Probiotics
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Probiotics
Probiotics are live microorganisms that provide health benefits when consumed, generally by improving or restoring the microbiota in the Gut microbiota, gut. Probiotics are considered GRAS, generally safe to consume, but may cause bacteria–Host (biology), host interactions and unwanted side effects in rare cases. There is some evidence that probiotics are beneficial for some conditions, such as helping to ease some symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). However, many claimed health benefits, such as treating eczema, or curing vaginal infections lack substantial scientific support. The first discovered probiotic was a certain strain of bacillus in Bulgarian yoghurt, called ''Lactobacillus bulgaricus''. The discovery was made in 1905 by Bulgarian physician and microbiologist Stamen Grigorov. The modern-day theory is generally attributed to Russian Nobel Prize laureate Élie Metchnikoff, who postulated around 1907 that yoghurt-consuming Bulgarian peasants lived longer. A ...
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Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a functional gastrointestinal disorder characterized by a group of symptoms that commonly include abdominal pain, abdominal bloating, and changes in the consistency of bowel movements. These symptoms may occur over a long time, sometimes for years. IBS can negatively affect quality of life and may result in missed school or work or reduced productivity at work. Disorders such as anxiety, major depression, and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) are common among people with IBS.The cited review is based on sources ranging from 1988 to 2001 and is probably biased relative to a more recent research. The cause of IBS is not known but multiple factors have been proposed to lead to the condition. Theories include combinations of " gut–brain axis" problems, alterations in gut motility, visceral hypersensitivity, infections including small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, neurotransmitters, genetic factors, and food ...
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Prebiotic (nutrition)
Prebiotics are compounds in food that foster growth or activity of beneficial microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi. The most common environment concerning their effects on human health is the gastrointestinal tract, where prebiotics can alter the composition of organisms in the gut microbiome. Dietary prebiotics are typically nondigestible fiber compounds that pass undigested through the upper part of the gastrointestinal tract and help growth or activity of advantageous bacteria in the colon by acting as substrates for them. They were first identified and named by Marcel Roberfroid in 1995. Depending on the jurisdiction, they may have regulatory scrutiny as food additives for the health claims made for marketing purposes. Common prebiotics used in food manufacturing include beta-glucan from oats, resistant starch from grains and beans, and inulin from chicory root. Definition The definition of prebiotics and the food ingredients that can fall under this classificat ...
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Gut Microbiota
Gut microbiota, gut microbiome, or gut flora are the microorganisms, including bacteria, archaea, fungi, and viruses, that live in the digestive tracts of animals. The gastrointestinal metagenome is the aggregate of all the genomes of the gut microbiota. The gut is the main location of the human microbiome. The gut microbiota has broad impacts, including effects on colonization, resistance to pathogens, maintaining the intestinal epithelium, metabolizing dietary and pharmaceutical compounds, controlling immune function, and even behavior through the gut–brain axis. The microbial composition of the gut microbiota varies across regions of the digestive tract. The colon contains the highest microbial density of any human-associated microbial community studied so far, representing between 300 and 1000 different species. Bacteria are the largest and to date, best studied component and 99% of gut bacteria come from about 30 or 40 species. About 55% of the dry mass of feces ...
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Dietary Supplement
A dietary supplement is a manufactured product intended to supplement a person's diet by taking a pill (pharmacy), pill, capsule (pharmacy), capsule, tablet (pharmacy), tablet, powder, or liquid. A supplement can provide nutrients either extracted from food sources, or that are synthetic (to increase the quantity of their consumption). The classes of nutrient compounds in supplements include vitamins, Dietary mineral, minerals, Dietary fiber, fiber, fatty acids, and amino acids. Dietary supplements can also contain substances that have not been confirmed as being essential to life, and so are not ''nutrients'' per se, but are marketed as having a beneficial biological effect, such as plant pigments or polyphenols. Animals can also be a source of supplement ingredients, such as collagen from chickens or fish for example. These are also sold individually and in combination, and may be combined with nutrient ingredients. The European Commission has also established harmonize ...
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Élie Metchnikoff
Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov (; – 15 July 1916), also spelled Élie Metchnikoff, was a zoologist from the Russian Empire of Moldavian noble ancestry and alshereat archive.org best known for his research in immunology (study of immune systems) and thanatology (study of death). Belkin, a Russian science historian, explains why Metchnikoff himself, in his Nobel autobiography – and subsequently, many other sources – mistakenly cited his date of birth as 16 May instead of 15 May. Metchnikoff made the mistake of adding 13 days to 3 May, his Old Style birthday, as was the convention in the 20th century. But since he had been born in the 19th century, only 12 days should have been added. He and Paul Ehrlich were jointly awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "in recognition of their work on immunity". Mechnikov was born in a region of the Russian Empire that is today part of modern-day Ukraine to a Moldavian noble father and a Ukrainian-Jewish mother, and later on ...
