Which foods can improve your gut bacteria?
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38800977 |
DH has become a big fan of kombucha. Our health store has a kombucha bar where we can get their own, low sugar, creations in various flavors. They have refillable "growlers" for economical mass consumption.
I do a lot of yogurt and sauerkraut, in recognition of my Scandinavian and German genetic heritage. Seems to agree with me! |
My most recent dietary change includes added probiotics.
I take a capsule every morning, but am uncertain whether this is still viable (or even if it ever was.) Last week I bought a product called Gut Shot, meant to be used in swigs, not glasses full. It is mostly sauerkraut juice and added live probiotics. I took too much at once and had a very strong negative reaction, but that doesn't put me off it. I also use small quantities of Organic Raw Kombucha Gingerade. Recently (November 2016) gave up all cow's milk dairy products, including cheese. I eat chevre in small quantities and later may buy goat kefir. Not sure. As a result of my recent changes I'm losing weight again, and it is fat. I can tell because my love handles are shrinking. Am now able to wear smaller panties. I believe my body is struggling to normalize my gut microbiome. I'd like that to happen so will continue this n=1. |
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"Which can kill off ..." LOL Isn't that the whole point of pasteurization? Unfortunately, I don't particularly like kefir. But I do make various fermented vegetables. The problem is remembering to eat them. |
I would have thought that we could trust the companies that added enough sugar to yogurt to make it comparable to ice cream to manage our gut bacteria for us. Huh.
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:lol: Oh, they will manage it, all right. Like an MBA. |
This feels pertinent to me right now as I am actively trying to change my gut bacteria. I've been suffering severe chronic fatigue for about 7-8 months (it's something I've had before but it hit me HARD this time) and I finally found a GP a few months ago who is awesome. He immediately had me get my gut bacteria tested. Most people's aerobic bacteria is apparently 70-90% E.coli and less than 5% streptococcus. Mine is 81% streptococcus and only 18% E.coli. No wonder I'm sick, my gut can't actually deal with the food I give it!
He's put me on a protocol which involves alternating targeted antibiotics and targeted probiotics (particularly focusing on increasing the E.coli), along with various supplements, certain dietary restrictions ("no sugar of any kind, including fruit! It feeds the strep!") and other food recommendations. (He fully endorses LCHF and Paleo diets!) Normally I hate taking antibiotics but I know I need that strep to go and I trust him when he says he's seen lots of people improve significantly from this. It's only been 4 weeks so far but I feel SO MUCH BETTER already. I can actually function in the real world again. I can work at my computer without collapsing. I can go out shopping or out to a cafe without having to come home and sleep for a week. I can eat a meal without feeling sick for 6-8 hours. I actually get hungry and actively want to eat, which I haven't felt in years. It has been really amazing. It's also actually completely obliterated the constant anxiety that I've been feeling since I was TEN. LC improved that, but never got rid of it. But now it's just gone. I still have these habitual behaviours that I do because I'm expecting to feel anxious, but the anxiety doesn't come. I have this serenity and calmness that I don't think I've ever felt in my life. It's crazy and awesome. I'm now suddenly wondering how long my gut bacteria has been screwing up my life. I'm expecting this protocol to take months and months to fully heal my gut -- I'm certainly not in a position to live a normal active life yet. But for the first time in a long time I feel like maybe I've gotten to the root cause of many of my chronic health conditions, and it feels like it will be possible to one day be a fully functioning human being. Anyway, this lesson has really taught me that gut bacteria is clearly so much more powerful than we give it credit for! I am determined to take better care of mine from now on! |
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That is really amazing. I am so glad for you. |
Curious - how does one go about testing gut bacteria? Stool sample? Needle? Breath?
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Thank you! I'm super excited about it all. I'm looking forward to just getting better and better. Quote:
In my case, stool sample. I think that's the standard method for testing at the moment. (There are breath tests but I don't know that they're all that accurate?) There are lots of different companies that offer it. Some can do fairly basic tests (parasites only, for example) for quite cheap while some do much more expensive tests that identify pretty much everything. My doctor sent me to a place somewhere in the middle; he said you want to know more than just the parasites, but that there's no point doing the really extensive tests right now since we don't know what most of those bacteria actually DO for us, so it's more cost-effective to test the ones we know about and work on fixing them. YMMV. :) |
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More here:
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... and the programme itself can be viewed here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08d6ctr |
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I am certain that there must be! Unfortunately I'm based in Australia so all my knowledge is local and not of much use to you. I think I remember SCD Lifestyle having some informative blog posts about different stool tests and their merits and deficits, although I think they were much more focused on finding parasites in the gut rather than testing the overall bacteria profile. (Although checking for parasites is important too! My doctor also checked that but I came up clear.) I am sure that if you do some web searches there will be plenty of people with more info available. The more web searches I do on this stuff (now that I know what I'm looking for) the more and more I am finding people who are going through the same or similar things, and blogging and posting on forums about what has worked for them. Crowd sourcing this knowledge, as it were, since doctors are being so incredibly unhelpful. I'm very, very lucky to have (finally) found a GP who already has his finger on this pulse, but if I hadn't I think I would still eventually have found this path for myself through reading and experimenting on my own. I definitely understand about not wanting to be old and sick! That's a big part of my goal too. I just turned 40 the other week and even with the chronic fatigue I'm overall healthier than I was at 20. I'm looking forward to continuing to solve my health problems so I can be even healthier at 60! |
SIBO occurs when the bacteria in our gut get out of balance and overgrow.
The colon is not as clean as the small intestine and reflux, or backflow, of stool into the small intestine can colonize it with harmful bacteria. |
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