Probiotics: Are They Really Necessary? | Talking Point | Diet

[Music] [Music] [Music] what i have in my hand here is my stool sample which i'm about to mail off to the lab for a test is the only way for me to find out the health of my gut but why the number one interest in my number two well for that we'll have to go back in time it's in cereal bars yogurt kombucha and even chicken probiotics which are live bacteria seem to be all the rage these days but the real question is are probiotics really necessary the global probiotics industry is expected to grow from 97.7 billion singapore dollars in 2020 to more than 100 billion singapore dollars by 2027. and a key player in that sector kombucha this is what you use to make kombucha over time they multiply this fermented tea drink that is known to be rich in probiotics legend has it that the drink has been around since a tin dynasty so why the sudden revival in interest to find out i'm attending a kombucha making workshop at this local brewery hey winnie hi nice to meet you so here are the ingredients that we'll be using today for today's activity okay followed by the kombucha sculptures which is called a scoby scoby is an acronym for symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast okay shall we get started just the normal way we make tea right yeah okay so what i will be doing next is that's adding your copious amounts of sugar sugar is not the enemy okay because without the sugar we won't have the opportunity for the kombucha bacteria and cultures to produce things like organic acids vitamins up to 40 strains of bacteria and yeast so here's my hot sweet tea since the start of the pandemic craft and culture has seen sales triple for its probiotic drinks probiotics are basically beneficial microorganisms that give you a health benefit when you consume them so essentially good gut health requires probiotics and kombucha contains probiotics if your gut health really isn't in tip-top condition you are probably more vulnerable to getting sick more easily than your peers are you supposed to drink a lot of this each day ideally we recommend about 250 cc's or a bottle like this a day we recommend taking it daily for about two weeks advocates of kombucha believe that the drink is beneficial to gut health because it contains probiotics which is said to have antioxidant effects and reduces inflammation within the gut but what exactly is the gut well when many of us think about the gut we automatically think about our stomach but that's not actually what the gut is let me better explain it with a picture [Music] the gut begins with my mouth and includes the esophagus the stomach the small intestine and the large intestine where it ends living inside our gut are trillions of bacteria viruses and fungi known as the gut microbiome and this microbiome plays a very important role in your overall health by controlling your digestion immune system metabolism and even mood this is why there is an emphasis on maintaining a healthy gut which is a balance of both good and bad bacteria so how does probiotics help improve our gut microbiome dr lopoyen is about to dive into my gut so doctor can you tell me what happens to my body when i start taking probiotics the provide you travel through your mouth into your esophagus and go past your stomach and in order to reach the intestine once the probiotic rich intestine it will try to actually secrete some compounds that compound actually try to grow the good bacteria and that actually will try to restore the balance of the good and bad bacteria and what happens if there is this imbalance in the gut once you have the imbalance good this bacteria it can actually disrupt the mucosal lining of intestine if let's say there's a disruption of the mucosa lining the allergens the bacteria the toxin will actually cross into the intestine subsequently activate the immune system in a bowel that lead to a lot of diseases how sick can i get if this lining is not intact one of the disease actually is ibs into bowel syndrome this also can lead to allergy conditions the allergens can actually cross into the immune system and activate the allergy immune system and subsequently leading to eczema asthma since most of our bacteria can be found in our bowels a stool sample gives a snapshot of what my microbiome could look like at any given moment and whether there is an imbalance of bacteria in my gut and that's where i am today i want to know the state of my own gut health and if i need probiotics on your poop i'm afraid we have good news and some not so good news [Music] it's been about two weeks since i sent in my stool sample to be tested [Music] so i'm bringing well me along to get a good idea of what's really going on inside me [Music] [Music] for 15 days staff here at emily have been analyzing the trillions of bacteria in my stool which has a direct correlation to the kind of bacteria that's in my gut hey jeremy hello hi steve wow who is this yeah i i brought me along because i thought it'd be easier for you to kind of explain what's going on with my body because sure i've never had this conversation before where i asked someone how's my poop well steve that's the first time for everything okay and on your poop i'm afraid we have good news and some not so good news so i brought this marker maybe you can help me understand where and why okay the good news is that you have a very diverse gut microbiome and what this means in layman terms is that you have many different species that are in your gut and the more species you have the healthier your gut generally is the not so good news is that across three particular areas in the body there are places that you can improve and the first is in this area around brain health right and something that many people don't fully realize is that many of the brain chemicals or what we call neurotransmitters are produced actually in the gut what is lacking here as in i already know i'm not so smart that's all right you know but no no no no steve it's not about your smartness it's about the transmitters that help to affect your mood right and what we have done in this test is to look at the microbes that help to produce the serotonin for example many people have heard of serotonin