Cranberry, the Prebiotic and Anti-Bacterial Functional Food

By Kyle J. Norton

Compared to probiotics, prebiotics are compound in food that induces the growth or activity of beneficial microorganisms in the gut.

In other definition, they are special forms of dietary fiber that act as fertilizers to promote the growth of good bacteria in your gut.

In the gastrointestinal tract, prebiotics can alter the composition of organisms in the gut microbiome.

In other words, prebiotics raises the levels of healthy bacteria against bad bacteria.

Gut microbiota is a complex community with over trillion microorganisms that live in our digestive tracts.

In healthy individuals, the ratio of good and bad microorganisms is balanced. In other words, healthy gut microbiota levels maintain the structure and function of the gastrointestinal tract.

In fact, a balanced ratio of gut microbiota plays a critical role in the digestion of certain foods that the stomach and small intestine have not been able to digest, in the production vitamins, improvement of digestive functioning and modulation of the immune function.

The use of antibiotics has been found to damage the gut ecosystem, leading to certain chronic illnesses such as inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, cancer, and autism.

Further, the unbalanced ratio of gut microbiota functions also alters immune homeostasis, leading to the onset of autoimmune disorders which in turn can induce intestinal and systemic autoimmune diseases.

On finding a potential compound for the treatment of digestive diseases researchers investigated the cranberry prebiotic or antimicrobial effect on gut microbiota.

Cranberry is an evergreen dwarf shrub, genus Vaccinium, belongings to the family Ericaceae, native to Northern America and Southern Asia. Because of its health benefits, cranberry has been cultivated in some parts of the world for commercial profit and used in traditional and herbal medicine to treat wounds, urinary disorders, diarrhea, diabetes, stomach ailments, and liver problems.

According to the results of the analysis, cranberry extracts and whole cranberry powder showed a strong activity that broadly modulates the gut microbiota by reducing the abundance of Enterobacteriaceae and increasing the abundance of Bacteroidaceae.

In other words, cranberry extracts and whole cranberry powder improved the ratio of gut microbiota by increasing the population of good bacteria and reducing the numbers of bad bacteria.

In a gut simulator, more precisely, salicylate found in cranberry showed a major contribution to reduce levels of Enterobacteriaceae and elevated Bacteroidaceae in a dose-dependent manner.

Taken altogether, cranberry combined with other herbal medicine may be considered a prebiotic and antimicrobial remedy for the treatment of digestive diseases, pending to the confirmation of the larger sample size and multicenter human study.

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Author Biography
Kyle J. Norton (Scholar, Master of Nutrition, All right reserved)
Health article writer and researcher; Over 10.000 articles and research papers have been written and published online, including worldwide health, ezine articles, article base, health blogs, self-growth, best before it's news, the karate GB daily, etc.,.
Named TOP 50 MEDICAL ESSAYS FOR ARTISTS & AUTHORS TO READ by Disilgold.com Named 50 of the best health Tweeters Canada - Huffington Post
Nominated for shorty award over last 4 years
Some articles have been used as references in medical research, such as international journal Pharma and Bioscience, ISSN 0975-6299.

Sources
(1) Cranberry extracts promote growth of Bacteroidaceae and decrease abundance of Enterobacteriaceae in a human gut simulator model by O'Connor K1, Morrissette M1, Strandwitz P1, Ghiglieri M1, Caboni M1, Liu H2, Khoo C2, D'Onofrio A1, Lewis K. (PubMed)