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It’s Not Just Antibiotics That Spell Trouble for Your Gut

Antibiotics do a number on friendly bacteria, but that’s just part of the problem. In no other era in history has the human race done more to destroy the delicate balance of intestinal health—and today we’re paying the price for our transgressions.

Digestive problems are epidemic, and that’s because the modern world tramples all over our beneficial microflora with every swallow of food, drink, and medicine we take. The constant onslaught includes:

√ Chlorinated and fluoridated water. Every sip subjects your microflora to low-level poisoning, day in and day out.

√ Residual pesticides and heavy metals in our food and drink. They harm beneficial bacteria, and there’s almost no escaping them.

√ Too much sugar. Sugar is rocket fuel for Candida, and we eat an average of 100 pounds of it every year—which helps explain why candidiasis is so widespread.

√ Processed foods and fast foods. They lack the fiber needed for transit and elimination, so they stick to the colon wall, putrefy, and become a breeding ground for pathogens.

√ Alcoholic and carbonated beverages harm beneficial flora as well. So do most illegal street drugs and tobacco products.

√ Too many antacids. We eat them like candy to make acid stomach go away, but they alter the natural gastric and intestinal pH in a way that benefits harmful pathogens.

√ Birth control pills and steroid medications also change the intestinal pH environment in favor of the wrong bacteria.

√ Residual antibiotics in meats, poultry, and dairy products certainly won’t do your native flora any good.

√ Mental stress also alters intestinal balance for the worse, which may explain why prolonged stress is often accompanied by gastrointestinal woes.

When you picture your intestinal tract for what it is—one long tube that is constantly exposed to the outside world—you can appreciate the unnatural stresses put upon the single-celled inhabitants that do us so much good.

Supporting your friendly flora with supplemental probiotics is fast becoming a necessity for modern-day health—to help offset the inevitable stresses and damage that we simply cannot avoid.

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