The #1 Probiotic for a Really Healthy New Year

We know the body needs probiotics to aid in digestion — but the benefits of L. plantarum, one of our favorite Body Ecology probiotic strains, extend far beyond the digestive tract. As you would expect, L. plantarum starts doing its hard work in the gut, colonizing while balancing out the pathogenic bacteria. From there, it continues to work and produce in a way that benefits the health of the entire body, manufacturing a critical B vitamin that the body can’t make on its own.

We’ll cover more on this B vitamin in a moment. But first, let’s start by understanding L. plantarum’s true purpose and what it can do for your gut.

The Benefits of L. Plantarum: It Starts in the Gut

Research in support of this hard-working probiotic strain abounds. Lactobacillus plantarum has not only been proven as effective as an antiseptic in a hospital setting, but two ground-breaking 2016 studies confirmed that it can decrease anxiety and protect against toxic heavy metal exposure.^1,2,3 We also know that probiotics (especially sour foods, like the L. plantarum-rich fermented vegetables made with our Body Ecology Veggie Starter Culture) can help to naturally decrease cravings.⁴ That’s why we consider L. plantarum an ideal day-to-day probiotic to promote good health all year long, especially when you want to get off of sugar.

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“Plantarum is such a special bacterium. That’s what’s in our Culture Starter. That’s how we make fermented vegetables and have for more than 20 years,” says Donna Gates, fermented foods pioneer and creator of The Body Ecology Diet. “Plantarum degrades oxalates. It also degrades histamines so you don’t have too much histamines. There’s so many things. It’s antiviral; it’s antibacterial. If you take an antibiotic, L. plantarum is not wiped out by most antibiotics on the market, and it’s the first bacteria that you can put in your gut right after you’ve done a detox treatment.”

Now here’s where the benefits of L. plantarum get even more interesting: regarding the probiotic strain’s ability to produce natural folate in the gut. One of the most important nutrients that you will find in food is folate. Folate is a B vitamin (B9) that we cannot manufacture — we must source our folate through the food that we eat or through supplements.

While we cannot make folate, some of the microbes living in the intestinal tract can.

This is good news because folate allows us to synthesize and repair DNA, making it an essential nutrient for expecting mothers and growing children. Folate also helps manage the expression of DNA, which means that it can help keep us healthy even if we are genetically wired to get sick. Because folate supports cell division, it also helps the body make healthy red blood cells. Without enough folate, the body pumps out large, immature blood cells, and we are more likely to develop anemia.⁵

Folic Acid versus Folate: What’s the Difference?

Most vitamins and fortified foods contain folic acid, the synthetic version of folate. Even though folic acid functions similar to folate in the body, supplementing with synthetic folate is not entirely risk free. For example, some research shows that synthetic folic acid may encourage the growth of cancer cells once they have already developed into a tumor.⁶ Other researchers are concerned that synthetic folic acid can mask a vitamin B12 deficiency, leaving it undiagnosed and untreated.⁷

Finally, synthetic folic acid does not easily break down in the body. This means that most of us — if we have eaten fortified foods or have supplemented with folic acid — are carrying around high levels of unused folic acid in our blood. Even newly delivered babies have unused folic acid in their umbilical cord blood.⁸

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This is a concern because unused folic acid may be related to brain deterioration in the elderly.⁹

The good news is that many foods are rich in natural folate. This includes:

• Liver
• Spinach and other green, leafy vegetables
• Black-eyed peas
• Asparagus
• Brussels sprouts

Body Ecology’s Cultured Vegetables Offer More Folate — and Other Big L. Plantarum Benefits

Lactobacillus plantarum is the only probiotic from the Lactobacillus family that can make natural folate. All other popular Lactobacillus probiotics — like L. acidophilus — cannot make folate.¹⁰ Fortunately, L. plantarum is a team player. One study published in 2013 found that a probiotic supplement containing L. plantarum can boost the numbers of beneficial Bifidobacteria in the gut while decreasing the numbers of harmful microorganisms.¹¹

More than a team player, Donna considers L. plantarum the captain of the team, “L. plantarum is one of those super microorganisms in the microbiome in your gut that tells the other bacteria what to do. If you think about it, the bacteria need leaders, and certain bacteria are the leaders.” Like Alexander the Great, L. plantarum is one of those “Alexander Organisms” that makes big, healthy changes in the gut, and all the other bacteria follow.

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While L. plantarum does a lot of good for the body, researchers in Brazil found in 2014 that it does not like to hang around in the digestive tract. This is true even when L. plantarum is consumed for long periods of time.¹²

In other words, L. plantarum is more like a visitor to your inner ecosystem than a resident.

Body Ecology’s Culture Starter targets our special need for folate. Along with a few other friendly microbes, it contains L. plantarum. Every time we eat a few ounces of cultured vegetables, we inoculate our inner ecosystems with L. plantarum — which will go on to produce folate in the gut while also supporting a healthy inner ecosystem. We also consume more folate than we would have by eating leafy greens raw and unfermented. If you are looking for an extra boost of natural folate, culture your leafy greens with Body Ecology’s Culture Starter. Body Ecology’s Culture Starter is more powerful than ever. According to our lab results, using our Starter Culture increases CFUs to as much as 1,800,000 per gram, compared to 58,000 CFU per gram without using a starter culture!†

We can’t emphasize enough the importance of L. plantarum’s ability to produce this natural folate the body needs to synthesize and repair DNA. But in 2016, even more interesting research came to light, confirming L. plantarum’s role as a supporter of our most vital body processes. French researchers found that L. plantarum gut microbes transferred from healthy children to mice could negate some of the most devastating effects of malnutrition.¹³ Yes, L. plantarum helps the body to build and repair, and it also helps us grow when we are at our most vulnerable. Proven to be one of the most protective probiotic strains out there, L. plantarum is the one you want in your gut.