It is known that a huge number of different microorganisms live in the human intestine. They form local flora, which plays an important role in the digestion of food, absorption of nutrients, absorption of vitamins, minerals and trace elements. Normally, it consists of 95-98% beneficial bacteria and only 3-5% opportunistic bacteria. When this balance is disturbed, problems with the gastrointestinal tract appear, immunity decreases, and overall well-being worsens.
To restore microbial balance, doctors recommend taking products with live beneficial bacteria. Pharmacies offer a wide range of drugs to improve intestinal function. Not everyone knows how they work and what they consist of. We tell you how probiotics differ from symbiotics and which complex you should pay attention to.
Acipol or Linex?
Probiotics. Everyone has probably heard this term many times. From the TV screen, in online articles, from friends or at the pharmacy. What is it? Let's figure it out. Probiotics are drugs or products that contain microflora beneficial to the intestines.
The main function of probiotics is to populate the intestines with beneficial bacteria, instead of those that have died for some reason. When the beneficial bacteria of the intestines suffer, pathogenic microorganisms take over the grooves. As a result of their reign, chaos occurs, or, as doctors say, dysbacteriosis. The onset of an enemy bacterial front can be due to various reasons and, for the most part, it is a consequence of the underlying disease.
Dysbacteriosis is not as safe as most people believe. If you rely on “maybe” and think “it will hurt and it will go away,” you can feel all the delights of the consequences:
- Progressive atrophy of the intestinal mucosa
- Digestive disorders
- Weakening of the body's general immunity
How to treat?
A gastroenterologist treats dysbacteriosis. It should begin, if possible, with eliminating the main cause of the disease and prescribing a diet. However, if we are talking not about prevention, but about treatment, then diet alone is not enough. Usually, the doctor prescribes medications in combination. Among the most popular drugs that help in the treatment of dysbiosis are Acipol and Linex. Let's understand the mechanism of action, their similarities and differences. Both of these products are part of the group of third-generation probiotics and help even with severe stages of dysbiosis. In addition to beneficial microorganisms, their composition includes additional components that increase the effectiveness of non-pathogenic bacteria. Their main difference is that Linex contains 3 types of microorganisms, and Acipol - 1 (Lactobacillus). Linex is often prescribed for disorders of the motor pathways of the nervous system (paresis), as it improves intestinal motility.
Now let's figure out in which cases Acipol will cope, and in which it is better to take Linex.
Acipol will do an excellent job with:
- mild poisoning
- gastritis
- consequences of antibacterial therapy
- atopic dermatitis
- allergic reactions associated with the gastrointestinal tract
The drug quickly and effectively removes toxins and restores healthy microflora.
Linex is worth taking:
For serious intestinal infections
- in cases where it is necessary to cope with several types of pathogenic microbes
- with intestinal paresis
- newborn children
The probiotic will restore microflora, peristalsis, normalize stool and improve food digestibility.
Both drugs will perfectly cope with dysbacteriosis, normalize microflora and remove toxins. After antibiotic therapy, it is better to give preference to Acipol, and in case of severe intestinal infection - to Linex.
Dysbacteriosis itself is not so terrible, but do not forget about the consequences and neglect timely seeking help from a gastroenterologist. Having information and keeping your finger on the pulse is definitely better than being in the dark. However, it is important to remember that any medications should be taken only after consultation.
If you follow a diet, properly selected medication and a healthy lifestyle, the intestinal microflora normalizes quickly enough, and dysbiosis goes away without consequences for the functioning of the entire body.
Why are prebiotics useful and probiotics useless?
President of the scientific society “Microbiota”, Candidate of Medical Sciences, Chicherin I.Yu.: “Dear friends and colleagues, as well as everyone who is interested in the very pressing problem of maintaining and restoring intestinal microflora (microbiota).
According to the World Health Organization, up to 95% of the world's inhabitants suffer from intestinal dysbiosis. Almost no disease occurs without negative consequences for the intestinal microbiota. But the most common destructive effect on intestinal microbes is the use of antibiotics. In a relatively healthy person with a body weight of about 70-75 kg, the colon contains about 2-2.5 kg of living biomass of microorganisms (normoflora), and the number of species reaches 1-1.5 thousand (!).
Every doctor, including patients, must understand that the antibiotic used does not select the point of application in the body and will ultimately suppress all microbes that are sensitive to it. The use of antibiotics for pneumonia, cystitis, bronchitis, etc., as they say, both cures and cripples. On the one hand, it helps to cure the underlying disease for which it was prescribed, but on the other hand, it causes enormous collateral damage to sensitive microbiota, and primarily to the intestinal one. With the banal use of antibiotics, the content of beneficial microorganisms in the intestines can decrease by 3-6 orders of magnitude, i.e. a thousand to a million times!
For more than 50 years, both in our country and throughout the world, for the correction of microecological disorders in the intestines (dysbacteriosis, dysbiosis), the main means (95-97%) were preparations based on living microbes - probiotics. In normal medical practice, if a doctor, when analyzing stool for dysbacteriosis, detected a decrease in one or another type of normal microflora, then he would first of all prescribe a probiotic to the patient based on the type of normal flora whose deficiency was recorded. There are not enough bifidobacteria, let's “add” bifidobacteria in the composition of the drug that the doctor likes best, etc.
