The Causes Of Indigestion
As we age, the biological mechanisms that create the digestive secretions that help break down proteins, fats and carbohydrates tend to decrease in output. Thus, the food you eat is not completely digested, creating indigestion. When you take an antacid to help alleviate these symptoms, you are, in effect, neutralizing what little acid you already have in your stomach. This sets up the intestine to receive partially digested food, which in turn creates further indigestion. Food choices can also wreak havoc on your system. Some foods, such as high-fiber foods and beans, create more gas than others, and are more difficult to fully digest. We often “overload” our digestive tract with too much food from overeating.

Turn Indigestion Into “Pro-Digestion”
Beta-Zyme supports “pro-digestion” by supplying the body with the digestive enzymes and acids that support complete digestion of fats, proteins and carbohydrates, including lactose. By helping the body to completely digest all of the food it takes in, Beta-Zyme can help alleviate the symptoms of insufficient digestive secretions or overeating.*

Complete Digestive Approach
Complete digestion ensures that your body receives the maximum amount of nutrients from the foods you eat. Beta-Zyme doesn’t “neutralize” vital stomach acid, it supports its many critical functions. An effective blend of stomach-targeted Beta-Gest and intestine-targeted Enzyme Digestive Aid, Beta-Zyme alleviates the causes of indigestion at every point in the digestive process. By making your digestive system more efficient, Beta-Zyme actually prevents occasional indigestion, rather than simply relieving some of its symptoms.*

Beta-Gest

Beta-Gest: Stomach Targeted

• Contains hydrochloric acid, which is critical for vitamin and mineral absorption, protein breakdown, pepsin activation and to kill harmful bacteria and other microorganisms.*
• Supports the stomach’s action of nutrient breakdown in preparation for absorption.*

Enzyme Digestive Aid

Enzyme Digestive Aid: Intestine Targeted

• Exclusive formula contains enzymes to facilitate digestion of fats, proteins and carbohydrates.*
• Targeted delivery tablet is pH sensitive to survive the acidic environment of the stomach and release its active agents in the intestine.

Beta-Zyme

Beta-Zyme: Enter The “Comfort Zone”
With Beta-Zyme, you can enjoy the foods you love without the effects you hate. Instead of treating the symptoms of occasional stomach and intestinal indigestion and possibly exacerbating the problem, use Beta-Zyme to address and eliminate the causes.*

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1. Endless health benefits

Probiotics do more than just providing health maintenance to your gut. Probiotics can also deliver a wealth of health benefits for issues relating to lactose intolerance, diarrhea related to antibiotic use, and diarrhea resulting from infections.^2,4 Probiotics can also help with balancing the composition of your intestinal bacteria (which in turn can help with gut conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel diseases), lowering serum cholesterol, improving the nutritional value of foods, and protecting against pathogens that can impact your gastrointestinal system.^2,4 There have been many research studies conducted for probiotics from 1977 to 2014 aiming to see the effects of probiotics on various health conditions.³ Most of these studies have tried to identify probiotic effects on antibiotic-associated diarrhea or infections due to the overpopulation of the bacteria called H. pylori, known to cause stomach ulcers.³ However, an increasing number of studies have aimed to find effects of probiotics in other conditions such as obesity or dental infections, for example.³ This illustrates the growing interest in identifying the roles probiotics can have in improving our overall health (and not just gut health)!

2. Not all probiotic bacteria are alike

Commonly used families of probiotic bacteria are Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus. The precise types of probiotic bacteria within the families are often referred to as strains (an example of a strain is Bifidobacteria bifidum) and it has to be recognized that health benefits of probiotic products need to be characterized according to the particular strains of bacteria that they contain, not just the families. For example, within the Bifidobacterium family group, a specific strain may be helpful with one condition, but not at all with another. The bacteria group of Bifidobacterium are most known for the ability to generate short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) which provide energy for cells in your colon and when absorbed into the blood, may positively influence blood fats. These bacteria also provide other benefits such as working with your immune system to help balance inflammation.⁵ Bacteria that have been shown to be particularly helpful with short-term diarrhea in children and adults include Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus casei, Streptococcus thermophilus, and Enterococcus faecium.^2,3

3. Probiotics must be protected

Probiotics can be found in a variety of products, including dairy products such as fermented milk, yogurts, cheese, ice cream, non-dairy foods such as cereals, juices, and soy-based products, and in dietary supplements.² Food products that contain substances that are meant to exert benefits to human health are called functional foods.⁴ Probiotics have been widely used as functional ingredients added to foods and supplements because of their health benefits, however, much can occur through processing, storage, and even rehydrating of the probiotics that can affect how many probiotic bacteria are killed and are found alive in the final product.⁴ Using a protective agent or encapsulation material can improve stability of probiotics.⁴ Think of this protective agent as a shield preventing injury to the probiotics. Different materials that have been used as protective agents to protect probiotics include polysaccharides carbohydrates such as alginate, starch, gelatin, milk proteins, and certain fats.⁴

