The Importance of Lactobacteria

Lactobacteria reside in the intestines and are known as "friendly" or "beneficial" bacteria. They are essential not just for health, but for life itself. They are vital for the assimilation of vitamins, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and the manufacture of B-Vitamins, Vitamin K, and assorted amino acids. A healthy immune system is strongly linked to an abundant population of these beneficial bacteria. They also promote bulky, well-lubricated stools, increased frequency and quantity of bowel movements, and help to counteract harmful bacteria and yeasts in the intestinal tract.
Many factors contribute to the depletion of beneficial bacteria - use of antibiotics, chlorinated and/or fluoridated water, stress, and poor diet, are just a few. Most people today suffer from this depletion and have ever experienced the state of health possible when a truly abundant population of beneficial bacteria is present.
These bacteria, however, are difficult to implant from external sources. Good supplements are available, but are usually expensive and / or time consuming to make at home. And although desirable results may be gotten from a good supplement, they are usually temporary and stop when the supplementation is discontinued because of poor implantation. It may take several months or even a year of daily supplementation before a good implantation is obtained.
Psyllium is used in virtually all intestinal cleansing programs and many other products intended to benefit the bowels because it is highly effective at removing stagnant waste material and has a regulatory effect on bowel activity. But taking psyllium seed daily for two to three months markedly depletes the beneficial bacteria in the intestinal tract. Even taking supplements along with the psyllium may not avoid this depletion because the older, adapted bacteria will have been removed while the newer, supplemented bacteria has yet to implant. Thus it is better to have the existing beneficial bacteria that are already adapted and implanted in the intestinal tract multiply to large numbers than to use supplementation.

Janet CuyUniversity of Washington Engineered Biomaterials
Natural polymers, or polymers derived from living creatures, are of great interest in the biomaterials field. In the area of tissue-engineering, for example, scientists and engineers look for scaffolds on which one may successfully grow cells to replace damaged tissue. Typically, it is desirable for these scaffolds to be [1]:
· Biodegradable
· Non-toxic/non-inflammatory
· Mechanically similar to the tissue to be replaced
· Highly porous
· Encouraging of cell attachment and growth
· Easy and cheap to manufacture
· Capable of attachment with other molecules (to potentially increase scaffold interaction with normal tissue)
Natural polymers often easily fulfill these expectations, as they are naturally engineered to work well within the living beings from which they come. Three examples of natural polymers that have been previously studied for use as biomaterials are: collagen, chitosan and alginate.
Collagen
Collagen is the most widely found protein in mammals (25% of our total protein mass!) and is the major provider of strength to tissue. A typical collagen molecule consists of three intertwined protein chains that form a helical structure (similar to a spiral staircase). These molecules polymerize together to form collagen fibers of varying length, thickness, and interweaving pattern (some collagen molecules will form ropelike structures, while others will form meshes or networks). There are actually at least 15 different types of collagen, differing in their structure, function, location, and other characteristics. The predominant form used in biomaterial applications, however, is type I collagen, which is a "rope-forming" collagen and can be found almost everywhere in the body, including skin and bone [2].
Collagen can be resorbed into the body, is non-toxic, produces only a minimal immune response (even between different species), and is excellent for attachment and biological interaction with cells [3]. Collagen may also be processed into a variety of formats, including porous sponges, gels, and sheets, and can be crosslinked with chemicals to make it stronger or to alter its degradation rate [3]. The number of biomedical applications in which collagen has been utilized is too high to count here—it not only has been explored for use in various types of surgery, cosmetics, and drug delivery, but in bioprosthetic implants and tissue-engineering of multiple organs as well [3]. Cells grown on collagen often come close to behaving as they do within the body, which is why collagen is so promising when one is trying to duplicate natural tissue function and healing.
However, some disadvantages to using collagen as a cell substrate do exist. Depending on how it is processed, collagen can potentially cause alteration of cell behavior (e.g., changes in growth or movement), have inappropriate mechanical properties, or undergo contraction (shrinkage) [3, 4]. Because cells interact so easily with collagen, cells can actually pull and reorganize collagen fibers, causing scaffolds to lose their shape if they are not properly stabilized by crosslinking or mixing with another less "vulnerable" material. Fortunately, collagen can be easily combined with other biological or synthetic materials to improve its mechanical properties or change the way cells behave when grown upon it. Exciting work is being performed to bind various proteins or growth factors to collagen as signaling molecules in order to tailor cell behavior to specific applications of interest [3]. One may attach signals that encourage cells to grow, to move, to make new blood vessels, to make a certain protein, or many other actions. In fact, simply the fiber orientation of a collagen scaffold can cause cells to align in a certain direction or take on different shapes [3, 5]. Collagen biomaterials offer many possibilities for successful and specifically-controlled cell interactions.
