Have you ever wondered why so many seemingly unrelated health issues—like hormonal acne, period pain, fatigue, and digestive troubles—often appear together? The answer lies in the intricate relationship between your gut and your hormones. From processing nutrients essential for hormone production to eliminating excess oestrogen, your gut plays a pivotal role in keeping your hormones balanced.

In this post, I’ll explore how nurturing your gut can be the key to unlocking better hormonal health and overall well-being.

How Gut Health Influences Hormones

1. Microbiome and Hormonal Metabolism
   Your gut microbiota—the ecosystem of bacteria in your digestive tract—plays a critical role in regulating hormones. Specific bacteria in the microbiome metabolize and recycle hormones like oestrogen through the “oestrobolome.” An imbalanced microbiome, or dysbiosis, can lead to excess estrogen recirculation, increasing the risk of PMS, endometriosis, and estrogen-dominant conditions.
2. Nutrient Absorption
   The gut is responsible for absorbing key nutrients (like B vitamins, zinc, and magnesium) required for hormone production. Altered absorption can lead to deficiencies of these nutrients which are vital for healthy hormone balance.
3. Oestrogen Detoxification
   It also helps eliminate excess hormones, such as estrogen, through bowel movements. Issues like constipation or dysbiosis may reintroduce excess hormones into circulation, exacerbating imbalances.
4. Stress and the Gut-Brain Axis
   This connection goes both ways, as gut issues can affect stress hormones due to the role of the gut bacteria in production of neurotransmitters and cortisol levels. Chronic stress impacts your gut lining and microbiome diversity, impairing digestion and increasing inflammation. This can disrupt adrenal hormones, leading to fatigue, poor sleep, and heightened PMS symptoms. It’s a vicious cycle.
5. Histamine and Ovarian Activity
   Dysbiosis can cause an overproduction of histamine, a compound involved in immune and allergic responses but also strongly involved in conditions like endometriosis and IBS. High histamine levels can stimulate the ovaries to produce more estrogen, exacerbating conditions like oestrogen dominance and premenstrual symptoms.

Signs Your Gut and Hormones Are Out of Sync

• Persistent digestive issues (bloating, constipation, reflux, nausea, poor appetite or diarrhea).
• Hormonal symptoms like acne, mood swings, or irregular periods.
• Low energy or brain fog that doesn’t improve with sleep or rest.
• Skin conditions such as eczema, acne or easy welting.

Steps to Support Your Gut and Hormonal Health

• Dietary Choices
  • Incorporate fibre-rich foods (vegetables, legumes, and whole grains) to feed healthy bacteria.
  • Add fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, and kefir, which provide beneficial probiotics (not as much of this if you have histamine issues).
  • Have a variety of plant foods to help provide beneficial nutritional compounds and a variety of fibre types, which reduces inflammation in the gut and supports microbiome diversity.
  • Limit inflammatory foods, including sugar, alcohol, and processed items, to reduce systemic inflammation
• Supplement Strategically
  • Use strain-specific probiotics that are specific to your health concerns to support gut diversity and hormone metabolism. Consult a naturopath to find the right strains for your needs.
• Feed the gut bugs
  • Specific prebiotic fibres can help to reduce the overgrowth of bacteria which impair oestrogen detoxification.
  • Glucomman, found in konjac noodles are helpful in reducing betaglucoradinase.
  • PHGG is a low fodmap prebiotic fibre that is a good allrounder, helping to regulate bowel motions and supporting microbiome balance.
• Stress Management
  • Chronic stress and poor sleep disrupt the gut-brain axis, which can dysregulate hormones. Incorporate stress-reduction techniques like yoga, meditation, or gentle walks to calm the nervous system
• Hydration and Gentle Detoxification
  • Drinking sufficient water supports bowel regularity and toxin elimination. Simple rituals like starting the day with warm water and lemon or apple cider vinegar can enhance digestion.
  • Adequate fibre and water helps with regular bowel motions which is important because you need regular bowel motions to support oestrogen detoxification and clearance.
• Restorative Practices
  • Improve sleep to regulate cortisol and support nightly hormone repair.
  • Incorporate gentle, restorative exercise, such as walking or pilates, to avoid over-stressing the adrenals.

Long-Term Benefits

Balancing your gut is the foundation for hormonal health. By addressing digestive issues, supporting your microbiome, and managing inflammation, you can improve symptoms such as period irregularities, skin problems, and fatigue.

By healing your gut, you’re not only improving digestion but also empowering your body to regulate hormones naturally. Balanced hormones mean better skin, more energy, fewer mood swings, better hormone balance.

Supporting your gut is a long-term investment in your health. By adopting these practices and seeking personalized care from a naturopath, you can achieve better balance and resilience in both your gut and hormones.

Disclosure: Links to products are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase.

The post The Connection Between Your Gut and Hormonal Health appeared first on Alison Mitchell Naturopath.

Gut Health

All disease begins in the gut – Hippocrates.

Your digestive system is more important for your overall health than you probably realise. It’s so much more than whether you do your number two’s regularly: digestive health impacts on your immune system, inflammation, hormone balance, mood, energy, skin, brain health and more!

Naturopaths and other holistic health practitioners have long been banging on about the importance of ‘healing the gut’ for a wide range of digestive disorders and overall wellbeing. In the last few decades, research into the importance of a healthy digestive bacteria balance (our ‘microbiome’) and digestive lining have been booming.

Put simply, the digestive system is a hollow tube ranging from mouth to anus, and is actually a continuation of our skin (just in a different format). You can imagine it like you’re a donut! And think about this: everything inside your digestive tract is actually outside of your body. Along this tube the surface of the skin changes, e.g. in the stomach there is a thick coating of mucous which helps to protect against the strong acids that are created there, and in the intestines the surface changes, developing a lot of finger like folds and protrusions called villi. Villi are designed to increase the surface area for both absorption of nutrients and room for immune cells. Almost like in a factory chain, other glands and organs will come into play, depositing enzymes and acids at various points that help us break down our food more effectively.

The bugs that live in your gut

If I told you that your body contains 10 times more bacteria than human cells, would you be reaching for the soap? Well you don’t have to worry because the majority of these bugs are working to keep you healthy. They are actually so interconnected with us, that we are now considered to be a ‘super-organism’ (1) (2).

The majority of the bacteria exist in your digestive tract, and there they work to detoxify harmful chemicals, process nutrients (and in some cases they actually create nutrients!), control the unfriendly bacteria that live there (yes there are usually always some bad guys present, about 15%, but the state of your good bugs determines whether the baddies cause a problem), control the immune system, produce energy for the rest of the body and much, much more.

The Goodies

There are over 400 known types of bacteria within our digestive tract. In some people there are more, and in others who may be eating a processed diet or have had damage to their gut flora, the diversity of these bacteria are significantly reduced. Interestingly, the bacteria in our gut are different throughout the different stages of our life.

Our friendly bacteria can be damaged by certain medications and lifestyle habits. Antibiotics are one of the most well known causes of damage to our friendly bacteria, and recently it has been discovered that some of our good bacteria may never recover after a course of antibiotics* (3).

Antibiotics, while often over used can sometimes be necessary and in some cases are life savers. Limiting their use and ensuring that if taken they are used correctly can help to prevent the development of antibiotic resistance. Consider your options before taking antibiotics, and if you do have to take antibiotics then see a practitioner who can guide you on how best to mop up at the damage.

Feeding the Good Guys

Whereas Probiotics are the organisms, Prebiotics are their food.  The use of prebiotics is often neglected, but it’s an important part of recolonising your gut. You can get various isolated prebiotics in supplement form, or you can consume a variety of foods which contain these compounds, particularly those high in soluble fibre.

Fermented foods are another key tool in keeping your digestive system happy. The act of fermentation allows beneficial bacteria that naturally live on the food to grow, and it also makes a whole host of nutrients within the food more bioavailable (meaning we can get more out of it). You can buy fermented food, or grow it yourself.

You should aim to have a variety of fermented foods~ and prebiotic foods consistently.

Regularly chow down on these to keep your good bugs thriving*:

• Almonds
• Apricots
• Asparagus
• Avocado
• Banana (especially green)
• Beetroot
• Garlic
• Jerusalem artichokes
• Kefir~
• Kimchi~
• Kombucha~
• Lentils
• Plantain
• Pumpkin
• Sauerkraut~
• Sweet Potato
• Witlof and Wombok
• Yoghurt (free from added sugar and chemicals)~
• Zucchini

* If you have Fructose Malabsorption, some of these foods may cause digestive discomfort. Seek advice from your health practitioner if you are unsure.

The Baddies

There are a huge range of unfriendly pathogens that if allowed to get out of control can cause all sorts of havoc in your digestive system.  Some can even cause trouble with your mood. Chronic infections can result in a wide variety of symptoms that are often unexplained such as aches and pains, fatigue, brain fog, unexplained inflammation and recurrent infections –fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome are just a couple of conditions that can have a chronic infection as an underlying driver (4) (5).

There are a huge range of organisms that lie dormant in our digestion: many, many forms of bacteria, viruses, protozoa (e.g. malaria and giardia), fungi, yeasts and parasites can exist in our gut.  Some of them can be deadly killers, and others may not be lethal but can result in a variety of nasty symptoms.  Our immune system, digestive juices and the presence of our good bugs are what keep it all in check.

The Gut and Your Immune System

“The immune system present in the gut makes more immunological decisions in a day than the rest of the immune system does in a lifetime”.  (6)

If your immune system isn’t behaving itself properly, you might want to consider that your digestive system is the culprit.

Your digestive system has a special mucosal lining over the surface of your intestines, and the health of your gut flora (the complex, extremely important colony of bacteria within your digestive system, also known as the microbiome) has a huge amount of immune decisions to make on a daily basis – it has to deal with bacteria, viruses and food, and decide each time whether it is a friend or foe. It is via this mechanism that your gut health can contribute towards skin conditions such as eczema and psoriasis as well as autoimmune conditions such as SLE (Lupus), Rheumatoid arthritis, Graves disease and more.

The gut reports to the immune system

There is a special type of cell within the digestive system called a dendritic cell.  This cell is responsible for determining whether our immune system should be on high alert or not.  Occasionally this cell will extend a little feeler (almost like a tentacle) and take a handful of whatever is in your digestive system to examine, to then report back to the rest of the immune system whether everything is okay or not.  This can explain why your diet can have an effect on allergic conditions such as hayfever and eczema, as well as autoimmune conditions (7).

Immune cells in the gut

There are also a lot of other players involved in the gut, such as the immune cells Immunoglobulin A (sIgA) and certain T lymphocytes.  sIgA helps to protect the epithelial layer from being inhabited by bacteria and viruses.  This helpful immunoglobin is actually produced by lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell) which are actually created by Bifidobacteria (a good bacteria that exists mostly in the colon).  Unfortunately, Bifidobacteria are easily damaged, especially by antibiotics.

Enzymes do more than digest food

When you think about digestive enzymes, you’ll probably be thinking that they’re there to break down your food so it’s primed for absorbing.  They also have another important role to play, and that’s in breaking down substances that might be harmful to your immune system.  Due to poor eating habits, the secretion of enzymes is compromised in a large proportion of people.  Implementing habits such as chewing each mouthful more and taking time to enjoy and concentrate on your meal are helpful for stimulating the cephalic phase of digestion – where your brain tells the rest of the digestive system to get ready for food, and consequently more enzymes and acids are produced.

The Gut and Your Mood

The state of our intestinal lining and the balance of bacteria within our digestive system have a major role to play in the production of our neurotransmitters: chemical transmitters that tell our brain whether we should be feeling such ways as happy, sad, agitated, or calm.

When the balance of our gut bacteria (collectively referred to as the microbiome) is affected, this can affect your mood.  Studies have found that the microbiome can have a major impact on stress levels and anxiety (8).  In fact, by treating imbalances in our microbiota, it is possible to support a wide range of mental health disorders (9), (10), (11), (12), (13).

The second brain

The nerves in your digestive system are constantly speaking to your central nervous system.  If your gut is irritated for some reason – say you’ve eaten something that you’re intolerant to (like gluten, for example), you’ve generally got a bad diet, there’s an imbalance in your microbiome (that’s your collective gut bacteria, remember) or you’ve got an infection – this can create an inflammatory reaction and will certainly make you irritated as well.

We know that depression is both associated with, and worsened by inflammation.  This inflammation in the brain can be driven by inflammation in the gut, which can be caused by intestinal permeability (leaky gut) and bacterial imbalances (dysbiosis).  Treating leaky gut can help reduce the severity of depression (10), (14), (15), (16), (17).

Neurotransmitters in our gut

Serotonin is produced in large amounts in our digestive system.  In people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) there is too much serotonin in their digestive system.  This is why antidepressants known as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) can improve the symptoms of IBS: these act by reducing the amount of serotonin taken into cells in the rest of our body which allows more to get into the brain.  However in some instances anti-depressants can affect the gut negatively, because if you weren’t making enough serotonin in the gut in the first place, you can end up with even lower levels in the digestive tract and so it can become irritated, affectively you’ll get a depressed gut (18), (19).

A vicious cycle

When your gut is upset, you feel upset.  But stress can affect your digestive system just as much as it affects your mood.  It can impair the secretion of digestive acids, slow down the motility of the gut, allows the unfriendly bacteria to grow, reduces your friendly bacteria and exacerbates intestinal permeability (leaky gut) (20), (14).  This is a recipe for an unhappy digestive system, and as you know this can then go on to send more messages to your brain: so you can see how the cycle continues.

People with gut problems are more likely to experience anxiety and depression.  Some studies have found a high proportion of anxiety in those with gut conditions such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome(IBS), Crohn’s disease and coeliac disease (21), (22), (23).

Look after your gut and it will look after you

The body has an amazing ability to heal, if given the right means to do so. If you eat a predominately plant based diet that is free from processed food, get your microbiome happy by feeding the good bugs with prebiotics and occasionally adding in some good bugs with fermented foods and probiotics, you’ll be on the right track to start healing your gut.

Works Cited

The post The Importance of Gut Health appeared first on Alison Mitchell Naturopath.

