Probiotics will maintain the Universe.......your bowels :)

I remember reading some advise about dealing with bowel dysfunction during endurance racing and probiotics being one of them . The particular article focused on race day. As I have said before I literally talk to people all day long about bowel habits, and one thing for sure constipation, diarrhea or irritable bowel can be very complex. The bowels are affected by so many variables. Diet, including fat,fiber, hydration. Exercise, and overall immunity. Yes, immunity. More and more research is showing that you really are what you eat, and the gut flora has a huge role in overall immunity. Prebiotics, probiotics, and microbes help to regulate the gut. I know this to be true , by simply listening to my endless stream of patients with benign bowel dysfunction or irritability. I must say that the diagnosis of irritable bowel is of exclusion, meaning other disease most be excluded before IBS is diagnosed. Other diagnoses would be inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative or crohns, infections. Viral or bacterial, celiac disease, cancers, bowel obstruction, pancreatic insufficiency, eosinophilic gastroenteritis , thyroid disease, other chronic disease, or polyphArmacy. See complicated right, but really, with most people in medicine, it is the horse before the zebra, meaning what is most common usually is, but you can't forget the zebra. Probiotics are not a bandaid, you cannot take them race day and think they will fix any GI distress that day. Probiotics are something to start daily . They help with gas, bloating, distension, diarrhea, constipation...over time. Through medical literature most probiotics will help the gut, there are over 400 species of probiotics, but the best are typically bifido bacteriums. People can spend a lot of money on these probiotics and you really do not have to . I recommend a gummy bear probiotics I buy at Costco. since it is a gummy substance it is more prone to pass successfully through the acidic stomach and make it to small/ large bowel to do it's work . I take mine morning and night. The more I train , the more I see how important nutrition and bowel regularity is. Of course I am an elderly athlete now. I don't remember focusing so much on my bowels when I was young and swimming 10,000 yards daily! I laugh with my patients a lot about how the bowels are truly the center of our universe!!!