It’s important to note that if probiotics are destroyed during processing, they may not function appropriately and exhibit their intended health effects. Several factors can impact the survival of probiotics in a product including the medium it may be in (such as the salt or sugar content or acidity of the product), processing effects (such as the temperature or heat treatment performed), and packing and storage methods.⁴

Remember that although all products may seem the same, the different bacterial strains in the products may exert very specific health effects. It is important to be aware that processing techniques can impact the probiotics in the product and there are strategies to ensure the protection of the probiotics as in the use of protective agents. Follow your gut instinct and choose probiotics that you feel are best for you!

NeoLife Product Spotlight:

NeoLife Acidophilus Plus can help re-balance the population of intestinal bacteria and help eliminate the growth of bad microbes.* Acidophilus Plus delivers five well-characterized strains of beneficial, lactic acid-producing bacteria (Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, Lactobacillus casei, Bifidobacterium bifidum, and Streptococcus thermophilus) directly to the intestines to help support a healthy balance of “good” bacteria.* NeoLife’s exclusive Gel-Gard Enteric Delivery System guarantees that the beneficial bacteria are delivered directly to the intestines.* Gel-Gard Protection is a technology that involves wrapping the bacteria in a gel-forming polysaccharide carbohydrate. Beneficial bacteria help produce vitamins, support normal digestive functions, and help to promote a healthy immune system.*

Written by:
Natalie Masis, PhD, RDN | Research Manager
Dr. Masis is a registered dietitian nutritionist and earned her doctorate in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Master of Science in Nutritional Sciences from Texas Tech University, and both a Bachelor of Science in Nutritional Sciences and in Food Science from Cornell University.

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References:

1. Probiotics: In Depth. NCCIH. https://nccih.nih.gov/health/probiotics/introduction.htm. Published November 21, 2011. Accessed May 1, 2018.
2. Kechagia M, Basoulis D, Konstantopoulou S, et al. Health benefits of probiotics: a review. ISRN Nutr. 2013;2013. doi:10.5402/2013/481651
3. McFarland LV. From yaks to yogurt: the history, development, and current use of probiotics. Clin Infect Dis. 2015;60(suppl_2):S85-S90. doi:10.1093/cid/civ054
4. Tripathi MK, Giri SK. Probiotic functional foods: Survival of probiotics during processing and storage. Journal of Functional Foods. 2014;9:225-241. doi:10.1016/j.jff.2014.04.030
5. Sanders ME, Benson A, Lebeer S, Merenstein DJ, Klaenhammer TR. Shared mechanisms among probiotic taxa: implications for general probiotic claims. Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2018;49:207-216. doi:10.1016/j.copbio.2017.09.007

Chances are if you are the owner of a human body, you’ve taken at least one course of antibiotics in your lifetime. Whether it was bubble-gum flavored amoxicillin for that ear infection in childhood or penicillin for the case of strep throat that roared through the school, your body was likely both helped (necessarily!) and unfortunately, to some extent harmed by antibiotic medication.

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The Impact of Antibiotics
An antibiotic prescription is the standard of care for various bacterial infections affecting virtually any site in the body, and for good reason: antibiotic medications have helped save millions of lives. But they are not without risks of side effects: as the name anti-biotic implies, these medications kill bacteria. And although this can be quite helpful, say, in the case of killing the E. coli that’s causing a urinary tract infection and stopping the infection in the bladder before it can crawl up into the kidneys and wreak havoc there, antibiotic medications are not particularly discerning in what strains they kill, or where. By their very nature, antibiotics disrupt the microbial milieu of the digestive tract and other body systems, killing the “good” strains of bacteria along with the bad.

This shift in bacterial balance predisposes antibiotic users to dysbiosis, or a microbial imbalance, leaving them at increased risk of side effects, particularly in the gastrointestinal tract where a large percentage of these commensal organisms are found. Reduced microbial diversity can also encourage the growth of opportunistic pathogens such as Clostridium difficile (aka “C-diff”), a potentially life-threatening condition, as well as a decline in the immune system’s ability to fight off infections in various sites of the body. Alterations to the normal microbial milieu is why many people notice diarrhea or other digestive complaints after taking an antibiotic, and why women often develop yeast vaginitis after a course of treatment. On a longer-term scale, decreased microbial diversity has also been associated with obesity, atopic conditions like eczema, asthma, and allergies, and even mood imbalances like anxiety and depression.

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