A few years ago I was interviewed by Carly Taber for Casa de Karma. It was a very well received podcast at the time but the website is no longer live, so I am going to share some of my content from there over the next few weeks. Here is a video version of the podcast episode where I was interviewed all about gut health.

The post Gut Health Explained – an interview appeared first on Alison Mitchell Naturopath.

Guts & Girl Bits – Episode 45 with Kirsten Greene

I’m so excited to share this episode with you all because SIBO is a condition I have been seeing a lot in clinic, and so I am thrilled to share this deep dive into SIBO with you.

Kirsten Greene (previously Swales) is a Naturopath who loves working with all this digestion, especially SIBO. She shares helpful tips of how to work through SIBO and also her own journey with this condition.

SIBO, also known as Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth is a condition that can contribute to a wide variety of symptoms, but some of the classic signs that this may be something to consider include:

• Bloating, especially soon after eating
• Diarrhoea, or Constipation
• Wind (Farting, Burping)
• Stomach pain
• Food sensitivities – especially the fodmap group
• other inflammatory conditions that you can’t pinpoint the cause

In this episode Kirsten shares information about:

• What is SIBO
• Her personal journey with SIBO
• How to test for SIBO
• How to treat SIBO, and how to target treatment based on whether you have a dominance of methane or hydrogen bacteria
• How to support digestive health while healing from SIBO
• What is hydrogen sulphide SIBO?
• Other forms of microbial imbalance: LIBO, and SIFO
• Strep infections and SIBO, and how your dental health can impact SIBO
• Biofilms and SIBO
• What are some common mistakes that people make when trying to treat themselves from SIBO?

The Podcast

Have a listen here or on the embedded player below:

iPhone   Stitcher   Youtube   Soundcloud  Spotify 

Get in touch with Kirsten

Kirsten Greene (previously Swales) has been a practicing Naturopath, Nutritionist and Western Medical Herbalist for the past seven years, and specialises in working with clients who have SIBO (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth).

Kirsten has worked in Australia, South Africa and Europe and consults with clients worldwide online.
Originally from South Africa, trained and qualified in Australia, Kirsten is a practicing member of Naturopaths and Herbalists Association of Australia and now calls Bali, Indonesia home.

Kirsten has worked in Australia, South Africa and Europe and consults with clients worldwide online.
Originally from South Africa, trained and qualified in Australia, Kirsten is a practising member of Naturopaths and Herbalists Association of Australia and now calls Bali, Indonesia home.

Her primary focus is helping women heal their digestive issues so they can enjoy a loving relationship with their body and food, and for some, so that they may feel “normal”, sometimes for the first time in their lives.

Having been through SIBO and suffering digestion issues herself for years, Kirsten is super passionate in this area and can relate to what her clients are going through.
SIBO free to this day, Kirsten has gone from living with an extreme fear of food due to bloating, weight gain and discomfort, to having a healthy, functioning digestive system and sound relationship with all food.
This is what she wants this for all other SIBO sufferers too.

Connect with Kirsten:
www.kirstenswales.com/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/kirsten.greene.nd/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/kirstenswalesnaturopath/
Youtube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCjgjfDxqujHARmLtuf3Dpug

Kirsten’s Online Course: www.kirstenswales.com/online-course/

Podcast Transcript

Alison Mitchell 0:08
Hi everyone, you’re listening to Guts and Girl Bits. I’m Alison Mitchell, a practicing Naturopath. I hope to share with you all sorts of information about women’s health and digestive health to educate and empower you to make informed choices about your own health. Please remember that all information is general and does not replace consulting with the practitioner.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to guts and girl bits. Today, I’ll be talking with a fellow naturopath. All About SIBO! SIBO, also known as small intestinal bacterial overgrowth is something that is affecting so many people and causing all sorts of tummy troubles. So I love working with people with digestive stuff, hence the name of this podcast, guts and girl bits and I’m really excited to share this information because Something that I’ve been talking about to a lot of my patients about SIBO and finding there’s heaps of people out there that are like ‘What? What is SIBO?’

So this podcast is awesome because my guest is extremely, extremely knowledgeable about SIBO. She has been through the process of healing herself, of SIBO and has helped countless people in their own journeys with the SIBO as well. We talk about what is SIBO? How does it come about? What are some of the testing options? What can we do to treat it, including different options with medicines from doctors like certain anti biotics as well as different herbal options, and we talk about, you know, do we use probiotics? And if you do, what sort do we use? We talked about the different diet options because there’s so much information out there. And what are the common mistakes that people make when trying to treat themselves for SIBO? And how long should we wait expect to get better.

So my guest is the amazing Kirsten Swales (Greene). She has been a practicing naturopath, nutritionist and Western medical herbalist for the past seven years. And she specializes in working with clients who have SIBO. She’s worked in Australia in South Africa and Europe and she consults with clients worldwide online. She’s originally from South Africa, but she’s trained and qualified here in Australia. And she now calls Bali Indonesia home. So her primary focus is helping women to heal their digestive issues so that they can enjoy a loving relationship with their body and food emphasizes that they might feel normal sometimes for the first time in their lives. Having been through SIBO and suffering digestion issues herself for years because it’s super passionate in this area, and can relate to what her clients are going through. Having been SIBO free to this day. Kirsten has gone from living with an extreme fee of food due to bloating rates. pain and discomfort to having a healthy functioning digestive system and a sound relationship with food. And that is what she wants for all other SIBO sufferers to have as well. Kirsten is so generous with her knowledge. And she has shared so much amazing content in this podcast. I was like wow Kirsten you are giving gold. So I’m really excited for you to listen to anyone that has been diagnosed with SIBO or suspects that they have SIBO or even if they just have some health issues that they haven’t quite been able to get to the bottom of have a listen to this episode because as we talked about SIBO is linked to so many other things in the body and it’s actually not a forever Doom diagnosis you can get better. So thank you for listening. I hope you enjoy!

Hi, Kirsten, thank you so much for joining me today.

Kirsten Greene 4:03
Thanks, Alison. Thanks for having me.

Alison Mitchell 4:06
Yay. So I’m so excited to have you here to talk about all things SIBO, because this is just a topic that I’m seeing so much more of, I think is becoming so much more common as well. And many people don’t know much about it, but it’s one of those hidden issues, isn’t it? Like, you know, if in doubt, look for SIBO in terms of gut health do you think that’s right?

Kirsten Greene 4:32
Definitely. And it’s just it’s been around I’ve found references in the studies from like the 1800s. But only recently has it been getting that awareness and it’s so so so common, and it’s something that is fixable, so I get really excited about it.

Alison Mitchell 4:47
Yeah, I love that you start with that it’s fixable because it is isn’t there then so many people like ‘oh no have I got this forever?

Kirsten Greene 4:56
Yeah, where sometimes people get tell they just have IBS, and it’s given what’s causing your IBS, and then this is something that causes it and you can get to the bottom. Mm

Alison Mitchell 5:05
hmm. You know, that’s so common, isn’t it? IBS? Oh, I’ve got IBS. That’s the answer. So I have to eat this particular diet or take this drug for the rest of my life. And it’s like, no. Oh, you don’t? So I’m really fascinated to know, how did you get into this career path?

