Probiotics have been touted as integral to good health for years. Commercials about the latest yogurt or fermented product containing live cultures abound on both TV and the internet, making many of us wonder what the fuss is about, and if we should be making use of these products.

I thought I would talk a little about why you might want to consider taking probiotics while on a low carb diet, because I’ve personally been reintroducing probiotic supplements into my own diet in the last few months.

As many of you know, I’ve struggled with debilitating allergies in the last few years – like, “take me to the ER, I can’t breathe” allergies. I’ve tried lots of natural cures and a staggering cocktail of medications to alleviate my symptoms, and could still barely function at all for over 6 months last year.

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In my research, I found that gut health can have a serious impact on seasonal allergies. For the most part I’ve been off gluten for years and have felt great while on a low carb diet – I had no reason to believe my gut wasn’t healthy as all get out. Here’s an interesting nugget I found though…

When you are on a very low carb diet for an extended time, your gut’s beneficial bacteria can starve and die off from a lack of resistant starch and fiber.

Here’s just one of the several articles I found discussing it, you can also Google it and do some further research on your own.

So this led me to wonder whether my being on a low carb/keto diet for several years now has led to my sudden allergies, food intolerances, and other symptoms via leaky gut syndrome and/or a compromised immune system. Since then, I’ve been working on a few different ways to address the issue (while still staying low carb) and see if healing my gut makes a difference in my allergies.

I’ll talk more about some of the things I’m doing in future posts – and how to maintain good gut health while also eating low carb, but one of the easiest and most important steps you can take to repopulate a compromised gut and support your immune system is to take a quality probiotic every day.

Getting probiotics on keto can be difficult because they are usually marketed in sugary yogurts, gummy candies or drinks. Fermented foods are another good source, but you need to eat a lot of them to get the same benefits, while still making sure the carbs don’t add up too much, which can feel complicated and overwhelming – especially if you’re already rocking a super busy lifestyle (and who isn’t these days?)

To get my probiotics in an easy format that doesn’t include any added sugar, I’ve started taking these Culturelle® Health & Wellness Probiotic capsules – and I love them!! I hate swallowing pills so these are great because I can just pop them open and pour the contents directly into/onto foods or drinks (cool temps only though, never hot.) This also makes it easy for me to get probiotics into the Hungry Dudes – and without the added sugar and dyes that often come with probiotic supplements.

There are lots of probiotics available on the market today, and it can be confusing as to which ones to buy. I like the Culturelle Probiotics because they contain 100% Lactobacillus GG, the most clinically studied probiotic strain proven to help your digestive system work better and support overall immune health*††. Just one capsule of Culturelle Probiotic contains 15 BILLION active cultures! Take one a day and you’re good to go – it doesn’t get much simpler than that.

If you don’t want to purchase probiotics in pill or powder form, you can get even MORE beneficial bacteria into your gut by consuming fermented foods on a regular basis! Sauerkraut, kefir, and kombucha are some ways to get healthy bacteria into your keto diet, just be sure to calculate the carbs into your daily budget and you’ll be in great shape!

However you choose to ingest them, make probiotics a regular part of your keto diet to keep your gut and immune system in tip top shape!