What is the distinction between prebiotics and probiotics?

Q: What is the distinction between prebiotics and probiotics?

A. Probiotics are living bacteria that are typically isolated from the healthy intestine and which, when consumed in adequate amounts, confer a disease preventative or positive health benefit upon the consumer.

Their benefits:

• Protect against intestinal infection, overgrowth or dysbiosis
• Prime the immune system from Bitrh to deliver the Correct Immune response
• Prevent and treat allergy
• Reduce intestinal inflammation
• Stimulate digestion of nutrients such as lactose, and increase absorption of minerals
• Decrease absorption of dietary cholesterol due to probiotic binding
• Decrease production of intestinal mutagens.

Prebiotics are non-digestible food components that have 2 fundamental benefits:

• Stimulation of the normal intestinal Bifidobacteria and Lactobacilli populations.
• Stimulation of production of the short chain fatty acids.

The most popular probiotics are Fructooligasaccharid es (FOS).
Basically prebiotics allow probiotics to multiply.