With health and fitness, the one thing I have found is that people with common interests always share their latest wellness discoveries. Recently, a discussion of probiotics came up at the office. Now, this was not new to me and I was pretty comfortable thinking I was getting all the probiotics I needed from the organic Greek yogurt that I eat every day. After doing some research on probiotics, it didn't take long for me to see I may not be getting a complete set of good bacteria from my yogurt.

Let's take a look at a few interesting aspects of probiotics and how they can help your health and fitness.

First, we need to understand in simple terms, what are probiotics? Simply defined, they are colonies of beneficial bacteria that reside in your digestive tract. There are many different types of microflora or so-called "Good Bacteria" inside all of us. The good bacteria have names like, Lactobacillus, Bifidobacteria, Saccharomyces boulardii, Streptococcus Thermophilus, Enterococcus Faecium and Leuconostoc. Within these groups of bacteria, they have many different species with names like Lactobacillus Acidophilus and Bifidobacterium Longum for example.

Now what do these "Good Bacteria" do for you? Probiotics protect us in many beneficial ways. First, they keep our digestive tract healthy with a proper balance between the good and bad bacteria. We need both good and bad bacteria so keeping things balanced between the two can be tricky and comes down to the type of good nutritional food choices we make.

The next area probiotics help is supporting our digestive tract so it can effectively filter and keep harmful bacteria, toxins, and chemicals from entering our bloodstream. The other important function and perhaps one of the most critical that probiotics provides is how it helps support our immune function.

It is estimated that 1 in 4 people in the United States suffer from some level of dysbacteriosis which is an imbalance of microflora mostly in the your digestive tract. In a study from 1999, it was determined that 70 to 80 percent of our body's immune cells are found in our digestive tract, so when you have an imbalance in your gut, it can negatively impact your overall health. When your system's microflora is out of balance and you have more bad than good bacteria, symptoms like diarrhea, gas, bad breath, muscle pain, and fatigue can become a daily event.

One of the best approaches to ensuring you're getting a good mix of good bacteria is to avoid poor food choices and eat foods that contain good bacteria like yogurt, dark chocolate, Miso soup or pickles which are very healthy for your digestive tract plus overall health.

Now let's bring the fitness aspect into the picture. Studies have shown that by ensuring you have a good balance of probiotics in your system and in your diet, it will help support your physically active lifestyle.

When you have a balanced, strong and healthy digestive system, it can increase the effectiveness to absorb many of the 23 amino acids that are important for muscle growth. Your absorption of other nutrients becomes more effective, which in turn increases your body's ability to heal faster.

With a stronger and healthy immune system, endurance and high intensity athletes will recover faster from intense training. Studies have also shown that well-balanced probiotic bacteria in athletes who overstress their bodies with intense training can reduce the occurrences of colds, flu, yeast and fungal related illnesses.

Probiotics come in many varieties and it becomes very confusing as to which supplement or food is best. Everyone is different and depending on your nutrition will change your body's requirement. I would recommend talking with your doctor or work with a nutritionist to see which probiotic will work best for you.

Judd Jones is a director for the Hagadone Corporation.