Some bacteria are good for us.

I learned this lesson the hard way. When I was a young woman studying at the University of Madrid in Spain, I got sick. I thought my problem was similar to what Americans get traveling in Mexico -- turista we used to call it -- caused by a change in local bacteria, mostly. You don't need a prescription to get most drugs in Spain -- it turns out I was having stomach problems from eating too much greasy food -- which is easy to get and yummy in Spain. When my landlady heard about my problem she went out and got me an antibiotic which I have since learned is almost never used in the US because it can cause a fatal form of anemia. I took it and got worse. Luckily another American living in the same boarding house sent me to the American Community Hospital where a Spanish ( yes) doctor told me my problem was probably caused by eating too much roast suckling pig ( guilty) and too much homemade mayonnaise ( guilty again) and other wonderful Spanish foods. Then the antibiotics had finished me off by killing off whatever good bacteria were left in my gut.
Good bacteria! This was a new concept for me ( this was over 40 years ago). The doctor gave me no prescription, but told me to give up all foods except a minimum of 3 containers of yogurt per day and tea with lemon. Since I didn't want to tell my mother I was sick because she would make me come home, I tried it. Sure enough it worked! After two or three weeks on this diet my stomach did great as long as I didn't eat anything else. After a while I was allowed boiled meat and vegetables with no salt and fat. I stayed on that for another several weeks. I lost weight and my stomach felt great except when I snuck a glass of sherry or some other wonderful Spanish food. Eventually I was fine and was able to return to a regular diet.
Well, nowadays, this homey cure has come to the forefront of medicine. Lots of us are getting a lot of weird diseases like irititable bowel syndrome, and auto-immune diseases because we don't have enough **good** bacteria in our bodies. Some of this comes from taking too many antibiotics. Some comes from the antibiotics in our milk and other food and some comes from, believe it or not, too much cleanliness. All a very long story which one can read about in books and articles about probiotics.
The solution is to add more healthy bacteria to our diets through yogurt and other probiotic dairy products now available in almost every grocery ( Activa, Danica, etc.) and miso and other fermented bean and rice products, popular among Asians, and sauerkraut, kim-chi and pickles which have not been sterilized.
This is all a major new concept for Americans who want everything they touch sterilized, but that isn't always the best way to live -- except in hospitals.
So I want to recommend the daily use of products containing live bacteria, the good kind. Have you had your yogurt or miso soup today, or even recently?
Here are two articles that appeared in the New York times today and in the last couple of days. Time to think about eating some bacteria for your health! Anybody but me using probiotics?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/health/14well.html?em

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/dining/15curi.html?em