100 Trillion Bacteria in Your Gut: Learn How to Keep the Good Kind There
You probably don't think about your gut very often but this may make you start--the bacteria in your bowels outnumber the cells in your body by a factor of 10 to one. This gut flora has incredible power over your immune system, which, of course, is your body's natural defense system that keeps you healthy. In other words, the health of your body is largely tied into the health of your gut, and it's hard to have one be healthy if the other is not.

The microorganisms in the gastrointestinal tract
In order to understand how the widespread use of antibiotics may have such devastating effects, it is necessary to understand the role of microorganisms in the intestinal tract. There are two main kinds of bacteria in the intestinal tract: aerobic and anaerobic. The aerobic bacteria need oxygen while the anaerobic bacteria don't need oxygen to live and even may be killed if oxygen is present. Some bacteria grow faster with oxygen but can adapt to a low oxygen environment. Another major group of organisms in the intestine are the yeast and fungi. In the intestinal tracts of some individuals there may be single-celled animals called protozoa as well.

Finding Bacteria Friendly: Probiotic Bacteria and Your Health
There is an secret world within you that dramatically influences your health and longevity. The Earth is home to an abundance of life forms that sometimes exist harmoniously and at other times struggle fitfully against each other. The human body also holds a vast internal ecosystem consisting of millions of living micro organisms that coexist, sometimes harmoniously and sometimes disruptively.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Prebiotics and Probiotics: What Are They and Why Should I Eat Them?
Among the hottest new topics in food and nutrition research are prebiotics and probiotics. You can buy probiotics as supplements and some foods are now fortified with them. Recently, pre-biotics has become the new buzzword in the discussion. What are pre- and probiotics?

Food-Friendly Bugs Do The Body Good
Trillions of bacteria naturally occur in your gut, but don't be alarmed! Many of the bacteria are good and may help protect the body from certain diseases. A number of factors can upset the balance between the levels of good and bad bacteria. However, there is evidence that consuming foods that have "good" bacteria, called probiotics, and foods that aid the function of probiotics, called prebiotics, may help maintain a healthy balance of bacteria in the body and help improve certain disease conditions.

Gut microflora: the inside story
Most people are aware of the association between intestinal disease and pathogenic ("bad") bacteria, but what is less well known is the positive role of beneficial gut bacteria (probiotics) on our health and well-being.

Microbiology - The Study of Microbes
Bacteria are very small, single-cell organisms which occur as little round balls, tiny short sticks, or spirals that look like springs. These three basic forms are often stuck together in long strings, or clusters that look like little squares, cubes, or random grape-like clusters.

New Directions for Cultured Dairy Products
It's an established fact that milk and other dairy foods play an extremely important role in the American diet. Milk also provides an ideal substrate for microorganisms that further improve nutrition, texture and flavor characteristics, resulting in yogurt, sour cream, buttermilk, cottage cheese, kefir and fermented cheeses. For this discussion, we'll focus on fermented milks, outlining their production, characteristics and nutritional benefits.

Probiotics: A Critical Review
A "probiotic", by the generally accepted definition, is a "live microbial feed supplement which beneficially affects the host animal by improving its intestinal microbial balance". Although referring to the supplementation of animal feeds for farm animals, the definition is easily applied to the human situation. The major consumption of probiotics by humans is in the form of dairy-based foods containing intestinal species of lactobacilli and bifidobacteria. It is implicit in the definition that consumption of the probiotic affects the composition of the intestinal microflora. This effect of the probiotic on the intestinal ecosystem, it is proposed, impacts in some beneficial way on the consumer. A number of potential benefits arising from changes to the intestinal milieu through the agency of probiotics have been proposed, including:

• increased resistance to infectious diseases, particularly of the intestine
• decreased duration of diarrhoea · reduction in blood pressure
• reduction in serum cholesterol concentration
• reduction in allergy
• stimulation of phagocytosis by peripheral blood leucocytes
• modulation of cytokine gene expression
• adjuvant effect
• regression of tumours
• reduction in carcinogen or co-carcinogen production