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There are many advances in our health care we can be thankful for today. Prior to the 1900's poor sanitary conditions including deficient sewage waste systems as well as contaminated food and water were attributed to the main causes of death aside from natural causes. Once we began to understand more about the invisible world full of bacteria, things like indoor plumbing and the sterilization of medical instruments were introduced. As time has passed, we have become more and more conscience about our personal hygiene. This has resulted in a significant decrease in infectious diseases.

On the other hand, while there has been a tremendous decrease in deaths due to infectious diseases, starting with the introduction of penicillin in the 1940's, new issues within the disease related causes of death cropped up. Instead of dying of many infectious diseases, death from serious chronic conditions has gotten out of control. People are not dying from poor hygiene, they are dying from the decrease and elimination of something else.

And this is where our discussion turns to the dark side of antibiotics. The sad truth of the matter is this - what kills the disease carrying bacteria, also kills our amazing probiotic bacteria friends.

While antibiotics have attributed to the elimination of so many diseases, the constant abuse of these medications, which includes prescribing them when people have colds and flues, which are virus related, not bacterial. Virus related illnesses are those that antibiotics cannot help. So, while sick with something non-bacterial you are killing off your bodies means of keeping it's immune system in top condition, which only leads to being more susceptible to other illnesses.

With the misuse of antibiotics comes the introduction of the antibiotic resistant bacteria. This has onlycreated more problems as more powerful antibiotics are created with the unfortunate results of the super antibiotic-resistant bug just keeps getting worse.

So, where does this leave us? What is the solution?

It is not a secret that both bad and good bacteria are destroyed when taking these medications. If doctors know that antibiotics destroy our healthy flora, how come they don't follow up their prescriptions with probiotics?

Although antibiotics have really reeked havoc on good bacterial growth, we have added to their damage by our more modern lifestyles. Fast food, soda, diet products, processed foods and the total lack of eating well-balanced meals are also to blame. We are living in a world of convenience which is running at a very fast pace. This causes a great deal of stress, lack of proper amounts of sleep, emotional distress and so forth. Our bodies are simply bombarded day in and day out. Our factory of health is exhausted. And we have only ourselves to blame.

How do we prevent our good bacteria from becoming part of an internal extinct species? If you're reading this article, no matter where you live, you have access to the solution. Even if it means ordering it online.

Helping our intestinal tract is just a matter of introducing the probiotics our bodies have lost and continue to lose daily. We can do this by adding into our diets the fruits, vegetables, yogurts and other foods that contain a wide variety of probiotics. We can also add them by way of probiotic powders, probiotic liquids and probiotic supplements. In the next article I'll be talking about some of the more common foods that we can buy to encourage our healthy probiotic bacteria to grow and outnumber the bad bacteria.