Tag Archive for: probiotics

What’s Wrong with Processed Foods

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If you do an Internet search for processed foods, you’ll get a whole lot of opinions on why they’re a bad thing. There isn’t a substantial amount of research behind the opinions when you look closely. In fact, there isn’t a substantial amount of research on processed foods at all and why they’re difficult to resist. Keep in mind that I’m talking about extensive processing; fruits and vegetables that are frozen immediately have been shown to have more nutrients than fresh produce that’s been sitting in the grocery display case for a while, and canned fruits and vegetables are a close second.

What’s the problem with processed foods, other than the fat, sugar, and salt? Two things stick out in my mind. First, the act of processing alters the vitamin, mineral, and phytonutrient content of the foods. Whether we’re talking about grains such as wheat or corn, beans such as soy, or dairy such as milk, some if not most nutrients are lost in the processing.

Second, you lose the fiber, and given how little fiber adults get, that might be the most serious loss of a nutrient. Fiber acts as a prebiotic to feed the microbes in our gut and helps with satiety and digestion. Breads, pastas, rolls, bagels, and every other processed food that uses grains come up short.

I’ll add one more to the list: probiotics. Processing destroys the good bacteria and other microbes that are valuable to our health. It isn’t just what we are getting in processed foods that harmful; it’s what we’re not getting that compounds the problem.

What’s the solution? I’ll finish this up on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

Immune Boost 1-2-3 Cautions

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Someone recently asked an excellent question: “Is there any risk in taking higher amounts of echinacea?” I’ll extend that to include vitamin C, garlic, and probiotics. The answer is possibly. I’m not hedging, but it’s complicated. Let me give you some examples.

One factor that can apply to any supplement is allergies. Echinacea and garlic are plants, and you may be allergic to one of the components of the plant. Instead of reducing your allergic response, it may heighten the response, causing the watery eyes and runny nose you’re trying to avoid. There’s no way to know for sure other than trial and error. If something makes you feel worse, it goes without question that you’ll stop it immediately.

Another potential issue is your genetics; you may process a phytochemical from these plants faster or slower than typical. That means it could be metabolized out of your system before it really has a positive effect or it could take longer to metabolize and stay in your system longer. There are no genetic tests for how you’ll react to any supplement—it’s trial and error.

One other aspect that’s important is whether you take medications. No surprise that there’s incomplete research on the interaction of every plant with every medication, so there’s no way to know how an herb or nutrient will interact with your meds. Garlic may reduce the coagulation of your blood; if you’re on blood thinners, you may not be able to take garlic because it could thin your blood too much. Or you might be able to take it because of your genetics and how you metabolize it. See how complicated it gets?

What you should know is that most people will not have a problem using the 1-2-3 immune boost. If you do, do what any reasonable person would do and stop taking it. On Saturday, I’ll cover the issue of using echinacea if you have an autoimmune disease.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

Protect Yourself Before You Travel

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Paula’s cousin recently visited friends in Arizona, and after she flew home, she got a fever with all the trimmings of the flu. After last week’s posts on boosting the immune system to deal with colds and allergies, there’s a little more you need to know.

Spring break is right around the corner and if you’re traveling, you need to prepare for it. It’s especially true if you’re going to foreign countries but any time you travel, you should do one more thing besides use the 1-2-3 immune boost approach I gave you last week: take a probiotic supplement with prebiotics every day for a week before you go and every day you’re there.

Your immune system starts in the gut; if your gut is healthy, your immune system will be stronger. Probiotics are the good microbes that help us digest food and do thousands of other things to help our overall health. Prebiotics are the fiber and sugar that feed these bacteria. Adding a probiotic to the 1-2-3 regimen, beginning a week before you travel, will help when you eat foods you don’t normally eat and are exposed to viruses and bacteria that are not in your everyday environment.

After all, the idea is to relax and renew, not be forced to the sidelines.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

Nutrition Can’t Fix Everything: Your Microbiome

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In this post, I’ll cover another reason that nutrition can’t fix everything: our microbiome, the bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other microorganisms that live on and in our bodies. From birth, our microbiome is the result of contact with our mothers and others, our environment, and the foods we eat and don’t eat. It’s also the result of the antibiotics we’ve taken when we’re sick as well as those that have been in the foods we’ve eaten.

Our microbiome works best when it’s in balance; the problem is that doesn’t happen in . . .

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Extreme Food Choices

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People have always fixated on the perfect diet. From the food combiners of the early 20th Century to the current focus on the Paleolithic diet, there’s always someone touting the best and healthiest way to eat. A lecturer from Australia, Rebecca Charlotte Reynolds, recently wrote an article on food fixations and raised the question of whether the food obsessions might fall into the category of psychological disorders such as anorexia nervosa (1).

She cites three current ways of eating that can take over someone’s life in an unhealthy way: raw foods, clean foods, and the Paleolithic diet. I . . .

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DNA Barcoding in Plants

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I like to know how things work, and researching DNA barcoding in plants opened up a whole new world I was only partly familiar with. DNA barcoding is a method that examines regions on DNA to categorize animals, insects, plants, and just about everything else on this planet that has DNA.

I first learned about using DNA to identify organisms when I wrote the section on the microbiome in Real-Life Detox. Using specific regions of the DNA strand, scientists were able to identify more than 5 . . .

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Feeding Kids to Support Their Immune System

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You can probably guess what kids should eat every day to keep their immune systems healthy: foods high in antioxidants, and that’s mainly fruits and vegetables. The research on the benefits to children’s immune system is beyond contestation (one of my favorite words).

Apples, oranges, strawberries, blueberries, and on and on and on. How you present them is up to you. I would avoid fruits juices even if you juice foods at home; you want every vitamin, mineral, and phytonutrient antioxidant you can give them, and the fiber helps feed the good bacteria that are important to the . . .

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Boost Your Kid’s Immune System

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Kids have been back in school over a week now and exposed to a whole host of viruses and bacteria they didn’t see this summer; I hope yours haven’t been sick already. It’s time to talk about how to keep kids healthy this school year.

The first thing on my list is probiotics, the good bacteria. Many studies have looked at probiotics as a treatment for allergies, dermatitis, and digestive issues in infants and children. That’s the way the healthcare research is done: you’re broken, how can we fix you? Our goal is different—we . . .

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