PARTE DE FISCALIZACIÓN Y CONTROL DEL EJECUTIVO MUNICIPAL

One kind of supplement that is used worldwide but still has yet to hit it big in the United States is probiotics, or the use of “good” bacteria in the diet to promote a healthy digestive and immune system. It may sound a little exotic but it’s not—you’re actually using probiotics every time you eat yogurt with live, active cultures. The health benefits of bacteria have been noted since ancient times, but research is finally accumulating to back up the anecdotal evidence.

Think of your digestive system as a vast metropolis teeming with bacteria, and you are a landlord who owns the space they rent. Most of these bacteria are great tenants, and actu- ally help you out in many ways. But others are destructive; they invade and wreak havoc on your property. Getting the right balance of bacteria in your digestive system is crucial to good health. Antibiotics can help destroy an infestation of infectious bacteria, but they leave a lot of collateral damage to the good ones as well. Another tactic is to supply a steady stream of good tenants to crowd out the bad ones and prevent an infection in the first place. This is the basic principle of probiotics: used preventively, they can help ward off potential infec- tions, or used in conjunction with antibiotics during an illness, they can help push the bad bacteria out and establish a healthier balance in your digestive system.

Because the bacteria in probiotics already exist inside us, they are completely benign. Doctors have used probiotics safely on newborns and infants as a medical treatment many times. Though the jury’s still out on the exact benefits, probiotics have been shown to be helpful in several situations. For one, almost all infants at some time or another are hit with a gastrointestinal infection that leads to diarrhea, usually caused by a rotavirus. Many stud- ies on children hospitalized with this illness have found that supplementing them with pro- biotics decreases the average duration and severity of their diarrhea. Good bacteria have also shown promise in preventing diarrhea that can sometimes crop up in children being treated with antibiotics for common infections. And studies have begun to look at how probiotics

their overall health; fortunately, breast-fed babies almost always get what they need from their mother’s milk, and formulas are generally supplemented with zinc. Dur- ing weaning, infants should be fed fortified infant cereals and other foods high in zinc. Zinc is most concentrated in animal products, especially red meat, and also in whole grains, nuts, and legumes, and fortified breakfast cereals and infant cere-

als. Zinc is one of the micronutrients you don’t want to get too much of, because extra doses can actually slow the immune system and interfere with iron absorp- tion. Those zinc lozenges you may have seen advertised to treat colds have failed to lessen the length of colds in clinical studies, so they are most likely useless and may even be harmful to children if the dose is too high.

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given to newborns or to pregnant or lactating mothers could prevent or lessen allergies and asthma in children, though the evidence is not yet clear.

As a preventive strategy, it makes sense to use probiotics in situations where your child could be exposed to infections, such as during hospital stays or while attending day care. Parents in the United States who are interested in giving their children probiotics currently face some challenges. Supplements are your best bet because yogurts, with the exception of those made by Stonyfield Farm, do not carry enough live organisms to be considered true probiotics. And probiotics supplements are afflicted with all the problems of the supplement industry—a lack of regulation and no guarantee that the product contains what it says it does. Still, you can find some reputable brands in drugstores and health-food stores. Though they often carry a hefty price tag, the best brands guarantee that each pill packs about a billion bacteria (you need to ingest a lot of bacteria to guarantee that enough will survive the trip through your stomach and intestines to have some effect).

While a few different kinds of bacteria are found in probiotics, the type that has been best studied as a supplement is Lactobacillus casei GG. As with any supplement, let your doctor know about any probiotics you intend to use, and keep in mind that they cannot substitute for medical treatment of illness or infection.

European infant formulas now often carry probiotics to mimic the health benefits of live breast milk, and it’s only a matter of time before U.S. versions follow suit. Americans tend to be a little queasier about the idea of ingesting bacteria, though, so companies are focus- ing for now on a related strategy called prebiotics. While not bacteria themselves, these sub- stances are not fully digested in the stomach and small intestine, so they end up in the colon where they serve as food for good bacteria. An example of natural prebiotics is oligosaccha- rides, a type of carbohydrate in breast milk. These are now added to some infant formulas as fructose oligosaccharides or inulin. Though studies have not yet shown prebiotics to have the same impact as ingesting live bacteria, they certainly can’t hurt and may be helpful.

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