Probiotics May Improve Workplace Health And Productivity

If diarrhea plays spoilsport with your working hours, you know that you need to head for the probiotics. However, how much does that help to improve productivity?

But first of all, what are probiotics, anyway?

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), probiotics are defined as "live microorganisms which, when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host."

Can the Probiotic Lactobacillus Reuteri Improve Work-Place Healthiness? This kind of probiotic bacteria is found in the gut flora and can treat "diarrhea, infantile colic, rotavirus, and female urogenital tract infections," amongst other conditions. Hence, the naturally occurring bacteria helps to keep a healthy immune system and offers strong protection against infections.

It is interesting that these small bacteria helps you to work in a company in which stress, shifts, heat, noise and pollution take a toll of your health. Workplace factors can impact your health negatively and lead to respiratory and gastrointestinal problems, leading to high rates of sick leave.

Research in the past shows that probiotics can reduce respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases, while their efficacy and efficiency of the probiotics can increase in the workplace.

But do probiotics boost the performance of employees in the workplace?

In an earlier study in Sweden, it was found that "daily intake of L. reuteri can reduce the proportion of subjects reporting sick from gastrointestinal or respiratory tract diseases by 60%. The effect was highly statistically significant and similar to the findings by Weizman et al, where small children in day-care centres had a 70% lower frequency of absence when given L. reuteri as compared with placebo," according to ehjournal.

The conclusion that was drawn was that use of L.reuteri group can lead to better workplace health, with a total of 4.3 million working days of improved productivity per year.

However, a new study at the ArcelorMittal Steel company drew different results, according to medindia. "242 male employees aged between 18 and 65 years participated in the study, to see if regular intake of the probiotic Lactobacillus reuteri could have any effect on the rate of sick leaves, mainly due to respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases suffered by them," according to medindia. The participants were divided into intervention and control group.

However, after a total study for 90 days, the average number of sick days in the intervention group was reported to be 2.24 whereas in the control group, it was 2.02 (p = 0.53), which showed that no difference had been made in the two groups.

Moreover, the longest cumulative sick leave for a participant was a month for the intervention group and 24 days for the control group. About 65% of the participants in the intervention group and 70% in the control group reported no sick leave due to respiratory and gastrointestinal symptoms.

The only benefit for the probiotic was prevention of diarrhea!

Hence, the study showed that the probiotic L. reuteri did not reduce the number of days of sick leave due to respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases for the male employees.

Obviously, more studies could improve the results, but currently, it proves something that you already knew---probiotics help to keep your poop healthy.