In recent years, the strategy for maintaining and restoring the intestinal microbiota has been revised!
A group of Russian scientists (more than 40 scientific papers, 2010-2015) managed to obtain convincing evidence that the use of traditional drugs based on living microbes - probiotics - is not the most effective and safe way to correct microecological disorders in the intestines.
It was found:
!!! The survival rate of living cells during transit through the gastrointestinal tract is less than 0.0001% (one ten-thousandth of a percent).
That is, on average, only 1 out of 1,000,000 (million) microbial cells ingested as part of a probiotic reaches the colon (the main habitat of normal flora). And no acid-resistant capsules used in some probiotics can save the situation: not 1, but 4-5 cells survive.
Each person has their own individual strains (autostrains) of lactobacilli, bifidobacteria, E. coli, etc. in their intestines. And probiotics are made on the basis of “universal” industrial strains of microbes. Probiotic cells that reach the colon alive in more than 70% of cases enter into an antagonistic relationship with the patient’s autostrains
of microorganisms
; in other words, they are
bioincompatible
. Probiotic microbes have a lymphocytotoxic effect, because. The patient’s immune system is able to determine which microorganisms (self or foreign) enter the gastrointestinal tract. Probiotic microorganisms are foreign to the patient’s individual microbiota.
!!! The thesis about the replacement effect of probiotics, which existed for several decades, turned out to be a myth.
Probiotic cells that reach the colon in a viable state do not take root in the intestinal mucosa. In probiotics, the main active principle turned out to be not microbial cells, as was previously thought a priori, but their metabolic products - exometabolites, and the microbial cells themselves only inhibit the process of restoration of the microbiota during dysbacteriosis.
The simultaneous use of certain probiotics with antibiotics, as television commercials constantly repeat, is in fact scientifically absurd and unfounded.
Probiotic cells are sensitive to most antibiotics even in those small concentrations that are created by antibiotics in the blood, and in the intestines the concentrations of antibiotics are tens to hundreds of times higher. It is obvious that such advertising misleads the consumer and, apparently, pursues only commercial goals. In addition to the above, in Europe over the past 7 years not a single new probiotic based on living microbes has been registered, but in our country the picture is the opposite.
The eternal Russian question - what to do?
The answer is simple, and currently it finds full understanding and agreement among specialists in this field - to maintain and restore your own individual microbiota, the one that formed in you after birth.
This is much more effective and safer than trying to populate the intestines with “good” but foreign strains of microorganisms!
This can only be achieved: through the use of prebiotics, i.e. drugs that do not contain live microbes, but contain substances that selectively stimulate the reproduction of the patient’s individual microbiota.
This very important conclusion is scientifically substantiated in experimental work by a group of Russian scientists and has been confirmed in clinical practice at the Educational and Scientific Medical Center of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation.”
PS This class of drugs is represented on the Russian market by Bactrum, produced by the research and production company Optisalt. As a prebiotic, Bactrum has undeniable advantages over drugs containing live microbes (probiotics), namely:
* Unlike probiotics (which have less than 0.0001%), prebiotics have high bioavailability.
1) prebiotic substances reach the colon 95-97% unchanged.
2) They are not affected by aggressive factors of the gastrointestinal tract - acidity, enzymes, bile, peroxide compounds, immunoglobulins, etc.
3) prebiotics do not come into conflict (antagonistic relationships) with the patient’s own microbiota; on the contrary, they serve as exclusive food for it.
4) After fermentation (utilization) of the patient’s own normobiota strains, prebiotics create favorable physiological conditions for its further existence in an active state by acidifying the intracavity environment (lowering pH).
Bactrum - instructions, composition, action, contraindications and reviews about Bactrum
* Prebiotics, unlike probiotics, are not only possible, but also should be taken simultaneously with antibiotics.
Firstly, antibacterial drugs do not inactivate prebiotics, because they do not contain living cells, and secondly, simultaneous administration helps protect the patient’s intestinal microbiota from the negative concomitant effects of antibiotics prescribed for infectious pathologies of other organs.
The most important conclusion is that the prebiotic effect of Bactrum supports and restores the patient’s own intestinal microbiota, rather than trying to unsuccessfully populate the intestinal mucosa with “good” but alien strains of microorganisms. The process of restoring one’s own (indigenous) microbiota always proceeds most efficiently and safely, because is an integral part of the formed microbiocenosis since the birth of a person and does not need to “pass passport control” before the immune system and the body as a whole. The most important thing is that this conclusion has been proven many times and is scientifically substantiated.
Main differences between the funds
Probiotics are a class of beneficial microorganisms. This is the name for living bacteria that improve digestion, suppress the growth of colonies of opportunistic strains and restore the balance of microflora. Probiotic preparations of the 1st and 2nd generation contain only one type of bacteria. What is the difference between probiotics and symbiotics?
Symbiotics are a combination of several strains of beneficial microorganisms. Most drugs combine lacto- and bifidobacteria. Such products are considered more effective because they contain different types of bacteria that act in several directions. Symbiotics solve digestive problems, stop inflammatory processes in the intestines, increase immunity and normalize stool.
