Lacto-Fermented Foods to Help With Strep B

Group Beta Streptococus (GBS) is a bacterial infection that occurs in 10 to 40 percent of healthy women. The bacteria live in the small intestine, the primary site. Not every woman shows symptoms, but GBS can cause birthing complications, permanent handicaps and even death amongst newborns. This can occur when the bacteria spreads to the rectum and vagina, or the secondary site.

Every pregnant woman is tested for the presence of the bacteria. While doctors reserve antibiotics for cases of a high risk of transmission, many lacto-fermented foods containing probiotic bacteria can help fight GBS in the secondary site.

Probiotics

• Probiotics are, very simply, "good bacteria" that helps the body fight off harmful pathogens, such as GBS. Live cultures are found in items such as yogurt, which are lacto-fermented, or preserved in a way that the sugars and starches convert to lactic acid because of the presence of the "good bacteria", or the probiotics.

  Regularly eating food with probiotics and live cultures in them is a great way to boost the immune system. We can destroy our immune system through taking antibiotics, which kills pathogens and probiotics alike. This leaves us still vulnerable to future bacterial invasions, but we can combat this by supplementing our diet with live probiotic cultures.

Lacto-Fermented Foods

• The most common food that people think of containing live cultures is yogurt. It contains two members of lactic acid bacteria which are known probiotics and can greatly boost our immune system, and help to reduce the risk of future infections. The best thing about yogurt is that there are multiple uses for it. You can eat it, but you can also apply it directly to the rectum and vagina on a natural tampon. Delivering the yogurt directly to the infected areas is an excellent way to treat GBS in a secondary site.

  There are other sources for additional probiotics in your diet as well. You can try sauerkraut and live pickles, depending on your taste. These two foods contain just as much probiotics as do yogurt, perhaps even more. Kimchi, a Korean staple food made from cabbage, red pepper, garlic and salt, is lacto-fermented and an excellent source of probiotics. It has the added benefit of being nutrient dense and is shown to be able to fight infections.

  If none of these catch your eye, there are still more lacto-fermented foods for you to try. Have you ever considered kefir? It's a fermented milk drink made from a grain from the Caucausus Mountains. Kefir is alive, with six different bacteria cultures and multiple species of yeast, it's extremely healthy and a known antibiotic as well as antifungal. It even has several vitamins and minerals to give your body an extra boost. Though kefir is made often with milk, but because of the enzymes, many lactose intolerant people can handle kefir without difficulty.