Tag Archives: Gut bacteria

Questions & Answers

Your Weight And Your Gut

Losing weight and keeping it off is greatly influenced by your gut bacteria.

If you look back to the ’50s, there was a big push for people to gain weight. It was post-war, and a lot of food industries weren’t up and running properly. People were primarily eating real food.

The artificial foods that came to the forefront in the 60s changed things dramatically.
Today it’s all about losing weight on this diet or that diet. There is no shortage of factory food that damages our health rather than building it up. You need to eat the right food and have the right metabolic rate to get the kind of physique your want. The gut flora plays an instrumental role in weight management.

The following are the steps I recommend to anyone who wants to lose weight or keep their weight in a healthy range.

1. Firstly, you want little to no inflammation in the body. Your immune system needs to be functioning properly so that your gut doesn’t react to gluten or lectin or any other compound in food. Fixing a leaky gut solves a lot of problems that people have with food.

I’ve helped a lot of people fix leaky gut by removing junk from their diet. This allows their intestinal membrane to heal, and the excessive permeability disappears. Low and behold, they can eat foods they haven’t been able to tolerate for years. Now their gut is in a better position to properly digest a wide range of food.When you eat a broader range of foods, you end up with a much more diverse microbiota, which is essential for building good gut and immune health.

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2. Foods with the right amount and type of fiber are essential. These types of foods help control your appetite and metabolic rate. Fiber contributes to a feeling of satiety, so you’re not tempted to eat a sleeve of cookies or a couple of doughnuts. The lack of fiber in the classic ketogenic dieting concerns me. I think it contains too much meat, too much fat, and not enough carbs, including resistant starches.

3. Optimize your gut health. An unhealthy GI tract can increase your tendency to store fat. Many people with poor gut health also have decreased insulin sensitivity resulting in higher blood sugar and insulin levels. This leads to more inflammation, more fat storage, and increased risk of diabetes and heart disease.

It’s crucial to eat the right kinds of fiber, fats, and protein to keep the gut healthy. At the same time, avoid antibiotics if at all possible. This class of drugs can reduce the levels of beneficial bacteria in your gut. When that happens, the door is open for harmful bacteria and yeast to overgrow. This overgrowth can impair your immune system, distort your appetite, increase fat storage, cause fatigue, and trigger brain fog. When you feel that bad, it’s a lot more likely that you’ll reach for the second burger and extra ice cream cone. A healthy gut helps you make healthy food decisions and vice versa.

4. Build up the right balance of microbiota in your gut. I’ve been advocating this for 30 plus years, and my recommendations are being more and more validated by scientific research. Having a healthy mix of bacterial species in your guts helps maintain your metabolic rate, your weight, and your physique.

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Questions & Answers

Start Young: Childhood Habits Make A Difference To Your Gut Flora

I read a fascinating study out of Montreal that followed 22 children over eight years. The study looked at the impact of childhood habits on gut flora.

This study was conducted at the Centre hospitalier universitaire Sainte-Justine, in Montreal, Quebec. The 22 children had multiple stool samples done over the eight years. What the researchers found was that children who were fit, sleeping well, and who had a generally healthy lifestyle, tended to have a much more diverse microbiome when they got older.

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In other words, childhood habits have a significant impact on the biodiversity of the microbiome. If you extrapolate those findings to adulthood, we can expect better mental, physical, and emotional health in those with a healthy lifestyle during childhood.

Encouraging your child to be fit, active, eat healthy foods, and put down the Xbox once in a while can make a big difference to their health in the long run.

Remember that the work I do is evidence-based. It’s not hocus pocus sort of fairy dust. It’s science-based information I like to present to people here because that’s what it’s all about. It combines the best of what science offers and the best of what nature offers. I like that sweet spot right in the middle there. I’ve always worked on that premise.

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Questions & Answers

The Connection Between Your Mood And Your Microbiome

How do gut and bacteria affect your mood?

It’s interesting. All the years that I practiced as a naturopath, I had this strong feeling that gut health had a significant impact on mood. I saw the relationship quite early on in my practice.

I noticed years ago that people who ate vegetables, lean meats, fruit, seeds and nuts, and whole grains with only light alcohol consumption had a much better mood than those eating potato chips, pizza, and soda pop. People who ate a lot of junk tended to be much more depressed.
Scientists are now validating my observations.

I think one of the first people that noticed the link between the GI tract and mood was a doctor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Dr. Sven Peterson is an experimental biologist who made the connection between the gut and the brain way back in the 1980s or 90s.

Now, I’m excited by all the different research institutions which are researching the impact of the microbiome on mental health conditions like depression and anxiety.

Dr. Cray is a scientist who has compiled a list of about 60 substances in the gut that impact neural response. We know that that a lot of the bacteria in the gut produce chemicals that affect nerve endings. These chemicals can influence whether your mood is good or bad.

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There are gut bacteria called Dialister and Coprococcus that can influence the brain.

Coprococcus produces butyrate, an anti-inflammatory short-chain fatty acid. Coprococcus also can impact the dopaminergic pathway, which is the pleasure pathway in our brain. In other words, this bacteria may be able to make people feel better.

We don’t know yet what factors are causative and what factors are just associated. But we can say there is a connection between the gut flora and our brain.

That’s the reason I tell people to avoid artificial sweeteners. I recommend getting rid of all the junk in your diet.

If you eat junk, you’re going to feel awful. If you eat great food, you’re going to look and feel great.

Eat well, feel well. That’s a motto worth following.

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Questions & Answers

What’s The Connection Between Gut Flora And GERD?

Restoring the gut bacteria to a healthy mix can help improve GERD.

You will get even better results if you identify the underlying cause of the GERD. For example, it could be related to a hiatal hernia. Spicy food could be contributing to your reflux.

As you make the diet and lifestyle changes that will reduce the GERD, you also want to focus on restoring and improving the bacteria in your gut.

The goal should be to get rid of harmful bacteria, remove or reduce the amount of yeast in your gut, and address SIBO. Revamping your gut flora can occur at the same time as you’re working on eliminating GERD.

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I suggest looking into probiotics, antifungals, antibacterials, antimicrobials, and other natural treatments rather than pharmaceutical drugs.

I’ve worked with many patients over the years who got rid of their reflux disease entirely by identifying some key triggers. These clients made changes to their diet, reduced the size of their meals, became more active, and made sure not to eat too close to bedtime. They also focused on getting more prebiotic foods into their diet.

Working on eating good foods that help to build good bacterial health is key. Likewise, eating foods that help curb bacterial dysbiosis is also important.

I recommend tackling GERD and your gut flora at the same time. You’ll get much more improvement in your reflux if you also work on the health of your bowels.

The proton pump inhibitors that many people take for GERD can interfere with healthy gut flora. That’s why so many people with reflux, also need to address their bacteria in their GI tract.

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