Kirsten Greene 5:28
So I think like most naturopaths it comes from a desire to fix ourselves. I had issues most of my life, and I got a bit of a joke that I probably popped out the womb on a digestive back foot. my mom said I was a very colicky baby. And then I was always just aware that digestion was not so much digestion. I was always just aware that food was a bit of an issue for me. So I was often hungrier than I seemed. compared to most of my friends. I struggled with gaining weight really quickly, except now that I know that I want to know It wasn’t that I was getting fat, I was just getting bloated. So I just came to believe that it was normal that every time I put food into my stomach that it would puff out. That’s actually not normal. That’s not meant to happen. So i was constantly trying all these different things to just feel better than I did for any new diet that came along. I would try to eat one thing diet, I would try eat cabbage diet, I would try the Atkins diet just so I could feel better. And I maybe did feel better in the moment, but it would always just rebound. And I often feel a bit worse than when I first started. So that was always a thing for me. And when I travel quite a lot in my early 20s and then run by the age of 24. I decided I was going to study something and it just happened to be a trade remedial massage because I like people I like working with people and this was an area that fascinated me. So it always been into natural stuff and how this can help us without hurting ourselves and then didn’t even know what a naturopath was but the college that I was studying at in Australia had a naturopathy course, a nutrition course, had a homeopathy course. And then we go home and with my friend, we had that prospectus in our hand, and we were googling these names meant because we didn’t even know. But just before the course started, there was a lecturer giving a talk on introduction to naturopathy and I thought. Oh, my goodness, this is it. So walked out of that room into the registers to my course and haven’t looked back since. So I’m so so grateful for all the issues that I’ve had myself, even though they were so horrible, but it led me to where I am. And if I had to do it all over again, I totally would, I’m so grateful.

Alison Mitchell 7:37
Yeah, I guess that has given you that real empathy that so many people really need from their carer as well. Mm hmm.

Kirsten Greene 7:45
Yeah. I can totally understand because I probably had all the symptoms that they’ve had themselves. Yeah.

Alison Mitchell 7:53
Hence the passion for digestion. Right. So is that what people mostly come to see for for digestion, Or are people coming to see you for other things as well?

Kirsten Greene 8:04
Definitely digestion. And so now I focus. I specialize in SIBO specifically. So I myself had SIBO back in 2016. And since then that’s really, really been my focus. So I know inside out and I get so much joy from helping other people with it. So they come to me with SIBO. Sometimes it turns out that it’s not SIBO, even if they’ve been told that it’s SIBO. So, I don’t specifically exclude anybody else that doesn’t have SIBO so all digestive stuff I help with. So often the method of healing up the digestive system is the same the specifics in terms of treatment might be different. But there’s so many different guidelines that apply with all digestive health. So it could be “just IBS” or it could be crohns, or it could be coeliac or it could be food intolerances. So all these things are my favorite topics. And when people come to me for.

Alison Mitchell 8:53
yeah, okay. And SIBO in particular is something that as we were talking about, you know, it’s becoming more more well known people are getting more awareness around it. But it’s been around for a long, long time. But So how long have you been treating that specifically? Has that been something that you know, you’ve just jumped you started your practice really passionate about it? Or was there a moment where it’s like, oh, this is the thing.

Kirsten Greene 9:19
I kind of evolved from my own journey. So when I graduated as a naturopath I knew that I wanted to specialize in digestive health because that had been my journey. And then when I got see by myself four years ago, then it became my sole practice because I know it. I know it so well, because I’d been through it myself and I’ve all the hundreds of you are treated since then. I’ve just know it so well and what to look out for how to get better in the quickest and most enjoyable way because it doesn’t have to be awful SIBO treatment doesn’t have to be awful. You just need to know what you’re doing. And I really enjoy that the past four years and then just have health for the past almost decade, I guess. Yeah.

Alison Mitchell 9:56
Now I think there might be some people listening that don’t actually know what SIBO is. So can we just, you know, backtrack a little bit and say what actually is a SIBO?

Kirsten Greene 10:09
Sure thing so it’s S I B O, and that’s acronym for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. So it doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s bad bacteria in your digestive system, it just means that it’s in the wrong spot. So ideally, we want this one to find to be relatively sterile in terms of bacteria. And then we want most of our bacteria to be in the large intestine. And there’s different kinds of SIBO as well. So there’s two main ones and then there’s a third one that’s getting more attention recently. So you have your methane dominant SIBO, where your methane gasses at highest produced by the methanogens, and then you get your hydrogen dominance SIBO, and then the third one that’s come out recently, more more focus on recently is the hydrogen sulfide to see by three different kinds there.

Alison Mitchell 10:56
Ah, and the hydrogen sulfide one is not somthing thing that I’ve heard or is that something that you can pick up, particularly with the testing, which we’ll talk more about the testing later.

Kirsten Greene 11:07
So there’s no specific test just yet that you can get Park Pimental from Cedar Sinai is working on it. But so it’s more of a process of elimination from the other tests, and then also taking a really good case history, and then they can find out more about this. There’s certain kinds of bacteria that released the sulphate gas, like Desulfovibrionales and Bilophilia wadsworthia they are the most common ones, but it’s that stinky guess is that rotten egg smelling gas may produce that.

Alison Mitchell 11:34
Interesting. So, let’s talk about some of the symptoms of SIBO what are some things that people should be looking out for that might go ‘hmm Maybe that’s related to me.’

Kirsten Greene 11:47
There’s so many, so the most common one for sure is the bloating especially and the timing of the bloating is important as well. So if it’s one to three hours after eating, then you can suspect at this moment of time, if it’s actually to three hours, then you might think of the large intestine. So definitely, definitely, definitely the most common symptom, but you don’t have to have bloating to have super. I’ve had clients before that, no issues with bloating but still have SIBO. Then also there are issues with your number twos. So it could either be diarrhea, it could be constipation, or could be an alternating of the two. Then you also get your food intolerances. So lactose intolerance is definitely a common one. And then also an issue with foods like the fodmaps, which are your fermentable carbohydrates and certain foods, and even garlic would be a biggest triggers for sure. There’s often an issue with digesting and breaking down the fibers in the foods and then the fiber is the indigestible part of a plant food so in your carbohydrates, so that’ll be the biggest one in there. But then you can also experience pain, gas. cramping, brain fog is really really common, joint pain, stiffness, skin issues, so many things associated with SIBO.

Alison Mitchell 13:01
Okay. So sometimes it could be something that you wouldn’t even think is related to your digestive system, but then turns out it actually is.

Kirsten Greene 13:13
I know, it’s all so connected.

Alison Mitchell 13:16
Yeah, the gut’s just connected to so many things. Okay. So why are people actually getting SIBO in the first place?

