Being sick costs everyone.

Being sick costs your employer. Canadians, on average, take 9 sick days per year. And these sick days cost the Canadian economy more than 16.6 billion dollars annually¹.

But being sick also costs you. Getting taken down by a cold or flu always seems to happen at the worst time – when your life is filled with commitments and to-dos and you’re forced to cancel plans that you were looking forward to because you’re cooped up at home with a contagious bug. Being sick also limits you from being there for the people in your life.

Same goes for when you aren’t fully sick, but you just feel “off,” and can’t fully enjoy or participate in what you’re doing.

That’s the real benefit of not getting sick – the ability to spend less time on the sidelines with more time to live your life and do things that you love to do.

Do you take vitamin C to keep yourself from catching what’s going around? You may be missing a big piece of the puzzle.

One study found that taking one supplement could help you (and most people you know) stay healthy during cold and flu season, by saving up to 84,000 courses of antibiotics, 500,000 sick days, $9 million in direct health care costs and $100 million in lost productivity².

Can you guess what the supplement is?

Probiotics.

How can a probiotic keep you from getting sick?
Probiotics are becoming increasingly popular, and many people are starting to take them to improve their health.

But what the heck do probiotics do, anyway? And how can probiotics help to keep you from catching colds and flus that are going around?

It starts with your immune system. Your immune system is a collection of cells and tissues that acts like a bouncer in a nightclub – its job is to identify and remove invading germs and viruses that could make you sick.

But if you were asked to point to your immune system, where would you point? Although your immune system helps to keep foreign invaders from taking hold in your body throughout your body, most of it is located in your gut.

In fact, 70% of your immune system’s cells and tissues can be found there.

Probiotics are important for boosting immunity by helping to reinforce and regulate the immune system. Just like the immune system can be found throughout the body, probiotics can too. One study found that taking oral probiotics can improve the makeup of our probiotic bacteria all the way up to our nasal cavity³.

The makeup of bacteria in your gut is now considered to be “an important partner of human cells,” and has been shown to interact directly or indirectly with all human cells. Pretty amazing stuff.

Probiotics can help to prevent you from getting sick. But even if you end up getting sick as the weather cools, a probiotic can help to reduce the time you spend suffering with a cold.

Two large studies found that a quality probiotic helped to reduce duration, frequency and antibiotic use due to a respiratory tract infection. Plus, taking a probiotic could help you shave off an average of 2.3 days of a respiratory tract infection⁴.

Less time spent being sick equals more time feeling great and more time to do the things you love.

How to choose a probiotic
The type of probiotic that you take matters. Many of the probiotics on the market are made with just a handful of strains, don’t contain a delivery mechanism, and worse, can contain allergens.

This is what inspired Genuine Health to create a line of probiotics designed to deliver more hard working probiotics to your gut.

advanced gut health probiotic is crafted with 15 balanced strains of super-potent bacteria that mimic the balance found in the gut. The strains are triple-cleaned to ensure that only the healthiest and heartiest remain.

Then, the probiotics are encapsulated in a delayed-release, plastic-free capsule that’s been shown to deliver up to 10x the bacteria to the gut. advanced gut health probiotic is free from wheat, gluten, dairy, soy, peanut, tree nuts, sesame, fish, eggs, corn, sulfites and mustard.

Look out for advanced gut health probiotic in 15 and 50 billion CFU and two new probiotics for women: advanced gut health probiotic women’s DAILY and UTI.

Feed Your Gut
Good nutrition is important to keep your body healthy as the weather cools – and good nutrition is needed for your gut, too! Once you seed your gut with healthy, hearty bacteria from a probiotic, you need to nourish them – that’s where a prebiotic comes in.

Just as it’s important to find a quality probiotic, it’s equally important to find a quality prebiotic. Based on cutting-edge research, Genuine Health created fermented organic gut superfoods+, the ultimate prebiotic superfood, and the perfect partner to your probiotic! Using the latest research on prebiotics, fermented organic gut superfoods+ was made with 22 fully fermented organic superfoods and prebiotics to prime the gut and nourish a healthy gut ecology.

Gut health is what really excites us. Look out for some new innovations in gut health and immunity coming soon from Genuine Health.

By Stewart Brown

References:
1. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/sick-days-cost-canadian-economy-16-6b-1.1864833
2. Wijnkoop, I et al. The Clinical and Economic Impact of Probiotics Consumption on Respiratory Tract Infections: Projections for Canada. PLoS One. 2016; 11(11): e0166232.
3. Cross, M.L. Immune-Signalling by Orally-Delivered Probiotic Bacteria: Effects on Common Mucosal Immunoresponses and Protection at Distal Mucosal Sites.
4. Wijnkoop, I et al.

About the Author: Stewart Brown

Stewart Brown is the founder and president of Genuine Health in Toronto. Learn more about Genuine Health at genuinehealth.com.