What is all the hype about probiotic yogurt these days and why would a person want to have, let alone add, bacteria into their body? The fact is that not all bacteria are bad; some can even be beneficial to our health. The role of bacteria found in the gut include helping with the digestion of food, providing vitamin K, helping protect the colon from the invasion of harmful bacteria, and helping to educate the immune system to differentiate between harmless and harmful bacteria.1 However, it is still not well understood exactly why the body fails to trigger an immune response against these bacteria.
Our bodies fight invasion through the lymphocytes. These white blood cells are varied and one type, the T cell, produces a response against invasion by activating other cells called regulatory T cells. Lathrop and his associates set out to determine how these cells are involved in regulating immune responses in the colon.
