Word: guts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...will be in each straw - might seem like a disgusting idea. But Baron's Sydney-based company, Unistraw, says there's a lucrative and growing global market for probiotic bacteria (the name comes from the Greek words "for" and "life"). These so-called "good" bugs live in the human gut; the claimed benefits of boosting their numbers include better digestion and a stronger immune system, the easing of allergies, stronger nails and shinier hair...
...been studying the role bacteria play in the gastrointestinal tract, a complex ecosystem made up of helpful and harmful bugs whose interactions aren't fully understood. The bugs begin to infiltrate when we're born. Some make us sick, while others help the body work better. An average adult gut contains about a kilogram of bacteria - 100 trillion bugs of some 500 different species...
...gut that the company sees immediate potential. According to Unistraw consultant microbiologist Patricia Conway, a professor in the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences at the University of New South Wales, there's no doubt about the health benefits of good gut microbes. Harmful microbes will flourish, she says, unless enough beneficial ones are there to keep them under control. "It's like kids in the schoolyard: once the bullies are allowed to get stronger, the good kids go hide in the corners...
...health came from the Russian physiologist and 1908 Nobel Prize winner Elie Metchnikoff. He believed that long-lived Bulgarians were benefiting from bugs in their fermented dairy foods. The most common probiotics are strains of Lactobacillus, used as starter cultures in yogurts, or Bifidobacterium, found from infancy in the gut and believed to improve immunity...
...Topping says probiotics have been found to help children, especially by treating diarrhea, which kills more than 2 million infants a year. A recent American study published in the science journal Nature found that good microbes in the gut may protect against diabetes, whose incidence among children is rising. But doubt remains about how useful probiotics are to adults. On that question, "the jury is still out," Topping says: more large-scale trials are needed...