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One of the lesser-known benefits of consuming a diet high in polyphenols is its beneficial impact on your gut bacteria.
Polyphenols help the Gut
They selectively encourage the growth of beneficial bacteria.
They are naturally occurring chemical compounds found in many of your favourite foods like blueberries and chocolate and they act like good food for your microbiome.
It contributes to good intestinal health by supporting the gut microbial balance by encouraging the production of beneficial bacteria and discouraging the growth of bad bacteria.
Benefits of Polyphenols
The portion of these foods that are beneficial to your inner health is the part that your body does not digest at all.
You see, once consumed, only about 5-10% of polyphenols are directly absorbed in the small intestine, while the rest make their way to the colon.
The undigested part of the polyphenol-rich foods that make it to the colon increases the good guys and decreases the bad guys helping create a healthy microbiome.
And with a healthy microbiome comes more energy better moods better sleep less pain happier belly and more balanced immunity.
Good health starts with the gut, so eat lots of polyphenol-rich food to keep your bugs happy and so to keep you healthy.
Foods that contain Polyphenol
They are found in foods such as tea, wine, chocolates, fruits, vegetables, and extra virgin olive oil, just to name a few.
You can benefit by specifically including apples, blueberries, plums, strawberries, cherries, raspberry, pomegranate, broccoli, spinach, rosemary, thyme, basil, curcumin, and other spices; dark chocolate, flaxseed meal, red wine, resveratrol containing foods, weak black tea, peppermint tea, green tea.
So worth looking into including more of these to support a healthier gut.
The gut microbiota, which describes the microorganisms living and growing inside your digestive tract is a hot topic right now! Exciting new research shows the benefits of probiotics and how these microbes have a profound impact on the many aspects of your health and wellbeing.
Taking probiotics (specific strains of beneficial bacteria) can positively influence these microorganisms and lead to improvements, not only in your digestive and immune health but the health of your whole body.
Is Your Gut Out of Balance?
An imbalance in the gut microbiota is linked to numerous health conditions, both within the gut and throughout the body. You may have experienced symptoms such as bloating, wind, abdominal pain, and discomfort; signs of poor immunity (e.g. frequent colds and flu); or been plagued by allergies or skin conditions such as eczema. These may arise due to disturbances to the intricate balance of intestinal bacteria.
Many common lifestyle factors including alcohol consumption, medications (e.g. antibiotics), processed foods, and stress can disrupt this delicate balance and lead to an increase in undesirable bacteria or deficiencies in beneficial bacteria.
This imbalance has been associated with conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), asthma, and autoimmune diseases (e.g. rheumatoid arthritis). In these cases, when taken in the right dosage, the benefits of probiotics are again evident when they help to restore the correct balance of bacteria and ultimately reinstate health.
It is now more important than ever to support your gastrointestinal microbiota!
How Do Probiotics Work?
Specific probiotic strains help to rebuild the disrupted microbiota and act like policemen within the gut, restoring peace amongst the ‘citizens’ of the microbiota.
Probiotics have a regulating effect on both disease-promoting and beneficial bacteria; undesirable bacteria are kept at minimal levels, meanwhile promoting the growth of beneficial bacteria.
This exciting new news is in contrast to earlier thoughts that probiotics repopulated the gut by directly replacing any bad bugs living there.
Instead, probiotics help to restore the numbers and types of beneficial bacteria unique to you; rebuilding a healthy and diverse community of beneficial microbiota, and enabling them to function at their best, so you too can feel your best!
The Correct Strains at the Right Dose
There can be significant variation between probiotic strains.
Different strains not only have different actions in your body but also deliver different health benefits. Additionally, different doses of the same strain can have varying effects on the body.
Naturopaths at Your Wellness Centre can tailor your treatment by selecting specific probiotic strains at the right dose to address your individual health concerns.
These may include:
Bifidobacterium animalis ssp lactis (BB-12®) – This super strain assists in rebuilding the gut microbiota and helps to rebalance bacteria after a course of antibiotics.
Lactobacillus rhamnosus (LGG®) – Commonly referred to as LGG®, this probiotic strain helps to regulate immune function, and in doing so may be useful for the treatment of autoimmune conditions, allergies, and eczema.
Probiotic Protection
Appropriate probiotic storage is of utmost importance to ensure the bacteria remain alive, strong, and healthy – essentially in a healthy state to restore your healthy state.
