How do we get probiotics into the gastrointestinal tract?
Probiotics don’t normally exist in the intestine in great quantities. To keep them at high levels, which is necessary for beneficial effects, they have to be continually ingested. We don’t actually know how much you need to take. But bacteria that we normally have in the body—especially in the GI tract—are present in very large amounts. So common sense suggests that to counteract existing bacteria that may have deleterious effects, you need large amounts. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of bacteria that you have to ingest-enough to colonize the bowel. And what can go wrong if this balance is distrupted? In healthy individuals, the immune system recognizes the gut bacteria as normal components in the body. In some people however, the immune system no longer recognizes the bacteria as natural and begins to react against them. The bacteria are recognized as something foreign and the immune system mounts an attack to get rid of it. We suspect that this may be the case in people wi
