10 billion live bacteria, there are indeed so many in the drink, but how many of them enter the intestines?

Sometimes, stomach discomfort may be caused by an imbalance of intestinal flora. At this time, we immediately think of probiotic drinks with 10 billion live bacteria.

Wow, there are 10 billion live bacteria in a small bottle. Drinking ten bottles means 100 billion. Wouldn’t your intestines be healthy in no time? But drinking these drinks doesn’t seem to have the magical effect you imagine. Is it false propaganda? It’s not true. 10 billion live bacteria do exist, but it doesn’t mean that all of them can get into your intestines. Probiotics are not a specific type of bacteria, but a general term for a series of bacteria. Since these bacteria are all beneficial bacteria, they will have a positive effect on our intestinal health, so they are collectively called probiotics.

Common probiotics include Lactobacillus, Streptococcus, and Bifidobacterium, etc.

These bacteria have a common characteristic, which is that they have high requirements for the living environment. In the in vitro environment, these bacteria are very sensitive to temperature. If the surrounding temperature exceeds 10 degrees, it will cause a large number of probiotics to die. You may find it strange that the human intestine is also over 30 degrees, so why don't probiotics die? What we are talking about here is the storage temperature. In layman's terms, once it exceeds 10℃, the probiotics in the beverage will starve to death.

Therefore, the cold chain must be maintained throughout the production, storage and transportation of probiotics. Once the ambient temperature is too high, probiotic drinks will quickly turn into ordinary sugar water.

As consumers, we cannot know the entire storage and transportation process of probiotic drinks, but at least when purchasing, these drinks should be placed in the refrigerator. If not, it is best not to buy them. Probiotics are difficult to adapt to high temperatures and are also afraid of low temperatures. If the drink is frozen, the cell membrane of the probiotics will be broken, and the death of the probiotics will be more thorough than in a high temperature environment. So strictly speaking, probiotic drinks should always be kept at 4℃ to 8℃ from the beginning of production to the final intake, so as to ensure that the 10 billion live bacteria can really be drunk by us.

But then again, even if we drink 10 billion live bacteria, it does not mean that all of them can reach our intestines.

Probiotics have to go through many checkpoints from the moment they enter the mouth, the first of which is the mouth. As the saying goes, "diseases come from the mouth", but in fact it is not so easy for pathogens to enter the body from our mouth, because our saliva contains lysozyme, and many bacteria are killed in the mouth. Of course, not only pathogenic bacteria are killed, but also probiotics. It can be said that the longer the probiotic drink stays in our mouth, the more probiotics will be killed.

After suffering heavy losses, probiotics finally reached the stomach, but the situation there was even worse than in the mouth.

There is a lot of gastric acid in our stomach, and gastric acid is a strong acid with a pH value below 1. It is difficult for both pathogenic bacteria and probiotics to pass through the gastric acid barrier, so you will find that all medicines used to supplement probiotics and regulate intestinal flora are enteric-coated tablets, just to be able to cross the stomach barrier without damage. The probiotics in beverages have no outer coat to protect them, so they will suffer heavy losses when soaked in gastric acid.

However, although the loss is huge, it is not a complete loss. A small amount of probiotics will eventually reach the intestines, which means that probiotic drinks are not completely useless.

Since the number of probiotics that eventually reach the intestines is relatively limited, it is impossible to restore intestinal health by drinking one or two bottles of beverages. The health benefits of probiotic beverages can only be seen after long-term drinking. However, long-term drinking will bring another problem, that is, excessive sugar intake. You must know that after fermentation, probiotic beverages have a very sour taste. In order to cover up this taste, a large amount of sugar will be added. Therefore, although the taste of probiotic beverages is not very sweet, the actual sugar content is not inferior to other types of beverages. So whether it is a probiotic beverage or other beverages, don't focus on its health effects. It is just a beverage. Drink it if you like it, and forget it if you don't like it. Its main function is to enhance happiness, not health.

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