Tag Archives: bacteria

Questions & Answers

Bringing Your Beneficial Bacteria Back

When you kill good bacteria in your gut, are they gone forever? Is it just a matter of popping a probiotic, and they’ll come back again?

Firstly, even when you take antibiotics, the beneficial bacteria aren’t entirely wiped out. The levels go down to a tiny number, but they still hang in there. I’ve never had a client experience a complete eradication of all their beneficial bacteria. The trick is to get them back to a high level.

Keeping marine fish has taught me something. I love to keep coral fish, corals, and tropical stuff in my talk. What I’ve learned is just how important it is to keep the parameters at the right level all the time. If I have a colony of coral that’s looking sickly, it’s probably my fault. I’ve either got something wrong with the water or put too much food in there.

When I get all the parameters in the tank correct – the pH, the temperature, the salt content, and the trace elements – the coral looks fantastic.

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The gut is the same way. When the parameters of your diet and lifestyle are in working order, your gut will thrive. You need to eat the right foods, chew properly, include resistant starch in your diet, and manage the stress in your life.

If your parameters are out of balance, your gut flora will suffer. If you add insult to injury by adding antibiotics to the mix the beneficial bacteria in your GI tract pay the price. I have seen a few patients who never bounce back from antibiotic use, but most patients recover. The recovery can range from reasonable to full.

The extent of your recovery depends on what you’re eating and how you’re living. You don’t have to eat clean all the time, or eat keto, or have a specific dietary regime to get the microbiome back in balance. What suits one person may not suit you at all. Your gut health plan needs to be customized to your unique biology and psychology.

Take a holistic approach to gut recovery. Supplements are important in some stages of recovery, but diet, stress, sleep, and lifestyle matter too.

Sources:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29854813/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28487606/

Questions & Answers

Lessons Learned from Years of Stool Testing

There’s lots to learn from stool testing.

In my opinion, it’s a big mistake not to get a comprehensive stool analysis if you have a gut problem.

In my opinion, trying to fix your gut without getting a stool test is like trying to fix your car without knowing the problem. You’ve got to take the car to someone who knows cars. The same is true for fixing your GI tract.

High-quality results from stool testing require using accredited labs with years of experience. I have had excellent working relationships with both Doctor’s Data out of Chicago and Genova Diagnostics out of North Carolina.

The best way to assess the microbes in your gut is to do a comprehensive stool analysis (CSA). A CSA also allows us to look at digestion and immune functions. Stool testing gives us measures of the levels and balance in the gut flora. We’re going to get information about pathogens, parasites, yeast, and beneficial bacteria.

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The only way you’re going to detect parasites, and yeast and bacteria in your gut is through proper laboratory testing. Colonic cleansing, hydrotherapy, and electronic machines that claim to be the answer aren’t going to give the snapshot of your gut flora that you need as a starting point.

Stool testing is helpful at the beginning of treatment to get a baseline. You can re-test after a period of treatment to see if your gut is responding. It’s a process. My approach has always been to test first, put a treatment protocol in place, and then test again later – several times if necessary – to ensure treatment is generating the intended results.

I’m absolutely, 100% convinced that stool testing is the most effective, definitive way to move forward if you have a gut problem. Stool testing removes the guesswork from diagnosis and treatment planning. Don’t rely on self-diagnosis or Google to determine what’s going on in your gut.

Make sure that you work with a practitioner who has expertise and experience when it comes to stool testing. Naturopathic physicians have a high level of training, but you still have to avoid the bad apples.

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Questions & Answers

Why You Should Keep Your Gut Flora Balanced

What’s the difference between good and bad bacteria?

It wasn’t that long ago when scientists thought that most bacteria were bad and needed killing. The importance of bacteria to human digestion and health hadn’t been recognized. But now we know very differently.

Bacteria help keep us alive. An imbalance in bacteria causes problems, but bacteria are vital to human well-being.

There are many species of bacteria in the gut. Some have the potential to cause a lot of problems. Some even have the potential to kill you.

All bacteria need to be kept in balance. Even bacteria that are generally beneficial can cause problems if there counts go to high.

