Our intestinal microbiome is teeming with microbial life. Keeping it healthy is a bit like tending a garden. If we want the benefits good bacteria bring—supporting healthy digestion, a healthy intestinal lining, keeping bad bacteria in check, supporting the immune system, etc.—we need to make sure we support their growth. What we eat and drink can have a big impact on the quality of this garden. Fresh fruits and vegetables and fibre all support healthy bacteria in our gut. Besides the use of antibiotics, lifestyle factors like stress, lack of exercise and smoking can also negatively impact our microbiome and shouldn’t be ignored.

Fermented foods and probiotic supplements are other ways to ensure diversity and health in our intestines. Flora’s Super 8 Plus Probiotic has been on the market since 2002 and is consistently one of our top selling products. You can probably already guess it is made up of eight different strains of probiotic bacteria.

Super 8 is a multiple-award-winning formula: multi-year winner of alive magazine’s Retail and Consumer Choice awards as well as a Taste for Life Essentials award winner. At a whopping 42 billion active cells at manufacture and 25 billion at expiry, it has the second highest potency in our refrigerated line and has the highest percentage of Lactobacillus species of probiotics of all our formulas at 91 percent.

Lactobacillus probiotics help to discourage overgrowth of yeast and pathogenic bacteria by producing lactic acid and hydrogen peroxide and generally outcompeting pathogens for space and food.

Manufactured in Canada in a GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) certified facility, the probiotics go through 17 different quality control checks throughout the production process. The quality control tests include gastric acid and bile resistance, enzymatic activity, the ability to implant and adhere in the intestines, antibiotic susceptibility, compatibility with other probiotics, anti-microbial effects vs. food pathogens, and the ability to de-conjugate bile salts (important for maintaining healthy cholesterol levels). Because the strains are gastric acid resistant, enteric coating is not required.

Combining a high potency, multi-strain probiotic formula with healthy food choices (think fibre, seaweeds, fruits, and vegetables like bananas, avocados, artichoke and asparagus and starchy, tuberous vegetables like yams and cassava along with fermented foods like kefir, yogurt, sauerkraut and miso) on a regular basis is a great way to support your overall health.

By Robert Dadd

About the Author: Robert Dadd

Robert holds a BA in Communications from Simon Fraser University and a Master Herbalist diploma from Dominion Herbal College. He works with Flora Manufacturing and Distributing as the Product Information Supervisor. He has written numerous articles for publications in the US and Canada like alive, Taste for Life, Tonic and Viva magazine. For more information please visit florahealth.com.