ScienceDaily has a good article on fermented foods...
Some well-informed doctors, like Amy Meyers, suggest that fermented foods may not be appropriate for people with gut issues. However, what I learned from the Harvard School of Public Health is that "the dose makes the poison and the cure."
What does this mean?
If you have a healthy gut - a healthy and diverse microbiome - adding fermented foods, or MORE fermented foods, will be of great benefit to digestion. However, if you have gut dysbiosis, adding fermented foods to your diet may cause a lot of disruption and distress.
This happens because, in dysbiosis, you most likely have pathogenic organisms in your gut. Adding new organisms creates a battle between good and evil. You have war going on in your gut.
You NEED good organisms, however - so the proper approach is slow and steady introduction of new and beneficial organisms. It's all about adaptation. We have developed a simple approach of adding probiotics to your diet - including fermented foods.
We HIGHLY recommend that you do add probiotics to your diet regardless of you gut health status. You do this by "seeding" the good organisms rather than forcing you gut to accept lots of new (even beneficial) organisms.
Below is a schedule of our program of low dose (seeding) probiotic introduction. If it's a fermented food, don't take a lot at one time. Just consume a small portion. What is "small" will depend upon your level of dysbiosis. You will know if you have added too much too quickly if the probiotic gives you gut distress. The solution is to lower your dose or quantity you take.
We have learned for true experts on this topic.
Thomas Borody, MD - Head of the Centre for Digestive Health - Sydney, Australia
Judith Miklossy, MD, PhD - world expert on Alzheimer's caused by pathogens.
Both of these pros say that DIVERSITY is more important than quantity. Each organism has its own task to perform in digestion. Consider your gut an assembly line with each organism (work station) doing a specific action.
Consider this approach:
Day 1 - take a probiotic at substantially lower dose than suggested on the label (1/4 dose or less)
Day 2 - eat a small portion of a fermented food
Day 3 - take a different probiotic at a low dose
Day 4 - eat a small portion of a DIFFERENT fermented food
Day 5 - take another different probiotic at low dose
Day 6 & 7 - eat a small portion of a different fermented food.
Repeat this program
Eventually you may not need to take a manufactured probiotic. Base you need on how you feel, any gut symptoms, and your labs. Often a gut in dysbiosis shows elevated blood labs including; C-reactive protein and erythrocyte sedimentation rate.
Also, consider testing for H-pylori which is a LIVING antacid.
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