Tag Archives: Yeast Infection

Questions & Answers

Alcohol And Your Gut: What You Need To Know

Will alcohol affect your gut health?

Yes. Alcohol will affect your gut in several ways.

If you’ve been struggling with a health problem for some time and you drink alcohol regularly, it’s time to put that drink aside.

If you have been going to different doctors trying to find out what’s wrong with you and still no answers, then giving up alcohol is an important step. This is particularly true if you have histamine issues, allergies, or recurring digestive issues.

I don’t care how much or what kind of alcohol you drink. Whether it’s glass or a bottle or it’s red wine or gin, regular drinking is going to impact your gut health.

Alcohol impacts the four basic groups of bacteria that live in your gut. The bacteria populations are altered and moved around.

Further readings:

You’ll only truly know to what extent your gut has been affected by alcohol by giving it up for at least six months. That may seem like a crazy thing to do if you drink regularly, but the difference between drinking and not drinking is profound when it comes to gut health.

Some people claim that red wine is better for your gut due to the polyphenol content. And red wine can indeed increase the amount of certain beneficial bacteria. But that benefit is offset by the impact of alcohol on the gut and liver.

Alcohol slows metabolism down. It affects hormonal health and increases the activity of inflammatory pathways.

Denial about the impact of alcohol on your gut won’t help anybody.
I recommend giving up alcohol for a significant amount of time and observing what happens to your digestive health.

A healthy gut microbiome will improve the physical and mental aspects of your health.
In my experience, bowel movements nearly always improve when people give up alcohol. In most cases, health improves across the board when alcohol is eliminated from the diet.

Sources:

Questions & Answers

8 Ways To Make Your Meals Gut-Friendly

There are several steps you can take to make sure the meals you are cooking are gut-friendly.

1. Always use fresh food: There’s no substitute for fresh food. Fresh food, not canned and processed food, gives you the best possible outcome.

It’s great if you can grow your own vegetables but, if you can’t, try getting them from a farmers’ market. The fresher the better, and the more nutritious and tasty.

2. Eat alliums every day: Alliums include garlic, onions, chives, and shallots. Alliums are a fantastic food for the gut. This group of plants contains fibers that help build up the level of beneficial bacteria in the gut. Alliums also help keep the blood thin and clean.

I think ginger and garlic go very well together. And ginger is also very good for your gut.

3. Each brassicas every day: This group of vegetables includes cauliflower, broccoli, kale, bok choy, and Brussel sprouts. Brassicas are extremely nutrient-densee and cancer-prevening.

Brassicas are superb steamed or added to stir-fries.

4. Use sharp knives: Don’t use cheap, junky, crappy knives. Using sharp, Japanese knives makes it a real joy to cut things for your meals.

Along with good knives, I use good stainless steel or cast iron pans. I don’t use aluminum.

Further readings:

5. Cook at home rather than eating out: When you cook your own meals, you know exactly what goes into each dish. When you eat out, there could be MSG or other chemicals that you don’t’ need in your food.

If you do eat out, pick something fresh and healthy like Japanese food.

6. Include some cultured or fermented food into your diet on a daily basis: Even if it’s only a small amount of yogurt or sauerkraut, it’s still good idea.

Cultured and fermented foods will complement the allium and brassica vegetables in your diet. All of these foods are good gut-building choices.

7. Eat fresh fruit every day: I eat a lot of berries, avocados, sour apples, and other healthy fruits. I usually eat three to four pieces of fresh fruit every day.

8. Use cooking methods that preserve the nutrients in your food: Steaming and stir-frying are good options.

Sources:

Questions & Answers

Gut Flora And Artificial Sweeteners: What You Need To Know

Is it a good idea to drink diet drinks? Is it okay for the beneficial bacteria in your gut?

Scientists that exposed gut bacteria to six major classes of artificial sugars found that it had an adverse effect on the flora. The gut bacteria quickly began to produce toxins in response to being exposed to artificial sugars.

Artificial sugars have now been linked to so many different types of diseases, like reducing your risk of getting pregnant and an increased risk of stroke.

Further readings:

Artificial sweeteners have also been linked to diabetes, obesity, and dementia. More recently, the link has been made to a disruption of the bowel flora.

To my mind, it is clear that artificial sweeteners are not something you want to have in your body.

People who drink diet pop should be very careful. They could be altering their gut bacteria for the worse.

Artificial sugars aren’t just in diet drinks. They are found in well over half of the foods found in supermarkets in America. It’s entirely possible that you are unknowingly eating these sugars and affecting your bowel flora.

Make sure you read the package of everything you buy to see if it contains any artificial sugar. If it does, put it back. You don’t want to be eating that kind of stuff.

Sources:

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.

Related articles:

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.

Sources:

Questions & Answers

Finding The Right Doctor For You

Having an unsupportive doctor can cause a lot of problems. Many people I’ve followed for a prolonged period have shared with me how unhappy they are with their doctor. They could be unhappy with their naturopathic, western medicine, acupuncture, or whatever kind of doctor.

Most doctors are good people. They don’t set out to be unsupportive
Doctors are often very busy and stressed. Medicine has changed since I was a child. Sometimes it feels like a supermarket; it’s so fast-paced.

The days of a family doctor who knows many generations of a family has generally come and gone in big cities. But, you can still find lots of caring doctors.

Does your current doctor pull the wool over your eyes, bully you, or make you feel bad in any way. That is not what he or she should be doing.

I don’t like it when doctors disempower their patients. If your doctor makes you feel like a foo, incapable of making your own decisions, then you have an unsupportive doctor. You need to find a new doctor.

There are plenty of nice doctors out there, and you deserve to be heard.

You wouldn’t put up with being disrespected by an electrician or a plumber, right? Your health is well worth spending the time to find a doctor who will listen and work with you.

This is why many people come to naturopaths like me. Our profession takes the time to listen to people. We listen to things and take things seriously that often the medical profession disregard.

I don’t disregard anything a patient tells me.

Related articles:

Some people may exaggerate a symptom up, or they may downplay a symptom. A good practitioner needs to be a psychologist to understand human nature, to work these kinds of things out,

How much time does your doctor spend with you? Five minutes? 10 minutes? That’s not good enough. That’s only enough time to say hello and goodbye.

It’s not uncommon for a conventional doctor to see 40 or 50 patients in a day. I’ve never seen any more than seven or eight patients per day in all my career.

I prefer not to take any more than two or max three new cases per day, and the rest of the day, see followup patients.

When you leave your practitioner’s office, you should feel inspired. You should feel confident.

You should feel happy and have some type of a plan in mind on which direction you’re going

I’ve always tried to make people feel good about themselves. It’s difficult sometimes when you work with mental health patients. But that’s the thing. When you leave your doctor’s office, you should feel good.

If you leave your doctor’s office feeling bad, it’s going to undermine your health and cause you more stress.

You need to have a positive relationship with the professional that’s going to help you through your health challenges.

Don’t give up. There are plenty of excellent doctors out there.

Sources: