in delivering living microbes to the gut.  All surfaces (including food) on Earth have living microbes that access light, organic matter, water and food (essentially food carbohydrates/sugars) for reproduction and survival. Microbial biomass is the major component of the organic fraction of the human faeces (i.e. 25–54% of dry solids and about 75% is water). Also, dead microbes on food are a potential part of the nutrition mix and a balance required in food integrity. Besides, all beneficial microbes consumed have beneficial health benefits. Therefore, the use of natural (wild, organic) food sustains life at an optimal level, and why the integrity of food is critical to wellbeing.

 The Future of Probiotics

People do not have to look much beyond the rapid rise in the most common diseases, e.g. cancer, cardiovascular, digestive, and auto- immune diseases to know that the modern science of medicine has failed in a catastrophic manner. Medical science does not have the answers and there is no sign that a fundamental change will occur within the medical science dogma. Medicine is not the pathway to health and wellbeing, albeit that we do need a medical system for surgical attention to injury and other trauma, etc.

As outlined above, the modern diet lacks the necessary balance, diversity and abundance of microbes from nature to properly nurture the human and domestic animal gut. The development of liquid probiotic foods that meet the probiotic requirements outlined in paragraph one (1) above, is the only way that modern-living humans can sustain optimal health or wellbeing. This form of probiotic food is critical in augmenting the balance of intestinal microbial populations and particularly inhibiting pathogenic microbes that are part of the mechanisms for intestinal inflammation, diarrhoea, urinary infections, allergies and multiple diseases.

When a person takes antibiotics, both pathogenic and beneficial microbes are seriously affected. This results in an imbalance in the gut flora, and thereby opens opportunities for other health issues. A reduction in the percentage (%) and predominance of beneficial bacteria can lead to digestive issues, such as diarrhoea, Candida (yeast infection) and urinary tract infections.

Many of these modern-day illnesses can be avoided using probiotic food, as wild collected and organic food, a supplemented (composite) probiotic food, and as a fermented food. This will require regulative attention to food integrity (i.e. getting chemicals out of food production and processing), health care based on natural, nutrient dense food, restoring the microbial balance in nature and other actions that puts nature at the forefront of life.

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Disclaimer

The information in this paper is not intended as medical advice, and nor do the opinions in this paper infer a therapeutic effect for any products. Everyone is encouraged to critically evaluate any information relating to health and wellbeing, including the information on websites and other parts of the Internet that promote both traditional and alternative medicines. This paper is not a discussion about medicines, in the conventional sense, however it is a discussion about food and the changes in food quality and integrity since the 1970’s and the impact of this change on health. Your health and wellbeing are dependent on you making informed and wise choices: nobody else has as much at stake as yourself.