Chitosan
Chitosan is derived from chitin, a type of polysaccharide (sugar) that is present in the hard exoskeletons of shellfish like shrimp and crab [6]. Chitin, in fact, is one of the most abundant polysaccharides found in nature, making chitosan a plentiful and relatively inexpensive product. Chitosan has recently sparked interest in the tissue-engineering field due to several desirable properties [7]:
· Minimal foreign body reaction
· Mild processing conditions (synthetic polymers often need to be dissolved in harsh chemicals; chitosan will dissolve in water based on pH)
· Controllable mechanical/biodegradation properties (such as scaffold porosity or polymer length)
· Availability of chemical side groups for attachment to other molecules
Chitosan has already been investigated for use in the engineering of cartilage, nerve, and liver tissue [7, 8, 9]. Chitosan has also been studied for use in wound dressings and drug delivery devices [10]. Current difficulties with using chitosan as a polymer scaffold in tissue-engineering, however, include low strength and inconsistent behavior with seeded cells [10]. Fortunately, chitosan may be easily combined with other materials in order to increase its strength and cell-attachment potential. Mixtures with synthetic polymers such as poly(vinyl alcohol) [11] and poly(ethylene glycol) [12], or natural polymers such as collagen [13], have already been produced. These combinations have displayed promise for improving the performance of the combined construct over the behavior of either component alone.
Alginate
Alginate is a polysaccharide derived from brown seaweed [14]. Like chitosan, alginate can be processed easily in water and has been found to be fairly non-toxic and non-inflammatory, enough so that it has been approved in some countries for wound dressing and for use in food products [14]. Alginate is biodegradable [15], has controllable porosity, and may be linked to other biologically active molecules [16]. Alginate forms a solid gel under mild processing conditions, which allows it to be used for entrapping cells into beads and other shapes [16]. Interestingly, encapsulation of certain cell types into alginate beads may actually enhance cell survival and growth [17]. In addition, alginate has been explored for use in liver [14], nerve [18], heart [19], and cartilage [20] tissue-engineering. Unfortunately, some drawbacks to alginate include mechanical weakness and poor cell adhesion [15]. Again, to overcome these limitations, the strength and cell behavior of alginate have been enhanced by mixtures with other materials, including the natural polymers agarose [17] and chitosan [15].
Collagen, chitosan, and alginate are just a few of the many natural polymers that are currently being studied as biomaterials. Their natural biological compatibility and activity make them attractive candidates for a variety of biomedical applications. Exploring how these polymers work and how they are designed by nature can help us better engineer synthetic materials to mimic these successful natural scaffolds.
References:
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Alberts B, Bray D, Lewis J, Raff M, Roberts K, Watson JD. Molecular biology of the cell, 3rd ed. New York: Garland Publishing, 1994: 978-980.
Han B, Huang LLH, Cheung D, Cordoba F, Nimni M. Polypeptide growth factors with a collagen binding domain: Their potential for tissue repair and organ regeneration. In Zilla P and Greisler HP, editors. Tissue engineering of vascular prosthetic grafts. Austin: RG Landes, 1999: 287-299.
Vaissiere G, Chevallay B, Herbage D, Damour O. Comparative analysis of different collagen-based biomaterials as scaffolds for long-term culture of human fibroblasts. Med Biol Eng Comput 2000; 38, 205-210.
Tranquillo RT. Self-organization of tissue-equivalents: The nature and role of contact guidance. Biochem Soc Symp 1999; 65, 27-42.
Chandy T, Sharma CP. Chitosan-as a biomaterial. Biomat Artif Cells Artif Org 1990; 18: 1-24.
Suh J-KF, Matthew HWT. Application of chitosan-based polysaccharide biomaterials in cartilage tissue engineering: A review. Biomaterials 2000; 21: 2589-2598.
Elcin AE, Elcin YM, Pappas GD. Neural tissue engineering: Adrenal chromaffin cell attachment and viability on chitosan scaffolds. Neurol Res 1998; 20: 648-654.
