bacteria

Taking a dip in Lake Michigan has always been something of an act of faith. The water you are swimming in today may be full of dangerous E. coli bacteria, but the earliest the city could close the beach down is tomorrow because the daily water samples take a day to yield results.

But now the guessing game is over, at least at Chicago’s 63rd Street Beach. This summer marks the beginning of a pilot program designed to better judge whether the water is safe for swimming.

When a red flag is flying, the color should stop beachgoers from testing out the water along Chicago’s shores. A green flag means ‘go.’ In reality, however, the flag color is based on bacteria tests performed yesterday and today’s water safety is still a mystery.

But now the guessing game is over, at least at Chicago’s 63rd Street Beach. This summer marks the beginning of a pilot program designed to better judge whether the water is safe for swimming.

Eating food infested with bacteria is not always a bad a thing.Oak Park triathlete Karen Steward-Nolan does just that to keep her body going while training, which sometimes requires running 10-20 miles on a treadmill during the Chicago winter months.

One of Steward-Nolan's favorites is yogurt, a good choice of snack because it contains "good" bacteria.

And a study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine this month concluded that a daily dose of these microorganisms, or probiotics, can help endurance athletes boost their immune systems.

This is good news for distance runners, like Steward-Nolan, who continue to train in the winter, when they are more prone to upper respiratory tract infections such as common cold and bronchitis.

"Athletes walk a fine line. You want to make your body stronger, but if you push too hard, you're just going to overload," Steward-Nolan said.

In the study, Australian scientists randomly divided 20 elite athletes into two groups. Half were given a capsule with lactobacillus fermentum, while the others got a placebo. The athletes took the capsules everyday for 14 weeks while running an average of 62 miles a week.

The runners who consumed the placebo had respiratory symptoms, on average, for 72 days while those who took the probiotics had symptoms for only 30 days.

"The most important finding of this study was a significant reduction in the number of days of respiratory illness symptoms," the authors of the study wrote.

But probiotics are not solely for endurance athletes. They're beneficial to anyone of any age, especially during the flu season, according to Colleen Lammel-Harmon of the Illinois Dietetic Association.

"They help enhance the lymphocytes and antibodies in the body," Lammel-Harmon said.

Probiotic cultures also help maintain the good bacteria in the intestine, shorten the symptoms of lactose intolerance and reduce the symptoms of irritable bowel disease, she said.

Mainly found in dairy products such as yogurt and fermented dairy beverages, these beneficial organisms can also be taken as dietary supplements.

But taking them as dietary supplements is not recommended by Annie Neuendorf, a registered dietitian at the Northwestern Wellness Institute in Chicago.

"I don't feel comfortable recommending these to my patients because there are no standards yet," said Neuendorf. For now, people should stay with something more natural like yogurt, she said.