Kirsten Greene 13:28
Someone asked me on my Instagram a little while ago what I think the common cause of SIBO is, and I say stress. And that could be physical stress. It could be mental stress, or it could be emotional stress. So SIBO is a condition and SIBO is an underlying cause of things like IBS, but then what went wrong to allow SIBO to get there in the first place? Because our bodies are so amazing. It’s an amazing organism. It is so well adapted at keeping everything in check and functioning by itself. But for SIBO to have got there, there’s got to been a breakdown in a protective mechanism somewhere along the way that allowed it to get there. A really common cause is food poisoning. So a lot of people can pinpointed on that holiday to Mexico where they had a funny mohito. And now they’ve got digestive issues. So food poisoning can do things with a digestive system and then somehow the bacteria is allowed to migrate up into this momentous time. And once it’s in this momentous sign, you have to take steps to get it out. So that could be we’ll come to this later, I’m sure but the antimicrobials or pharmaceuticals or the elemental diet. So that’s a physical stress that can cause the SIBO but really underestimated is the emotional stress as well. So if we are constantly under pressure, and no one likes to think that they stress they really don’t, but if you could take a little minute and just look at yourself and how you respond to the stressors in your life. So say you say someone scratched your car and he didn’t even really care that might be pretty low on the scale. Say you went to the shop to buy an avocado and they were out of stock and he burst into tears, it would probably that your stress response is a bit on high alert And if you’re having panic attacks, and you might get a 10 out of 10. And I just wanted to bring that up is because when we’re in the stress mode, we tend to be in what we call our sympathetic nervous system, which is also called our fight and flight. And then when we’re in our sympathetic nervous system, our parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest and digest gets shut down. So what that means is that sometimes our stomach acid doesn’t get produced at the right amount, or our stomach is constantly contracted like this, if you get a fright, you can notice that you gasps and your stomach will be contracted. So the peristalsis couldn’t happen. So things don’t move through as effectively. So that would be really common. But in terms of the physical thing for sure, there’s food poisoning, and then a history of antibiotic use. It could be back from when you were two years old, unfortunately, and things like this probably out of your control. So it’s always lovely to find your underlying Cause for getting SIBO in the first place. But also knowing that sometimes there might not be one specific thing. So for myself, I probably can’t relate it to one specific thing, more like a accumulation of things going wrong from birth, pretty much. So then it’s looking after your whole digestive system to get everything. And there’s protective mechanisms back in place, and then you can keep it away.

Alison Mitchell 16:26
Beautiful, thank you. I think that’s really interesting. linking it to that sort of relative stresses of that and how some people would say, I don’t have that much stress, everything’s right, but it really comes down to how they feel about it, how they react.

Kirsten Greene 16:42
yeah, if you’re waking up at 3am definite sign that your adrenals are a little bit fried. So I would you know, glands help us with our stress hormones, so adrenalin and cortisol, which is really important because if someone is pointing a gun at you, you need to make it so the cortisol will help us make those really quick decisions about which way to go. What do we do? So we need this one. But when it goes into prolonged stress, that’s when it becomes a problem. If you ever seen a zebra getting chased by a lion in the wild, while they’re getting chased, they in full on sympathetic nervous system fight or flight. But if they managed to get away from a lion and see the lion eating a difference zebra, they switch back very easily into their parasympathetic so they get back into the rest and digest. So you’ll see them eating grass happily and no problem. And then the biggest stressors, they say, studies have even backed this up. The biggest stressors that we have these days is deadlines, the deadlines at work, and bills that we receive a bill and then also even low batteries on our smartphones. So we know… laughs it’s so funny. So we intellectually know that these things won’t kill us. But our body will go into the same protective mechanisms as if it would. So it goes into your sympathetic nervous system, so digestion shuts down. Huge Cause.

Alison Mitchell 17:58
you know, I mean, for me I’ve got a really good life and things stress me out. And it’s the stupidest things. It’s things like my son way to put his socks on in time. You know, they’re such little things and yet maybe my adrenal glands need a bit of nourishing, who knows. But it’s all relative, it’s how you feel about the situation.

Kirsten Greene 18:24
And then also in our digestive system, we’ve got the enteric nervous system. So enteric relates to your intestines, and there are more nerve endings in your enteric nervous system than they are in the spinal cord. So if you’ve got digestive issues, and you’re constantly being triggered by an enteric, nervous system, say with food intolerances, that’s going to over stimulate the rest of your nervous system as well.

Alison Mitchell 18:46
For sure, so I think that people don’t often think about that do they but I’m so glad you’re talking about it because you’ve got to work on the gut to treat the nervous system, and you’ve got to treat the nervous system to treat the gut.

Kirsten Greene 18:59
No and it’s so wonderful when it all comes back into balance and it’s kind of I see my clients go through the process and then when I’m doing my last consult with them and then when they’re better we go through the intake form and compare with how far they’ve come and they often it’s so wonderful to see that they forget how stressed they used to be or they forget how scared of who they used to be. And that’s when you know that… God love it. I love it. I love it so much.

Alison Mitchell 19:25
That would be so nice, for both of you I would imagine. So that’s so that’s really interesting. So the SIBO has this massive connection with our mental health because of enteric nervous system and we’ve got all these neurotransmitters being made in gut like our serotonin and dopamine and our GABA, they’re all needing a health gut. We need that for our healthy neurotransmitters. But what about other sorts of conditions? Are there other sorts of health conditions or other seemingly unrelated symptoms that we can link to SIBO?

Kirsten Greene 20:04
I could probably tie almost every condition back to the gut. The main ones I’d say, because SIBO can lead to a lot of inflammation in the guts. And so SIBO can mess around with our digestion and absorption. So if you imagine that you are making food in the kitchen, and you just leave it lying around, so if you leave it laying around long enough, you’ll start to get the ants, leave it lying around even longer, and then you’ll start to get the mice and then you’ll start to get a whole bunch of stuff. So it gets a really big, festy mess. So that’s happening in your digestive tract. Just imagine the kind of bacteria that you are attracting and the pathogens that you are attracting, and it crowds out good stuff, which usually controls them. So then that can lead to a lot of inflammation in the digestive system. And then inflammation in that digestive system, if it goes on too long, can lead to inflammation, body wide. So most conditions have to do with inflammation. So almost anything that ends in ‘-ITIS’ so like arthritis, dermatitis, the itis relates to even hepatitis relates to inflammation of – all those conditions for sure. Then acne is a big one. I used to have horrendous skin, it was so bad. And then back when I was in college, it was okay. And then learning what we know, I came off the contraceptive pill, my skin just exploded. And then I was managing it a little bit with different herbs. And then I went vegetarian for a period of six months, because it was heralded as the most healthy diet. It’s like, Okay, this is gonna make me feel amazing. I’m going for it. So I went full vegetarian for six months. But I felt so so so awful, because at that stage, I didn’t have the digestive system strong enough to handle it. Whereas nowadays, my diet is mostly vegetarian, because I’ve spent so much time working on it and I can actually digest the food that I’m eating.

Alison Mitchell 21:52
A lot of plant fibres there.