Scientists have done enough research to recognize the difference between the good, bad, and the ugly bacteria in the gut. For example, Clostridium perfringens can cause severe problems when it grows too fast. Antibiotics can trigger the imbalance that allows Clostridium to get out of control, sometimes to the extent of being fatal.

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Salmonella is another bacterium that lives in the gut but, through food poisoning, it can increase in numbers and make a person very, very sick.

Parasites and viruses can upset the bacterial balance in the gut. Remember that most of these microorganisms live in the body in tiny amounts in normal circumstances. They don’t cause any problems until their numbers increase and they shift the balance in the gut.

Imbalances can be triggered by medication, stress, traveling, or a poor diet. One of the reasons I recommend eating cultured or fermented foods is that it helps keep the gut flora balanced. One of the best things you can do to keep your gut balanced is to avoid taking antibiotics if at all possible.

If you go back in time, you’ll see that people have been eating cultured and fermented food as far back as we go. They knew that these foods settled the tummy.

You shouldn’t have to fear bacteria. Most people tend to keep a good balance in their gut. Do your best to keep it that way.

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Questions & Answers

What You Should Know About Garlic and Your Gut

Let’s talk about garlic and bacteria.

Many websites are good at bashing garlic, and saying that it indiscriminately kills good and bad bacteria. They suggest avoiding garlic in your diet. Some sites claim that garlic is too pungent and contains chemicals that have an overly powerful effect on the body. A lot of these websites are Ayurvedic websites that don’t like onions or garlic in the diet in general. But, there are generally no scientific links to support the negative opinions of garlic.

Instead, some studies demonstrate garlic having beneficial properties when it comes to GI health. Garlic has not been shown to destroy beneficial gut bacteria. It turns out that various strains of Lactobacillus are resistant to fresh, raw garlic. There is also evidence from studies that garlic is a prebiotic.

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Of course, everything in moderation. If you eat a pound of raw garlic daily, you’re going to wipe everything out, including your relationships. No one is going to come near you. But, if you eat one or two cloves of garlic per day mixed into your food, you’ll be fine.

Garlic can help keep the blood thin, regulate blood pressure, and increase resistance to viruses in the blood. It’s a superb food but should be used carefully.

It’s not uncommon to read studies that completely contradict each other. When it comes to garlic, I think it helps to look at how it was used for hundreds of years by many different populations. It was used so extensively because of the benefits it generated. This is one of the reasons garlic is still around today.

In my opinion, science has validated garlic as a superfood in terms of its positive effects on the body. I put garlic in the same category as fresh salmon, avocados, blueberries, black currents, and 90% dark chocolate. Regularly consuming small amounts of these superfoods will have a profound effect on your health. Eaten in moderation, I have no concerns about garlic killing beneficial gut bacteria.

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Questions & Answers

Do Beneficial Bacteria Communicate With Your Immune System?

There is a fascinating study that was undertaken to try and understand if and how beneficial bacteria communicate with the human immune system.

About 50 years ago, they used a 2D electron microscopy technique to discover that beneficial bacteria hang on to the bowel wall. It’s almost like the bacteria have a little grappling hook that can attach themselves, a bit like a mountain climber goes up a mountain.

For many years, scientists did not understand how gut bacteria communicated with the immune system.

In recent years, researchers used a unique tomography technique to look at bacteria in mice. Using this approach, the scientists confirmed that bacteria in the gut of mice have a grappling hook.

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The bacteria attach themselves to the gut wall. The immune system detects the bacteria as being a normal part of the body. The immune system will communicate with tiny little packets of protein that get transferred from the bacteria into the cells of the gut wall, and then into the immune system.

It’s a bit like a docking procedure. It docks a little bit like, I suppose, how it would happen with the International Space Station. Essentially, the bacteria docks and locks onto the gut wall and then signals to the immune system. The bacteria send chemical messages but also receive communications from the internal immune system.

The immune system becomes charged up and ready to attack other kinds of pathogens.

Essentially, science is validating how beneficial bacteria contribute to the health of humans. Science is also clarifying why a healthy, beneficial gut flora is so essential to the human digestive system.

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