As many of you know in my practice, I constantly advise that we need to have healthy gut flora (microbiome) to have healthy bodies. That is why I advise all my patients to take a probiotic and cut simple sugars, such as sweets, juices, smoothies, overly processed carbs such as instant oatmeal and alcohol from their diet.
I have also expounded on the decline of a healthy microbiome in the soil and environment from which our food is produced which further affects our own microbiome. If we ate food grown in a healthy environment and then added in naturally fermented foods that came from this environment, we wouldn’t need a probiotic, but sadly this is not the case. As you all know I am not a big fan of most vitamin supplements, but I advocate the big three we can’t get from our diet for different reasons, namely probiotic, vitamin D and omega 3 fish oils. (I sometimes refer to these as the ‘holy trinity’, tongue in cheek).
Anyway, it looks like science may be catching up with my musings and the state of our collective digestive tracts! As you all also know I advocate a three-week diet cleanse, the modified yeast free diet, (and sometimes longer than three weeks for individual conditions) in conjunction with a probiotic to reset the healthy flora in our gut. This program is used to treat many different conditions including weight loss, irritable bowel syndrome, seasonal allergies, eczema, asthma, chronic yeast infections, chronic urinary tract infections, chronic Lyme disease, and chronic inflammatory conditions such as chronic pain and auto-immune disorders. It also will help prevent these problems in infants if the mother adheres to the regimen before, during and after pregnancy.
The article highlights fecal transplant as a way to reset healthy flora, but this is only necessary for extreme conditions such as recurrent C Diff, Otherwise the diet and the probiotic will do the job. I offer counseling on how to do this step by step in my clinical practice. Please read the article linked to above and set up an appointment if you would like to go over the diet and supplements in more detail.