Kirsten Greene 21:53
I know, and it’s so good for us. We just need to make sure that we can digest them and break them down. I had really, really bad acne when I was going through the vegetarian stuff. Now I don’t. So now that I healed my gut that’s gone away. Definitely joint pain for sure. And then also anxiety and depression often are connected to the digestive system as well. Not saying always, but definitely a lot of the time. If there is a group of bacteria called the gram negative bacteria, and these are the not so good bacteria, and then when our digestive system is out of balance, they can override a lot of good bacteria. Just I love to compare it like a garden it’s so similar to a garden. So if you have this garden, the grass and the plants and all the things and if the weeds start to take over, and they knock that balance, then they can just grow and grow and grow and more and more and more our good plants would kind of suffer there’s no space for them. So these Gram negative bacteria, they, in their shells, they have something called lipo- polysaccharides. So lipopolysaccharides are classed as an in endotoxin: endo means within and a toxin is a toxin. So these lipopolysaccharides are so inflammatory. And then if there’s a case of leaky gut, which is when the tight junctions of the gut separate and things can get into the bloodstream, they aren’t meant to. So if these lipopolysaccharides get into the bloodstream, and then just like the gut barrier, we have a blood brain barrier, which can also end up leaky, so leaky brain some people call it, and then if that gets into the brain, it can inflame the brain and cause feelings of depression. And this is even how they test the pharmaceutical antidepressants. Like they inject the poor mice with lipopolysaccharides and then test their pharmaceutical antidepressant to see if it’s effective. So that’s hugely connected.

Alison Mitchell 22:41
That doesn’t get spoken about much does it?

Kirsten Greene 23:43
Noo, and people don’t realize and they think that it’s a nervous system condition, when actually it’s coming from the gut. And if you can fix your gut, you don’t need to be on antidepressants you don’t need to be on even if it’s herbal Nervous System support, if it’s coming from your digestive system. There’s a lady called Dr. Allison Siebecker. She’s probably one of the pioneers in terms of theSIBO world. I love her. And she’s got a website called siboinfo.com, and she’s got a whole page dedicated to associated conditions. Also, because she’s a research scientist, she’s got the research studies backing up all the different things. If you wanted to see more, what’s involved in you can go to siboinfo.com. I forget the exact page, but it’ll be there somewhere.

Alison Mitchell 24:25
I’ll pop the link for that in the show notes. (Here it is: https://www.siboinfo.com/associated-diseases.html).

…more transcript to come!

The post A Naturopath’s Guide to SIBO appeared first on Alison Mitchell Naturopath.

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It is estimated that one-fifth of the population believe that they have a food intolerance. If you’re reading this article, you’re probably one of them. If you can’t quite put you finger on what food isn’t agreeing with you, then it’s time to get clued up.

In this article you can read about the difference between food intolerances and food allergies, plus 5 common causes that you can investigate, and practical tips to help manage your allergy or intolerance.

Want to learn more? You can read the full article here: http://casadekarma.com.au/the-ultimate-guide-to-food-allergies-intolerances/

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Health & Wellbeing Podcast #3

If you have been following me for a while you probably know that I love to talk about digestive health and the importance of gut health for overall wellbeing. I was very excited to have the opportunity to talk about all things digestion (and of course poo) with my fellow naturopath, the beautiful Hayley Stockbridge.

Hayley practices at Manly on Sydney’s Northern Beaches and in Stanmore in Sydney’s Inner West. Her major focus is always educating her patients to live healthier and happier lives. She treats women, men and children of all ages and a wide variety of health issues such as weight loss, digestive problems, anxiety/stress, fertility, hormone imbalances, food intolerances and headaches.

You can also connect with Hayley on Facebook and Instagram.

We answered a few digestion questions in this podcast which was lots of fun, I would love for people to keep submitting questions for future podcasts. You can submit them in the comments section below, on my facebook page or via the contact form.

Want to subscribe to get podcasts automatically? You can do that here: https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/health-wellbeing-podcast/id1006574743

Podcast Breakdown

3:57 What is a normal bowel movement?

6:50 Question 1: I’ve had GORD ever since I can remember, I’m on Nexium and I take metamucil. I still get the occasional bit of reflux but mostly it’s controlled with the medication. I don’t want to stay on it because I don’t want to rely of a medication. I also get diarrhoea every week or so that’s watery, explosive and smelly and really urgent and uncomfortable, and I’m frequently bloated. Is any of this connected and what do you suggest I do about it?

9:05 Diet for reflux, food intolerances.

9:40 The importance of easing of PPI medications slowly.

11:00 Reflux often due to a structural/mechanical issue, but this doesn’t mean you’re doomed.

12:50 Testing and avenues to look at for assessing causes of reflux, most common food triggers of reflux.

14:15 Question 2: I feel bloated and grumpy whenever I eat bread, but my GP said I’m not celiac so I can eat as much wheat as I want. I don’t get it though, why am I getting these feelings if I’m ok with bread?

15:00 Non celiac gluten intolerance including fructose mal-absorption

18:34 The general overconsumption of wheat and gluten containing foods and the issues with processing of wheat

22:40 It’s advisable to rule out celiac disease, as knowing this will determine how much gluten you can tolerate.

24:00 Sourdough may be an option for people sensitive to wheat as the fermentation breaks down some of the gluten and gliadin

25:45 Gluten free products are not always better for you

26:45 Experiment to find out what foods work best for you

27:55 Question 3: Help for constipation please! I have been taking movicol for about 5 yrs now. I go to the toilet once a day, but if i don’t take movicol I go once a week. I don’t like relying on it, but I don’t know what else I can do. Hayley and I discuss some common approaches to supporting constipation and diet for good bowel movements.

30:29 Papaya vs Pawpaw

33:00 Probiotics

34:40 Apple cider vinegar benefits

36:00 Dandelion coffee/tea

37:00 Manual work for constipation

37:25 The importance of exercise for healthy bowel movements

38:57 Toilet time – make time each morning to train your bowels to go at that time, and don’t suppress the urge to go when you need to.

39:50 Our yoga efforts.

41:00 Question 4: My 4 year old daughter frequently complains of stomach pains, I’m always at the doctors with her trying to find out what it is but they can’t find anything. It can be really upsetting for her, and sometimes she’s doubled up and crying with the pain. We eat well, but she always has a runny nose and this stomach pain is very concerning. She started preschool last year and seems to get sick all the time, I’m worried about how she’ll go at school with this stomach pain. She used to go to the toilet every 3-4 days, and even though this is considered normal the doctors gave her parachoc to try and help in case this is causing the pain, now she does go to the toilet easily (although it’s very lose) . Is there anything else I can do for her?

46:00 Infant massage for stomach pain

47:15 Our favourite digestion herbs

The post Digestion Podcast appeared first on Alison Mitchell Naturopath.

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You’ve probably been hearing about fermented foods recently – things like how you can have a spoonful of sauerkraut alongside your dinner or add some kefir to your smoothie or muesli for a myriad of awesome health perks. I thought it might be helpful to remind you of just WHY health nerds like myself have been banging on about fermented food awesomeness and so I’ve compiled a little list for you:

BETTER GUT HEALTH

The process of fermentation breaks down sugars in the food, and in this process lactic acid is created. This lactic acid helps to feed the good guys in your guts, aiding in a better microbiome.
Eating fermented foods will also introduce beneficial bacteria to your digestive system, again helping achieve a better microbiome.