the so-called happy chemical that's right but 95 of serotonin is produced in your gut my results showed that the concentration of bacterial groups associated with the production of serotonin which affects my mood and sense of well-being was low i see never thought of that the second is your heart what the results show is that you have elevated levels of t-mount and higher levels associated with poorer heart health so brain heart brain heart and lastly overall metabolism right which is around the gut and how we harvest the energy from the foods we eat okay right and your microbes tell us a story that you're not harvesting the energy as efficiently as you could have so what we find is really that you're not as energetic as you used to be you may feel a bit sluggish after meals how can i improve my gut we have four specific recommendations for you when it comes to diet okay right miso is really fermented soya it's packed with probiotics one two bowls a day very very good for you okay natto is also fermented so likewise it's got lactobacillus which is one of the strains that are very good for gut health and aids digestion pua tea is made from fermented tea leaves the fermentation process helps the probiotics and the polyphenols to really emerge and that's very good for gut health and the last one is idli which is a south indian food that's made of fermented rice studies have been done that show that idli has up to 15 different types of probiotic strains that are good for gut health all the food and drink prescribed to me are fermented that's because the process of fermentation allows probiotics to multiply so why those four specific fruits well steve there is no one size fits all and based on your test results these are specifically the ones that are good for you when we talk about these probiotics they're literally hundreds of different strains that some of them can be good for you some of them you already have enough and how often should i be eating these wells for poo a tea tree four cups a day would be good miso one or two bowls or soup a day would be fine and natto one two servings a day about the fistful would be very good and same for idli just a small serving are there other things i can eat what we have here is the supplements that we have formulated that are tailored for an asia population and this is specific to me uh this is specific for the profile that you exhibit based on the results all right sounds good i guess i'll give it a try and see you back here in two weeks looking forward my friend all right take care then oh yeah sorry i forgot about me [Music] you know if people told me stuff like this is good for my gut health i'll say you bet i was also told to take one of these probiotic supplements each day before eating and it will help improve my gut health i've been told to add very specific fermented foods and supplements to my diet which got me wondering what is the difference between fermented foods and supplements helping me out is dietitian bibi chia so i've got these fermented foods and i've got supplements and they all claim to have probiotics what's the difference so fermented foods are different from supplement because for example kimchi apart from just having probiotics would also have fiber lactic acid and so there are other goodness from fermented foods apart from just the probiotics how would i tell the difference between these two well if you look at the bottle it generally would tell you what are the different types of strains so different strains means they are of different bacteria the more strains the better i would say for general well-being yes but for certain health conditions you might want to target the specific strains studied for that health condition i'm halfway through my probiotic diet which is supposed to improve my mood make me less tired and decrease my risk of heart disease will my efforts pay off so guys i've got a confession to make [Music] [Music] for the past one week i've been following a rather specific diet i've been eating this south indian dish idli and natto a japanese dish made of fermented soy beans i'm told the best way to eat it is just put on some plain rice oh well here it goes bon appetit oh i just swallowed it wow it tastes just like it looks smelly gooey oozy rotten fermented why do the healthy things taste so bad i have no idea how i'm gonna eat more of this in the coming days i have no idea i've been taking miso soup with my meals and drinking pure tea it's not too bad it's a little bit bitter has a pretty much an earthy taste it's just something that i guess i wouldn't normally get for myself if not for you know this show i had also thought i would be able to substitute this for my daily cup of coffee but i found that i haven't it's not quite the same thing i've also been prescribed probiotic supplements specially formulated to match my health profile which showed that i have low levels of serotonin a hormone that affects my mood and sleep and a higher risk of heart disease and stroke even though i've been recommended specific probiotic rich food there are so many varieties on the market how would consumers like me know which ones to choose and is one more effective than the other [Music] i'm getting some tips from food scientist william chen but if i'm at the supermarket and i want to get food which is good for my gut health how do i know what i need we need to look at whether the probiotics are still active and how how many microbes are there in the particular food oh so we call it cfu stands for colony formation unit basically you measure the activity of the bacteria international definition of property food is actually there must be one billion cfu in the particular food which is uh generally not not labeled most of these food dwight because they are not sure ah so in order to put the labor probiotic they must have at least one billion cfu that's right that's right you will see there are actually a variety of food which so he stays the probiotic keeper and then he says different types of yeah billions of live culture okay yeah so they can label probiotics another example like the kombucha the fermented tea this is very popular right now so they also label that the probability microbe yeah this is live