The benefits of probiotics has become so well-known that most MD’s will recommend taking probiotics in some form during and after antibiotic treatment. This is because antibiotics don’t just kill “bad” bacteria that are making you sick: antibiotics kill both good and bad bacteria, leaving your digestive tract depleted of a critical component. As a result, we need to refresh our “healthy” or “friendly” bacteria in our systems - and this is where probiotics come in.

It’s possible that probiotics are doing more for us than simply helping with digestion. There is new evidence that probiotics might even help you to reduce allergic reactions like eczema.

A Dutch team decided to test this hypothesis. Their study brought together 150 pregnant women with allergies and looked at their responses to probiotics during the last six weeks of pregnancy. Test subjects were given either a dose of probiotics or a placebo. It was a double-blind test: neither the doctors nor the study participants knew who was getting what.

After the women delivered their babies, their children were monitored by the researchers. The babies continued to get either probiotics or placebos for 12 more months.

Even before the study concluded, it was evident that the probiotics were helping children: after just three months on the protocol, the eczema rate of the probiotic group was less than half of the rate of those taking the placebo.

There were no more doses given of probiotics after 12 months had passed. Test children were observed until age 2, however. Interestingly enough, even after probiotics were discontinued, there continued to be a substantial difference in allergic symptoms between the two groups.

This study has provided some concrete evidence that probiotics can make a difference for the children of allergic moms by reducing the rate of allergies in their offspring.

This study was published in the Journal Of Allergy.

Source: Natural News