Probiotics and digestive enzymes

Today i'd like to talk about probiotics and digestive enzymes and how they can be beneficial for our dogs ?

Probiotics are one of the supplements that any animal or any person can really benefit from .there's almost no downside to giving a probiotic and to give you an idea why so as you're probably aware when you're using a probiotic what you're basically doing is is you're giving your pet beneficial bacteria and the reason why that's important ? is because the population of bacteria that lives in their gastrointestinal tract is critical to their overall health .Realize that seventy plus percent of their immune system of the cells involved with their immune system lives in the gastrointestinal tract so what that means ? is that the amount and type of bacteria in the GI tract have a direct effect on their immune system and thus their overall health .
One common misconception about probiotics is there's sort of this natural assumption that when you're giving a probiotic you're effectively planting seeds if you will so you're putting bacteria in there that are then going to sort of regenerate and populate and that's what you're populating the gastrointestinal tract with and the reality is that's actually not true .
A lot of studies have been done with probiotics and what they almost invariably show is if you take a person or an animal off of the probiotic within a matter of a few weeks many of the bacteria that you are giving as the probiotic are no longer present in their GI tract anymore .
So what it turns out is actually going on is the probiotics that we're giving are actually promoting the growth of the beneficial GI flora ,the beneficial bacteria that are already in the gastrointestinal tract ,and at the same time there discouraging the growth of the potential bacterial pathogens of the bad bacteria .
So really what that probiotic is doing ?
Its maintaining an appropriate balance, it's not really sort of planting seeds if you will now when it comes to probiotics one thing that is frequently spoken about along with probiotics is what's called prebiotics so effectively prebiotics are food for the for the probiotics so a lot of really good probiotic supplements will have a prebiotic in them as well some type of digestible fiber that the bacteria will feed on and therefore replicate and be healthier in the gastrointestinal tract thus making them more effective .
- Digestive enzymes :
 Digestive enzymes it's a little bit different than probiotics but there are some overlap and and some relation here.
 Digestive enzymes help break down the food that your pet is eating .
Now under normal circumstances your pet should be able to break down their food just fine that's pretty much what the stomach and the pancreas do is they secrete enzymes and acids that break down food so they can be digested .
Sometimes for various reasons if the stomach isn't secreting enough acid , if the pancreas isn't getting the job done , sometimes supplementing some enzymes can be very helpful it very much depends on the dog but for those animals that can help break down the food so therefore the probiotics and the other bacteria in the gut can act on that food and help with digestion even further you know there are so many reasons why things like probiotics can be beneficial to the body but as I said before it's very supportive of of the immune system overall keeping the immune system healthy can minimize the degree of inflammation in the body so therefore they can actually help with pain ,they can help with chronic gastrointestinal disease there's actually even there's a system in the body that is referred to as the gut brain axis and basically what that means is that the health of the GI tract and in particular the flora the bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract have a very direct relationship to brain health and one of the things that has been seen in people is there's potentially relationships to things like an unhealthy gastro intestinal flora and the development of Parkinson's disease and people so there are some very very direct relationships to gut health and overall health and without a doubt maintaining the appropriate gut flora is the primary thing that you can do to sort of help maintain the immune system and help keep your pet healthy in that regards so you know I think that's a perhaps a lot of information to think about but but hopefully what I can leave you with is how important it is to make sure that your pets gastrointestinal tract is healthy and that adding in a good quality probiotic is a great way to do that.