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Is Yogurt Good For My Health?

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yogurt

  1. What happens when you eat yogurt?

Yogurt provides your body with some carbs, fats and protein.  More notable however are the “good” bacteria we call probiotics.  These bacteria are beneficial and essential for good health.  Probiotics live in your intestines and help breakdown food, form certain nutrients and improve your immune function.  You need them and they need you.

One significant job is that they kill off “bad” bacteria that makes its way into your body via the food you eat.  If your guts are brimming with probiotics, as they should, there is little room for intruders and they are promptly destroyed.

  1. Do more probiotics  help?

It might rattle your reality a little to learn that you swallow harmful bacteria ALL THE TIME in tiny quantities from the food you eat.  But you don’t get sick most of the time, do you?  Why not?  Because, just like a fortified city with many soldiers, the probiotics are able to overwhelm and destroy the invading organisms; if there’s not too much of it at one time.  If your “good” bacteria is low, it just can’t put up enough of a fight.  Thus, ensuring you have enough probiotics in your diet, such as from yogurt, is crucial.  So, the more probiotics the better.  It is not as if you can overdo them.

The best yogurt products will say ‘live and active cultures.’  You can’t make yogurt without probiotics but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are still alive later.  For instance, the manufacturer might heat up or freeze the product for various reasons, killing the good bacteria off.  Therefore, it is important that it is tested to ensure that the cultures are still strong.

  1. What about yogurt with added sugar?

If you want to die faster and live a more miserable life, eat lots of added sugar regularly.  The same goes for yogurt.  A little won’t do much butless added sugar is ALWAYS healthier.  Sugar intake seems to pretty much be the reason for the increase in every disease known to man over the last century.  Natural sugars, like you’d find in fruit are fine and in fact, healthy.  The added garbage…I mean sugar…is bad news.

  1. Can yogurt help my blood pressure?

Probably not but there is some evidcence.  It seems that those who eat more yogurt have lower blood pressure.  But those who eat yogurt regularly probably eat much healthier already.

  1. Does it boost your immune system?  If so, why?

It does, for the reason I mentioned earlier.  If your guts are full of probiotic bacteria, they snuff out and harmful organizms, much like well-armed city would do to enemy intruders.  If you don’t have adequate “soldiers,” you could lose the battle!