Doctor’s Notes – Fall 2018: Eat Better. Feel Better.
“ An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”
– Benjamin Franklin
”You don’t have to go on a diet, just change your diet.” But, there are so many choices and we are all different in our makeup, routines, environments, genetics, habits and comfort foods. Of course, but if you could feel better from a change in your habits and comfort foods, mixed in with some education on the subject, it might just be worth it.
It is not that difficult. Health minded approaches to nutrition have made their way to your local grocery store and your favorite restaurant. It is understandably difficult to know where to begin in our busy lives. Let’s try to understand how we nourish and what to nourish with.
Everyone is talking about taking probiotics, “they are good for you”.
The World Gastroenterology Organization Global Guidelines define a probiotic as “live microorganisms that confer a health benefit on the host when taken in the adequate amounts” and “strictly speaking, are live microbes shown in controlled human studies to impart a health benefit”. The evidence based applications for adults are associated with active disease imbalanced states such as acute diarrheal states, antibiotic related diarrheal states, irritable bowel syndrome, colitis and certain liver diseases. The Human Microbiome Project began in 2007 and is active today at the Mayo Clinic and Scripps Institute among other centers worldwide. What if you don’t have any of those conditions and you generally feel well?
What are my personal “probiotics” and how are they?
They are your own personal group on microbes localized mostly in your large intestine, the colon. They become associated with us while we are in the womb, increase in number during vaginal birth and stabilize as we begin to eat […]