NS110Probiotics: Myth or miracle?Miranda HeadDepartment of, Lecture notes of Accounting

Download NS110Probiotics: Myth or miracle?Miranda HeadDepartment of and more Lecture notes Accounting in PDF only on Docsity! NS110 Probiotics: Myth or miracle? Miranda Head Department of Science, NS110 1. How many people you interviewed? Out of this number, how many did and did not use probiotics? Include a percentage for each of these numbers. For my probiotic survey, I interviewed 4 people. Of the 4 individuals interviewed, 3 (75%) used probiotics whereas 1 (25%) did not. 2. What were the main reasons cited for probiotic use? The main reason cited for the use of probiotics was that it improved the overall health of the digestive system. For instance, one person was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection (UTI) and was recommended to start taking a probiotic supplement to cure the UTI and shortly received great results from the supplement. Another person said they only take probiotics when they’re experiencing episodes of constipation and/or diarrhea. 3. What were the main reasons provided for not using probiotics? The main reason for the person not using a probiotic was that they are already under the impression that they’re healthy and do not need to spend money on probiotics that they deemed to be unnecessary. 4. What was the response to item “D” about the scientific research on probiotics? Would people change their behavior, why or why not? When asked whether or not they would continue to take probiotics even if scientific students have not demonstrated any discernible benefit the answer among all 4 participants was, they would indeed continue to take probiotics. The reason to continue is that if this is their doctor’s recommendation, it must be beneficial to their situation. 5. Does your data align with Achenbach's claims about human behavior? Why or why not? When considering the relation to taking probiotics referenced in Achenbach’s claims about human behavior (Achenbach, 2015), I don’t think that they apply to anyone except for the one person who claims to take probiotics only when they’re experiencing episodes of constipation, due to not being recommended by a physician to take probiotics before starting them. I would argue that none of the 3 individuals who take probiotics are healthy individuals in the sense that they are taking the supplements to supplement an already healthy digestive system. In all three instances, there are scientific studies to back up the reasons for taking the probiotics. According to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology (Chibbar & Dieleman, 2015), certain strains of probiotics have been shown to offer significant benefits to patients suffering from mild to moderate UC. In the case of urinary tract infections, an article published on the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) (Homayouni et al., 2014), shows that certain probiotic strains have been shown to offer patients better results than those who did not take the probiotics. All in all, I think that unless you have a specific medical need, as well as a physician recommendation to supplement with certain probiotics, you should avoid taking them until better research is established to demonstrate the benefits for the average healthy person. I do believe that this research would be very hard to accomplish due to the numerous variables associated with digestive system health. I don’t think that you can necessarily improve general digestive health functioning by only adding in probiotic supplements, but you must also incorporate reduced stress, more restful sleep, a well-rounded diet,