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Lactobacillus Bulgaricus
''Lactobacillus bulgaricus'' is the main bacterium used for the production of yogurt. It also plays a crucial role in the ripening of some cheeses, as well as in other processes involving naturally fermented products. It is defined as homofermentive lactic acid bacteria due to lactic acid being the single end product of its carbohydrate digestion. It is also considered a probiotic. It is a gram-positive rod that may appear long and filamentous. It is non-motile and does not form spores. It is also non-pathogenic. It is regarded as aciduric or acidophilic, since it requires a low pH (around 5.4–4.6) to grow effectively. In addition, it is anaerobic. As it grows on raw dairy products, it creates and maintains the acidic environment that it needs to thrive via its production of lactic acid. In addition, it grows optimally at temperatures of 40–44 Â°C under anaerobic conditions. It has complex nutritional requirements which vary according to the environment. These include ...
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Microorganism
A microorganism, or microbe, is an organism of microscopic scale, microscopic size, which may exist in its unicellular organism, single-celled form or as a Colony (biology)#Microbial colonies, colony of cells. The possible existence of unseen microbial life was suspected from antiquity, with an early attestation in Jain literature authored in 6th-century BC India. The scientific study of microorganisms began with their observation under the microscope in the 1670s by Anton van Leeuwenhoek. In the 1850s, Louis Pasteur found that microorganisms caused food spoilage, debunking the theory of spontaneous generation. In the 1880s, Robert Koch discovered that microorganisms caused the diseases tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria, and anthrax. Microorganisms are extremely diverse, representing most unicellular organisms in all three domains of life: two of the three domains, Archaea and Bacteria, only contain microorganisms. The third domain, Eukaryota, includes all multicellular o ...
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Yakult Drink
is a Japanese sweetened probiotic milk beverage Fermentation (food), fermented with the bacteria strain ''Lacticaseibacillus casei'' Shirota. It is sold by Yakult Honsha based in Tokyo. The name "Yakult" was coined from wikt:jahurto, ''jahurto'', an Esperanto word meaning "yogurt". Ingredients Yakult's ingredients are water, skimmed milk, glucose-fructose syrup, sucrose, natural flavours (citrus), and live ''Lacticaseibacillus casei'' Shirota bacteria. The strain was originally classified as being ''Lactobacillus casei''. Yakult is prepared by adding glucose to skimmed milk and heating the mixture at 90 to 95 Â°C for about 30 minutes. After letting it cool down to 45 Â°C, the mixture is inoculated with the lactobacillus and incubated for 6 to 7 days at 37 to 38 Â°C. After fermentation, water, sugar, Natural gum, gums, and lactic acid are added. Health claims In 2006, a panel appointed by the Netherlands Nutrition Center (''Voedingscentrum'') to evaluate a ...
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Bulgarian Yoghurt
Yogurt (; , from , ; also spelled yoghurt, yogourt or yoghourt) is a food produced by bacterial fermentation of milk. Fermentation of sugars in the milk by these bacteria produces lactic acid, which acts on milk protein to give yogurt its texture and characteristic tart flavor. Cow's milk is most commonly used to make yogurt. Milk from water buffalo, goats, ewes, mares, camels, and yaks is also used to produce yogurt. The milk used may be homogenized or not. It may be pasteurized or raw. Each type of milk produces substantially different results. Yogurt is produced using a culture of ''Lactobacillus delbrueckii'' subsp. ''bulgaricus'' and ''Streptococcus thermophilus'' bacteria. Other lactobacilli and bifidobacteria are sometimes added during or after culturing yogurt. Some countries require yogurt to contain a specific amount of colony-forming units (CFU) of bacteria; for example, in China the requirement for the number of lactobacillus bacteria is at least 1 million C ...
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Bacteria
Bacteria (; : bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one Cell (biology), biological cell. They constitute a large domain (biology), domain of Prokaryote, prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were among the first life forms to appear on Earth, and are present in most of its habitats. Bacteria inhabit the air, soil, water, Hot spring, acidic hot springs, radioactive waste, and the deep biosphere of Earth's crust. Bacteria play a vital role in many stages of the nutrient cycle by recycling nutrients and the nitrogen fixation, fixation of nitrogen from the Earth's atmosphere, atmosphere. The nutrient cycle includes the decomposition of cadaver, dead bodies; bacteria are responsible for the putrefaction stage in this process. In the biological communities surrounding hydrothermal vents and cold seeps, extremophile bacteria provide the nutrients needed to sustain life by converting dissolved compounds, suc ...
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Bacillus
''Bacillus'', from Latin "bacillus", meaning "little staff, wand", is a genus of Gram-positive, rod-shaped bacteria, a member of the phylum ''Bacillota'', with 266 named species. The term is also used to describe the shape (rod) of other so-shaped bacteria; and the plural ''Bacilli'' is the name of the class of bacteria to which this genus belongs. ''Bacillus'' species can be either obligate aerobes which are dependent on oxygen, or facultative anaerobes which can survive in the absence of oxygen. Cultured ''Bacillus'' species test positive for the enzyme catalase if oxygen has been used or is present. ''Bacillus'' can reduce themselves to oval endospores and can remain in this dormant state for years. The endospore of one species from Morocco is reported to have survived being heated to 420 Â°C. Endospore formation is usually triggered by a lack of nutrients: the bacterium divides within its cell wall, and one side then engulfs the other. They are not true spores (i.e. ...
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