These days it seems like everyone’s obsessed with the gut and the bugs in there.
And rightly so, those little chaps have a HUGE ability to drive health or disease within the body.
As a result there’s been a boom in the sale of probiotics designed to give more diversity and a better balance of the good bugs.
But they have a dark side.
You see these bugs have specific locations in the gut where they like to live so they can do their job properly. If they find themselves in a different part of the gut, even the so-called good bugs, can wreak havoc.
And this leads us to the main problem with probiotics, we don’t know where they will open and deposit their payload of little guys.
There has been a recent boom in SIBO (Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth) a nasty condition caused by having too many good bugs in the wrong place…my guess this upsurge is linked closely with the upsurge in people taking probiotics.
The Solution
When we talk about getting the right bugs it’s often not the case that we don’t have any of a particular species just that they’ve been outcompeted and there’s only a few of them left…so few that they no longer do their jobs properly and so their beneficial effects are not felt.
How do we get these populations back to healthy levels?
We feed them!
And thus allow them to outcompete the bugs we don’t want. Restoring balance and function to the gut.
What do these good bugs primarily like?
Phenols.
The dark coloured compounds found in foods like blueberries, goji berries, olives or beetroot (amongst many others).
Add a few of these foods to your plate every day and you’ll soon start growing back healthy populations of the good guys.
Sam.
😎👊