Elcin YM, Dixit V, Gitnick G. Hepatocyte attachment on biodegradable modified chitosan membranes: In vitro evaluation for the development of liver organoids. Artif Organs 1998; 22: 837-846.
Madihally SV, Matthew HWT. Porous chitosan scaffolds for tissue engineering. Biomaterials 1999; 20: 1133-1142.
Chuang W-Y, Young T-H, Yao C-H, Chiu W-Y. Properties of the poly(vinyl alcohol)/chitosan blend and its effect on the culture of fibroblast in vitro. Biomaterials 1999; 20: 1479-1487.
Zhang M, Li XH, Gong YD, Zhao NM, Zhang XF. Properties and biocompatibility of chitosan films modified by blending with PEG. Biomaterials 2002; 23: 2641-2648.
Tan W, Krishnaraj R, Desai TA. Evaluation of nanostructured composite collagen-chitosan matrices for tissue engineering. Tissue Eng 2001; 7: 203-210.
Glicklis R, Shapiro L, Agbaria R, Merchuk JC, Cohen S. Hepatocyte behavior within three-dimensional porous alginate scaffolds. Biotechnol Bioeng 2000; 67: 344-353.
Chung TW, Yang J, Akaike T, Cho KY, Nah JW, Kim SI, Cho CS. Preparation of alginate/galactosylated chitosan scaffold for hepatocyte attachment. Biomaterials 2002; 23: 2827-2834.
Rowley JA, Mooney DJ. Alginate type and RGD density control myoblast phenotype. J Biomed Mater Res 2002; 60: 217-223.
Orive G, Hernandez RM, Gascon AR, Igartua M, Pedraz JL. Survival of different cell lines in alginate-agarose microcapsules. Eur J Pharm Sci 2003; 18: 23-30.
Mosahebi A, Simon M, Wiberg M, Terenghi G. A novel use of alginate hydrogel as Schwann cell matrix. Tissue Eng 2001; 7: 525-534.
Dar A, Shachar M, Leor J, Cohen S. Cardiac tissue engineering: Optimization of cardiac cell seeding and distribution in 3D porous alginate scaffolds. Biotechnol Bioeng 2002; 80: 305-312.
Masuda K, Sah RL, Hejna MJ, Thonar EJ-MA. A novel two-step method for the formation of tissue-engineered cartilage by mature bovine chondrocytes: The alginate-recovered-chondrocyte (ARC) method. J Orthop Res 2003; 21: 139-148.

[The effect of "Solco" lactobacteria (Lactobacillus acidophilus) on the survival and microflora of mice with a Salmonella infection][Article in Russian]Popova-Barzashka S, Tarabrina NP, Bossart V, Korshunov VM.The Solco lactobacterial strain L. acidophilus Lat 11/83 has been used for the normalization of intestinal microflora in experimental post-infectious intestinal dysbacteriosis in mice. The results of experiments indicate that the intragastric administration of live Solco lactobacteria contributes to an increase in the survival rate of infected animals and the normalization of their gastrointestinal microflora. This strain may be used as a bacterial preparation for the regulation of intestinal microbiocenosis.

Lactobacteria Food III with new formulation and improved taste is our most recent significant breakthrough for maintaining a healthy population of beneficial lactobacteria in the intestinal tract. Lactobacteria Food III feeds the lactobacteria already present in one's body (prebiotic activity), namely those already implanted and colonizing the walls of the intestines. As these grow and multiply, their offspring colonizes the intestinal walls as well. In this way a healthy colonization is achieved in a few days or weeks without the need to be implanted.
It now contains Inulin
This new formulation yields a manifold increase of lactobacteria-enhancing activity over earlier products, while providing improved taste and multiple other proven healthful benefits. Our intestinal cleansing products have some of this same prebiotic activity but should not be taken continuously since homeostasis (the body becomes used to the products and they loose their effectiveness) will occur. Lactobacteria Food III, however, has no such effect and is thus ideally suited as a maintenance product to be taken between rounds of using the Holistic Horizons intestinal cleansing products. You may now promote an abundant colonization of lactobacteria year round!
This product is a blend of premium quality powdered herbs taken one to three times daily with liquid at mealtime. It is quite gentle and effective. (2+ bottles required per month)