Happy Wild Workout Wednesday! Every week I link up with Annmarie from The Fit Foodie Mama, Michelle from Fruition Fitness and Nicole from Fitful Focus to bring you fitness and healthy living posts. If you have a post to share we would love to have you join us in the link up fun, if not grab your coffee, protein shake or water and get ready for some great fitness and healthy living motivation!
Today I want to share with you more of an educational post. I was given the opportunity from Fit Approach as a Sweat Pink Ambassador to try and review Vitamin Pit Stop's USANA Probiotics. Because of all that I know about how important probiotics are to our overall health I was excited to try them and share the info with you guys. Also, it is timely as I am studying for my nutrition certification through Precision Nutrition, and just read a chapter about our digestion. To me it is fascinating what our bodies do on a daily basis! I hope that you learn a little something about your gut!
When it comes to your health, we often overlook the importance of our gut health. Our GI (gastrointestinal) tract is responsible for allowing nutrients into our body while keeping the harmful things out. When you have a healthy GI tract you are able to digest and absorb up to 97% of the food you eat. When you have compromises to your GI tract from things such as irritable bowel syndrome, celiac disease, food intolerance and others that this rate of absorption can be compromised. The whole complex process of digestion is important to our health as it determines how our bodies break down and absorb nutrients from our food. The healthier our GI tracts are the healthy we are going to be overall. I have studied about gut health in the past, due to my own personal issues and now that I am getting my nutrition certification I am reading more about it and I have come to understand even more the importance of keeping your GI tract healthy!
It has been said that the stomach is your second brain, which is why maintaining healthy gut flora is so important. It can hard to believe that what we eat can influence how we feel and even our mood and behavior. However, the more I read about our bodies and the amazing processes they go through it is so astounding that more people don't understand the correlation between the two. After all we are what we digest, absorb and transfer to our cells. What we eat literally becomes our cells. So if we are feeding our bodies whole real food that it can easily recognize, breakdown, and absorb we are going to feel and perform so much better than if we are feeding it highly processed hard to recognize food like substances.
Our large intestine/colon contains the most numerous amounts of bacteria in the GI tract.
*A healthy balance of bacteria in our large intestine may:
- prevent harmful bacteria and yeast from colonizing in the gut
- remove carcinogens (cancer causing substance) and boost the immune system
- prevent allergy
- prevent inflammatory bowel disease
*Reference: Precision Nutrition The Essentials of Sport and Exercise Nutrition Certification Manual
The good news is that you can restore the healthy flora and bacteria in your gut! It has been shown that the use of prebotics: compound that is not digested but rather fermented by microflora amd stimulates growth of healthy bacteria in the GI tract and probiotics: live microorganisms that help to restore beneficial bacteria in the GI tract from food and supplements. These can help stimulate the growth of healthy bacteria while helping to control the unhealthy type.
Over the summer if you remember I kept getting sick, a lot. I went to see a functional medicine doctor, and he helped get my immune system back on track. One of the things I stared doing right away was taking probiotics and I also cleaned up my nutrition. You can read more about that in this post. So recently when I got the opportunity to try Vitamin Pit Stop's USANA Probiotics I was excited because I know how important probiotics are to your overall health. I also love that they are in powder form and not pill form so I knew I could add them to my daily protein shakes. They are a very high quality probiotic and Vitamin Pit Stop offers them at the lowest prices online without requiring a monthly commitment or sign up fee to purchase. They contain a blend of probiotic bacteria that is clinically shown to support healthy digestion and immune function. The bacterial strains were carefully selected to survive the harsh environment of the stomach ensuring effective colonization of the GI tract. Per the instructions I added one packet of the probiotics to my protein shake every day for 2 weeks. You can also take them every other day which would last you a full month. If you are having digestive or immune problems I would start by taking them daily for 2 weeks, then switching to every other day.
After the 2 weeks I noticed improved digestion. I really loved that they are easy to mix into any drink and there is no taste from the probiotics, so I got all the added benefit without having to take a pill. I have also been able to stave off getting sick so far this fall, which is a huge feat because she started preschool and the germs I have been exposed to are greater than they were in the summer. My daughter had a stomach bug during the time I was using the Vitamin Pit Stop's USANA Probiotics, and I was able to avoid getting it, which was not always the case. I usually get whatever she has. With cold and flu season coming up I highly recommend Vitamin Pit Stop's USANA probiotcs. You want to make sure that you have your GI tract healthy and your immune system ready to fight off the germs that are coming! It is easy to order from Vitamin Pit Stop, just head over to their website and check out the probiotics and all the other awesome and healthy supplements they offer. Vitamin Pit Stop was generous enough to offer a giveaway of their USANA probiotics, be sure to enter below and check back next week to see if you won.
Vitamin Pit Stop USANA Probiotic Giveaway
I really hope that you enjoyed my post today, and that you learned a little more about your gut health and why it is so important to your overall health! I know it is not a typical post for me, but I love sharing the knowledge I have obtained. Your health is your wealth and it is so important to pay attention to it and to keep your body healthy...as they say:
Now it is time to link up! Be sure to link back to all 3 of the hostesses, and share on social media! We will help to promote you and the link up...sharing is caring!