In nearly all instances, probiotics must be stored at stable temperatures within the fridge to keep them alive and active.
The only exception is when they are protected by PROTECTAIR™ technology as this has been shown to minimize moisture levels (moisture ‘activates’ probiotics, which you don’t want to happen until they are in your body!).
This technology has been developed to allow certain probiotic strains to remain out of the fridge for a set period of time, while still remaining stable and effective, so you get results.
Practitioner Recommended Probiotics Are Best
It is essential to source your probiotics based on the recommendation of a qualified Natural Health Practitioner.
This ensures that the formula contains the correct strains at the right dosage and combination to address your specific health needs.
Practitioners at Your Wellness Centre will prescribe probiotics that provide high strength, therapeutic doses of bacteria, beneficial for managing your health.
To restore peace and balance amongst the ‘citizens’ of your marvelous microbiota, ring Your Wellness Centre on 9879 9596 or contact us.
Take the step toward a healthier you!
Don’t forget to like our Facebook Page, Twitter @YWCnaturopath, and GPlus +YourwellnesscentreAu.
The identification of bowel toxicity followed by effective treatment is invaluable to many patients. Current dietary and lifestyle practices have produced an increasing number of health disorders caused by a malfunctioning digestive tract and toxicity that results from it. We start by looking at the causes of toxic bowel syndrome also referred to as Gut Toxicity.
The causes of toxic bowel syndrome are as follows:
1. Perhaps your digestion of protein is not as good as it could be due to excessive consumption and lowered stomach acid production.
2. Intestinal overgrowth of anaerobic bacteria – (bacteria that don’t need oxygen to survive) often due to maldigestion.
3. Insufficient healthy gut flora. – aerobic bacteria are necessary for healthy gut function.
4. Maybe there’s something missing in the diet. Perhaps you lack things like glutamine, vitamins A, B12, folic acid, B5. These nutritional deficiencies will cause the breakdown of the gut barrier and its ability to recover.
It’s then possible to have what is now known as leaky gut. Here the Intestinal lining could be damaged resulting in holes that allow the entry of increased levels of molecules from the gut into the bloodstream. Because these molecules are able to cause unwanted actions you could end up with problems like poorly functioning liver or liver damage and widespread inflammation in the body. Irritation, inflammation, or damage to the intestinal mucosa results.
5. Oral antibiotic therapy: Many individuals report having Thrush after taking antibiotics. This is because of the Candida overgrowth that often occurs after antibiotic therapy. Besides this, antibiotics actually disturb natural bacterial growth, causing overgrowth of putrefactive and other bad bacteria.
6. Saccharin sweetened beverages: These can lower the production of important enzymes from the pancreas and then result in poor digestion. Undigested food particles pass to the colon, resulting in more bad bacteria and increased toxicity.
7. High-stress lifestyles can cause the slow down of digestive processes producing chronic poor digestion and bowel toxicity.
8. High sugar diets: When complicated with drugs, hormones and other immune disturbing practices can cause overproduction of not only Candida but also other putrefactive or bad bacteria.
9. Over-eating: this is too much for the digestive system and a lot of undigested food particles pass into the colon, producing more toxic or putrefactive bacteria.
10. Food sensitivities and allergies: For example, casein, gluten, yeast, and other chemicals can trigger immune responses from elements in the gut. The result is the food and allergic reactions experienced by some individuals.
11. Gastrointestinal infections and infestations (bacterial, fungal, parasitic, and viral): Produce severe diarrhea, breaking down the balance of normal gastrointestinal flora.
12. Autoimmune Diseases: For example, the New England Journal of Medicine has documented that the absorption of colonic bacteria from the small intestine produced an auto-antibody cross-reaction with receptors in the brain causing Myasthenia Gravis.
Symptoms of Gut Toxicity include:
Bloating, flatulence, tiredness after eating, brain fogginess, aches and pains in the joints, diarrhoea, abdominal cramps, drowsiness after meals, constipation, halitosis, fatigue, failing memory, constant tiredness, candida infections.
Conditions that may result from the above processes are:
- Gall stones and constipation
- Coeliac disease
- Diverticulitis
- Gastric Ulcers
- Hypochlorhydria
- Inflammatory bowel disease
- Crohn’s disease
- Pancreatic insufficiency
- Irritable Bowel Syndrome
- Scleroderma
The above list emphasizes the importance of identifying toxic bowel syndrome. The cascade of related health disorders that may occur as a result of toxic bowel syndrome dramatizes the importance of both assessment and treatment of this disorder.