cultures in here and actually when we talk about this probiotic food product we also need to pay attention to the storage conditions okay so as we know bacteria they would they grow slower at the low temperature faster in the high temperatures in other words a probiotic product can lose its potency if it isn't stored properly or sits on the shelf too long so ideally the lower the temperature the better some of the new product i even had a frozen state frozen which means that we literally put the probiotic to sleep then we know the cfu label on it stays as it is which is good for consumers because they know really how much they are taking in those is a labeled cfu number typically was a number at the packaging date okay but the company would not have time to monitor how long these water stay on the shelves until the consumer buy it right so the actual number of micro that we take in at the consumption date we don't know no one knows then you need to pay attention to the expired date right don't over buy too much and then put in the fridge for too long okay day eight of drinking poor tea i'm pretty used to it but i'm still not loving it so guys i've got a confession to make remember natto that fermented soya bean well i'm here to say that we have officially broken up i tried really hard i gave nato new friends i mixed gotten out of the mix with eggs i even tried to give natto a new fragrance i put black pepper sauce with natto but no matter what i did i just could not find myself liking natto and so it is official natto and i are over so this is my last meal on the last day and you know overall it's been actually quite easy to incorporate this probiotic foods into my diet the only exception being natto i'm interested to see just how it made a difference to my gut health [Music] it's time for me to do another test to see if all those probiotics have improved my gut health [Music] i've sent my stew sample back to emily hey jeremy hey steve hi we are back and i'm ready for my results so tell me has my gut health improved well steve you have improved you've done very well in the gut okay with one bacterial that is in your gut that's linked to greater permeability that has come down and what this means is that your gut is not so leaky it improves the efficiency of the absorption of nutrients and all right and remember the last time when we talked about the heart we spoke about female and how your levels are a little on the high side which is an indicator of really inflammation and risk of cardiovascular disease but in the second test the levels have they have come down so they are within the normal range now but you can do better right but i've got some not so good news you have done well in heart health the brain not so good but let's go into detail okay okay some of the neurotransmitters that the microbes produce and then they go up to your brain these haven't gone up right and there are two possible reasons for this one is that it's still very early these changes may not be linear meaning that certain parts of your of your body like the gut may may respond faster the heart may respond faster but the brain may take a little while longer the other reason is that maybe you're just not producing sufficient levels of really serotonin low levels of serotonin production can affect my mood and sleep so how accurate is this test that i took and should everyone be taken well steve this is a wellness test right this is for those who are interested in how their microbiomes look like and how to live their lives at the fullest from a gut health point of view should everyone take it i would say not yet you know i've learned a lot about my own gut bacteria from taking this personalized test and it's great that the probiotics i took has enhanced my ability to digest carbs and fats and also lower my chances of getting heart disease but let's face it the test is not exactly cheap it costs 228 dollars if you add on the food the supplements for two weeks that's another 150 dollars so the question is do i really need to enhance my diet with probiotics if i don't have any major health issues to begin with what do you think dr melvin look has a special interest in gastrointestinal surgery so if i come to you as a fairly healthy individual do i still need to take probiotics or is my regular diet good enough if you have a very good diet balanced diet plan based and you avoid you know smoking excessive alcohol etc then you probably do not require extra probiotic supplements but probiotic foods would be a good idea because it should be an essential part of our balanced diet so my gut can't balance itself without the need for probiotics if your gut is functioning healthily it should be able to balance itself yes and what side effects i mean are there any from having too much probiotics probiotics are essentially very safe you cannot overdose on a probiotic but if you take a lot of fermented foods they do contain a high amount of amines and some people do get symptoms like headaches because they can irritate the brain for probiotic supplements because they do cause fermentation in the gut some people do get bloating and abdominal distension or discomfort if you take probiotic supplements that contain yeast that might cause constipation so is the goodness of probiotics a myth or miracle probiotics did help improve some areas of my health but it's not that straightforward i've learned that because we each have our own unique gut microbiome that's no one size fits all probiotics and i may have to oh eat things that i don't really like just to improve my health but the study of the gut microbiome is still a fairly new field and it may be too early to put our money on gut health tests to accurately diagnose us what we do know is that probiotics is needed to balance out the good and bad bacteria in our gut but it may not really be necessary on a daily basis especially if we are fairly healthy to begin with [Music]

Channel: CNA Insider

Views: 397,450

Keywords: CNA, Channel NewsAsia, Asian perspectives, Steve Chia, gut health, microbiome, kombucha, fermented, digestion, immune system, stool test, serotonin, miso, supplements, diet, CFU

Id: eImZ25DQdb4

Length: 23min 50sec (1430 seconds)

Published: Tue May 03 2022