Here’s just a few reminders on why a healthy microbiome is awesome:

1.  Better immune health
2. Better digestive health with less unhappy gut symptoms like bloating, farting, diarrhoea/constipation and pain
3. Better mood (you can read more about that here)
4. More energy
5. Less inflammation, less aches and pains

BETTER NUTRIENT ABSORPTION

The presence of the lactic acid helps some nutrients to be better absorbed and used by the body. In fermented vegies you get more Vitamin A and Vitamin C, in fermented dairy like kefir and yoghurt you get more B vitamins and in some cheeses Vitamin K2. If grains have been sprouted prior to fermenting the protein is much better absorbed, and enzymes that reduce mineral absorption are limited as well.

Have you noticed improvements in your health from fermented foods? Let me know below!

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Kimchi is a traditional Korean dish made from fermented vegetetables.  Kimchi has a tangy, slightly spicy flavour and is a good side to a lot of dishes.  Fermented food is awesome for your digestive system, because it helps the friendly bacteria in our digestive system to stay in balance, which can help with all sorts of health conditions, especially digestive complaints like bloating.

I’ve been experimenting by making various fermented foods, and Kimchi is my favourites, mostly because it tastes good.  I like to have a couple of tablespoons of kimchi with one of my meals most days and encourage my patients to do the same, as I am pretty excited about the benefits it offers.

I totally get that making your own fermented foods is probably a little daunting, it’s a bit time consuming (not every day though) and sounds weird if you haven’t heard of the concept before – but it’s worth it!

When you ferment vegies, you get a whole heap of benefits:

• The food becomes more digestible
• The vitamins are heaps easier to use by the body
• More enzymes are produced, which help digestion
• Your gut’s good bacteria increase, which means better digestion and better immune health
• Fermented foods help clear out unwanted heavy metals such as mercury and aluminium
• Fermented foods promote an alkaline environment, which is important for general health
• Fermentation is a natural preservation technique, and is actually the only method that doesn’t kill off nutrients in the process.

Ingredients:

Day 1:

• Sea salt (not table salt)
• Half a purple cabbage (normal cabbage is fine, I just like the colour)
• 3 carrots (i used a combo of orange and purple carrots)
• Optional – other vegies can include beetroot, green beans, radishes, seaweeds

Day 2:

• 1 red onion
• 1 red chilli, seeds removed and finely chopped
• 8 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 3 tbsp freshly grated ginger
• Spices, e.g. cumin, coriander, turmeric, caraway, fennel.

How to:

Prepare the brine by mixing approximately 1 tbsp salt into 1L of filtered water, stirring to dissolve.  You want it to be salt, but palatable.  If you are not using whey, you may need to add more salt to preserve it until the fermentation process starts.

Thinly slice the cabbage using a mandolin or a slicing attachment on the food processor, and either grate, or quarter and thinly slice the carrot.  Submerge these vegies (along with any of the other vegies with the exception of garlic and onion) in the brine and allow to soak overnight.  You can put a smaller plate on top of the vegies and weight it with a can to ensure they’re fully submerged.

The next day drain the soaked vegetables (reserving the brine) and mix through the chopped garlic, ginger, chilli, onion and a generous amount of spices of your choosing to the kimchi.

In the mean time sterilise 2 large jars with boiling water and allow to air dry.

Pack the combined vegies into the jars, pressing down firmly and adding more brine if needed to submerge the vegies fully.  Close or cover the jar with muslin or a clean tea towel and then let it sit in a warm place.  Snap lock jars work best for storing fermented foods, but a screw top jar will be fine.  If you close the lid of the jar rather than cover with cloth you may need to ‘burp’ (open) the kimchi every few days to let out some pressure.

It usually takes about a week for the fermentation process to complete – you know it’s worked when the vegies taste ‘ripe’ and have a sharp acidic smell, but it shouldn’t smell off.  It’s a good idea to check the vegies every 1-2 days so that you don’t let it go too far.  Once it’s complete, seal the jar and store in the fridge.  You can eat it straight away or store for a few months.

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Enhance Your Health with Probiotics

Top Up Your Good Bugs

Your diet and lifestyle play a major role in the balance of bacteria (or bugs) in your body. Amazingly, you are actually a ‘superorganism’ made up of hundreds of microbes living together in and on your body. Your immune system’s job is to monitor the many kinds of bacteria to ensure that healthy bugs are in larger numbers than troublemakers, such as viruses and yeasts. The best way to balance the good with the bad is to ensure you maintain adequate levels of beneficial bacteria in your digestive tract, and maintain a lifestyle that keeps the bad guys in check. No matter where the unhealthy bacteria live, you can influence your immune system’s fight by starting with good flora in the gut.  If you experience any of the common symptoms below, you may need a top up with good bugs (also known as probiotics):

• Bloating and/or flatulence
• Constipation or diarrhoea
• Frequent colds and the flu
• Eczema or allergies

Bug Basics

The most effective way to replenish beneficial bacteria in the gut is by taking  probiotics. There are many different types of probiotic bugs, and in many ways they are just like us.  We employ them because of their occupation. Different strains do different jobs in the body, so it is important to choose the right strain for the right condition. For example, specific strains have been scientifically proven to help with health problems including irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and eczema.  Make an appointment to discuss your health requirement, and for help in selecting the probiotic strain that is the most appropriate for you.

Some of the most effective therapeutic strains include:

• Lactobacillus acidophilus (NCFM): General balance

This strain is a great everyday probiotic to maintain bacterial balance, and has been extensively tested and proven to restore levels of healthy bacteria in the colon.  It is particularly effective after a course of antibiotics and/or  following a gut infection. This strain is antimicrobial in nature and inhibits the growth of unfriendly bacteria.

• Bifidobacterium lactis (Bi-07): Dysbiosis

When there are more bad bugs than good bugs in the gut, it is called dysbiosis. This is the reason we experience many of the symptoms mentioned earlier. Bi-07 has been proven to address dysbiosis, improving overall health. It has also been shown to reduce gastrointestinal disturbances, especially after antibiotic use.

• Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (LGG): Eczema and allergies

This probiotic strain has been studied in over 350 clinical trials, and has the ability to enhance immune system function, specifically reducing the occurrence and symptoms of allergies, eczema and other atopic conditions. LGG may also help to decrease the risk of digestive upsets such as diarrhoea in both adults and children. It can also shorten the time that you experience diarrhoea if you are struck by a nasty gastro bug.  This is one of the best ‘all-rounder’ probiotic strains for general digestive health.

• Lactobacillus plantarum 299v: Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Inflammation

The 299v strain is a specialised strain of Lactobacillus used specifically for gut issues. This probiotic has been proven to assist and manage the symptoms of medically-diagnosed IBS and other inflammatory bowel disorders. It has been clinically shown to improve the key IBS related problems of bloating, flatulence, pain, inflammation, constipation and diarrhoea.

Lifestyle Tips to Boost Your Good Bugs

To keep your ‘superorganism’ balanced, you need to include and avoid certain factors in your diet and lifestyle. Here are some easy everyday ideas that maintain your good and bad bugs in harmony:

• Reduce alcohol: Reduce your weekly consumption as excess drinking kills off large proportions of the good bugs.
• Manage stress: Stress can lead to an imbalance of bacteria. If stress is an issue for you, make an appointment to discuss lifestyle methods and supplements to support your response to stress.
• Exercise: Moving your body a little each day assists immune function and keeps your bowel moving too.
• Basic nutrition: Drink plenty of water, a minimum of eight glasses per day, and avoid excessive caffeine, sugar and salt intake to keep your good bugs flourishing.

