Probiotics: The Single Greatest Thing You Can Do To Enhance Your Pet’s Health

By Dr. Karen Becker

Why Might Your Pet Need a Healthy Probiotic Boost?

As in people, the bacteria in your pet’s GI tract can be easily influenced by a number of factors, ranging from emotional stress to  an unhealthy lifestyle.

For instance, antibiotics and steroids like cortisone are the most-prescribed drugs in traditional veterinary practices. However, both these drugs can decimate the friendly bacteria in your pet’s gut.

Other stressors that can throw off the ratio of good-to-bad gut bacteria in your pet in a very negative way include:

• A sudden change in diet (if your pet has been on the same food for a long time)
• A poor-quality diet
• Strange eating habits (feces, grass, sticks, rocks, etc.)
• Consumption of unclean water (from lakes, ponds or ditches)
• Ingestion of fertilizers, pesticides, or chemicals in the water supply
• Vaccinations
• Antibiotics and/or steroids (cortisone, prednisone)
• Surgery
• GI disease
• Boarding at a kennel or pet hospital
• Travel
• Emotional stress (usually caused by a change in routine)

When GI stressors upset the balance of good to bad bacteria in your pet’s digestive system, it can create a cascade of nutritional and other health problems, including poor food absorption and intermittent or chronic diarrhea.

It also opens the door to leaky gut (dysbiosis), which means your dog or cat can absorb partially digested amino acids and allergens into its bloodstream. This in turn can trigger a host of other health problems, from allergies to autoimmune disease.

Concerns with Most Probiotic Supplements Sold Commercially

The frustration with the probiotics that are currently available in the veterinary market:

1. They only contain one or two strains of beneficial bacteria for dogs and cats.
2. Viability, potency and purity have not been evaluated in many of the strains.
3. The number of colony-forming units of really beneficial bacteria per gram is only between 1 million and 4 million.

Remember, any type of gastrointestinal stressor can not only rock the delicate balance of good to bad bacteria in your pet’s system, but can actually open up the door for your pets to have leaky gut or dysbiosis.

The best defense against some of these nasty problems and to bolster immunologic gastrointestinal health is through the use of probiotic therapy – but using a sub-par variety will not do the trick.

At MercolaHealthyPets.com, they have specifically blended the very best probiotic bacteria and put them into one supplement, so you don’t have to pick and choose three or four different strains depending on what problem your pets are experiencing in terms of gastrointestinal upset.

They’ve included healthy bacteria for maintenance, but the correct species that are necessary for animals to regain bowel health after antibiotics or steroid use, and put a couple of strains in there that are excellent for immunocompromised or debilitated, including animals that:

• Came from a shelter
• Have mange
• Are immunologically compromised
• Are runts or poor doers
• Are weak or not thriving
• Have problems gaining weight
• Suffer with chronic diarrhea or chronic vomiting

There are even a couple of strains that are excellent in helping balance bowel health for specific immunocompromised patients. These strains have all been blended together, and are offered at The Animal Keeper and Pet Suites. It’s the very first product on the market to cover all of these bases.

And remember, not just any probiotic will do, including the one you may take yourself. Probiotic formulas used by humans were developed specifically to fortify the bacterial species found in the human GI tract. Pets have some specific strains of bacteria unique to them, so they need a unique probiotic. Your dog or cat must have organisms derived from its own species for best results, so make sure you choose your pet’s probiotic wisely.

Article courtesy of http://healthypets.mercola.com