Correction of toxic bowel syndrome is especially important to those patients requiring nutritional support to alleviate their health problems since toxicity can interfere with the proper utilization of nutrients.
To Reverse Gut Toxicity:
This requires specific antimicrobial or antiparasitic treatment, healing of the gut, and replacing the noxious bacteria with those which are beneficial to good health.
How Long will it take?
Treatment time depends on your response to our approach.
Removal of the toxicity takes could take from 2 weeks to 6 months. Really severe cases have been known to take between 1 and 2 years.
How Will You Benefit?
Freeing the gut of toxicity and improving leaky has far-reaching effects on your future health.
You will feel so much healthier, some clients describe a feeling of lightness, “I haven’t felt this good for at least five years” and “I just feel so much more energetic”, are frequent expressions of appreciation.
Contact us or ring 98799596 for more information or to make an appointment.
Bloated, Gassy, Abdominal Cramps, Tummy Upsets…
You know how we experience the occasional upset tummy, bloating, gas or diarrhoea when we’ve eaten too much, eaten the wrong thing or while on a traveling expedition?
Well, we generally know why and know that these occasional episodes are bound to pass. BUT, what if you experience these and other symptoms not only occasionally but just about all the time!
With this in mind, during April we will be covering topics such as:
– Irritable bowel in which SIBO, Leaky Gut, FODMAPs, Yeast/parasites/bacterial infection, as well as stress, could be implicated
(Since the brain communicates with the digestive tract, we often find that when we are under stress, the digestive system can play up!)
– We will also touch on Diverticulitis, Coeliac Disease, Crohn’s disease and Ulcerative Colitis.
(If there is anything else you would like us to cover, please let us know.)
– I have been making Kombucha – so I thought I’d share the recipe and the technique I was given by our lovely friend Maireid.
-Do watch out for our weekly emails and keep in touch on Facebook if this is a topic that interests you or anybody else you may know.
– And do make use of the attached $39 gift voucher.
The bodily process of digestion and absorption is one of the most important to our health. Hippocrates made this statement over two thousand years ago and it can be regarded as more true today than ever.
He put it succinctly “All Disease Begins in the Gut”
So let’s take some of this ancient wisdom on board, as relevant today as it was two thousand years ago! And aim to keep the gut as healthy as possible.
To hear about some of the causes of IBS, listen…
Watch IBS Treatment in Melbourne video here.
Simply “like” us on Facebook andTry this Kombucha Tea recipe below.
Kombucha Tea
Ingredients:
- 1 SCOBY (I got one from our friend Maireid)
- 8 teabags black tea
- 1 cup sugar
- 4 litres of water
- 1 4-litres jar
- 1 Porous tea towel
Method:
- Boil 8 cups water.
- Add 8 tea bags of black tea and allow to steep for 20 minutes.
- Add 1 cup of sugar and stir well.
- Allow the steeped tea to cool to room temperature and pour into a clean 4 litres container.
- Add more boiled and cooled water (room temperature) to the jar to make 4 litres and place the SCOBY into the jar on top of the tea. It will float. Your hands must be perfectly clean.
- Cover with a tea towel and secure with a rubber band.
** Allow the homemade kombucha tea to ferment out of direct sunlight for 7-14 days. The fermentation time will vary depending on how sweet or sour you want the homemade kombucha to be.
** Sample by moving the SCOBY aside and taking a little out with a clean spoon. (I used the little tap on the bottom of my jar.)
** After this time, your tea may be slightly carbonated and will be tea-flavoured.
And ready for you to enjoy its health-giving benefits of about 100ml each morning.
For more health tips, visit our Your Wellness Centre Facebook page.
Kombucha Tea is loved by many because of its taste. The internet is full of stories of its benefits. However, research doesn’t yet support its health-promoting properties, but it is generally considered safe to drink when carefully prepared.
It is known to be a good source of probiotics, enzymes, and beneficial acids, and also some B-vitamins. It can be made at home as above or bought from some health food stores and supermarkets.
As is the case with any raw/fermented product, those with any health condition or who are pregnant/nursing should check with a health professional before consuming.
Take the step toward a healthier you!
Call 9879 9596 and book an appointment today!