Maximise Your Health with Probiotics

Maintaining bacterial balance is one of the key elements of optimal health and vitality. Remember, your immune system doesn’t just control colds. It also regulates your ‘superorganism’ on a daily basis. Together with healthy diet and lifestyle choices, a daily probiotic is one of the best ways to keep your good and bad bugs in check and bring your body back into balance. Whether you have eczema, allergies or IBS, specific probiotics can enhance the success of your treatment.

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Ever wanted to tame the microbes in your gut?

You’re not alone. Complaints such as bloating, irritable bowel and flatulence are very common in my clinic. Thanks to a certain television ad, most of us are aware that having the right balance between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ bacteria in our gut (stomach and intestines) is highly important for overall health and well being. You may also be aware that antibiotics, the oral contraceptive pill, chlorine in our drinking water and factors such as stress can interfere with levels of good bacteria in the gut. Antibiotics are particularly problematic because they do not discriminate between the good and the bad bacteria in the gut, killing indiscriminately.

Following antibiotic use or if there are general gut symptoms such as bloating or diarrhoea, many people turn to probiotic supplements to help restore levels of good bacteria in the gut. While this is advisable, in my opinion just taking probiotic supplements in isolation is not enough, particularly when we consider that most probiotic supplements only contain 2-10 species / strains of ‘good bacteria’, yet over 400 bacterial species have been identified in our gut.

The right amount of good bacteria is important for healthy intestinal absorption and digestion of nutrients, and also for enhancing the immune system as up to 70% of the immune system is actually found in the gut.  A healthy gut has been shown to decrease prevalence of allergy in susceptible individuals. The gut is also the site of much of the production of serotonin, the neurotransmitter responsible for a good mood, so if your gut is not functioning well, your mood may well be affected.  Clearly good gut health is important, so how do we get the balance of good bacteria back into the gut if our intestinal health is not what it should be?

Fermented & cultured foods

Fermented foods (i.e. foods containing naturally occuring healthy bacteria) offer a delicious and nutritious way to get the good bacteria back into your gut. This is because they are a great source of naturally occurring probiotics. Fermented foods are not a new fad; they have been used for centuries as daily nourishment in many countries including India, Japan, Vietnam and Africa. Many people report less bloating, gas, fatigue and bowel issues after using fermented foods. Examples of fermented foods with naturally occurring probiotics include live yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchee, kombuscha, and soybean-based miso and natto.

Fermentation in food describes the process of lacto fermentation, where naturally occurring healthy microorganisms such as the lactobacillus bacteria feast on sugars and other carbohydrates in foods, creating lactic acid as a by-product. The growth of these bacteria in fermented foods affects the composition and function of the bacteria in the gut in many different ways. Their presence not only increases the digestibility of food, they can also increase the nutritional content of the food, for example, vitamin C is more bio-available in fermented cabbage than fresh cabbage.

Fermented foods offer a fantastic way to:

(1) Increase the variety of healthy bacterial strains in the gut;

(2) Increase the quantity of healthy bacteria in the gut, particularly if you feed the probiotics ‘prebiotic’ foods (more on prebiotics below); and

(3) Discourage the presence of the bad bacteria that cause bloating and other gut related symptoms.

Prebiotics promote the growth of good bacteria in the gut as they function as a food source for the probiotic. Prebiotics are things such as inulin and fructooligosaccharides (FOS). You can find these prebiotics in foods such as asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, bananas and shitake mushrooms.

For best results with improving gut health use fermented foods on a daily basis. My top three fermented/cultured foods (in no particular order) are:

1. Kefir

Kefir is a fermented milk drink that tastes similar to natural yogurt. It is one of my favourite fermented foods as not only does it contain high levels of probiotics, it also contains prebiotics such as inulin, which act as a food source for the good bacteria and ensures the probiotics multiply.

My favourite brand of Kefir is the Babushka brand, which you can find at good health food stores. As well as containing high levels of healthy cultures/bacteria (approx 12 billion CFU [colony-forming units] per shot), Kefir is also delicious and perfect for kids as it comes in kid-friendly flavours such as strawberry and honey. Despite the fact that it is a dairy product, it is actually very helpful for those with lactose intolerance. Studies have shown that lactose intolerant adults drinking kefir either eliminated or drastically reduced symptoms related to lactose intolerance. It is believed that the healthy bacteria in kefir possess the enzyme that is necessary to digest lactose.

2. Miso paste

Miso paste is a fermented food that contains healthy bacteria similar to that found in our gut. The healthy bacteria grow during the fermentation process of miso.  Always choose unpasturised miso as pasturisation kills the good bacteria.

My favourite brand is Spiral foods.  Care should be taken not to boil the miso as this destroys the cultures/bacteria.  Add it at the last moment to a soup in place of stock or use cold as part of a salad dressing.

3. Fermented vegetables

Fermented vegetables have been used for centuries. Sauerkraut is a fantastic example of an Eastern European fermented food that many of you will be familiar with. Fermentation by lactobacilli cultures occurs naturally in Sauerkraut as the healthy lactobacilli bacteria multiply on raw cabbage leaves where they grow. Lactobacilli are not the only culture to be found, leuconostoc and pediococcus have also been noted.

When it comes to sauerkraut you are best making your own rather than buying it from a supermarket as quality can be an issue (plenty of recipes exist on the internet). Supermarket versions tend to pickle the cabbage in vinegar, unlike traditional methods which favour just water and sea salt. Water and sea salt is preferable as unlike the vinegar, it promotes growth of healthy bacteria cultures. If you do want save time and just buy some fermented vegetables then my favourite brand is by Life in a jar http://www.lifeinajar.com.au.

I couldn’t miss the opportunity to highlight kimchee, a traditional Korean probiotic-rich food similar to the sauerkraut described above. It is comprised of an assortment of fermented vegetables (usually cabbage, carrot and cucumber) and like the sauerkraut above, the vegetables are fermented over a long period, which ensures growth of probiotic cultures for gut health. If you ever go to a Korean restaurant, be sure to order some kimchee.

Many places now offer classes that teach you how to make fermented vegetables and offer tips on how to add these to your daily meals. Examples include BU Organics in Bondi Junction, partly run by my favourite chef Pete Evans where they teach you how to make cultured vegetables and coconut kefir, yum! If you are interested in reading more on the benefits of fermented and cultured foods check out the book Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon as she dedicates a whole chapter to them and includes some lovely recipes.

Lisa Costa Bir – Naturopathic nutritionist, Ayurvedic lifestyle consultant, Lecturer & Food Coach web content coordinator

B App Sc. Naturopathy, Grad Dip. Naturopathy

Lisa maintains a practice in South Sydney and lectures at Endeavour College of Natural Therapies.

Connect with her on facebook under ‘Lisa Costa Bir Naturopath’ or check out her site at www.lisacostabirnaturopath.com.au

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The post Foods to stop BLOATING and FARTING: Fermented Foods appeared first on Alison Mitchell Naturopath.