Posted 9/15/2017 2:29 PM (GMT 0)
Or do you think about it as a waste of time?
Just curious. I see many people here who add probiotics to their regimen. I was wondering if the same people try and cultivate a welcoming 'digestive environment' for their new friends?
Or are you one who believes probiotics are simply a waste of money?
The things I do to create (what I believe to be) a nutritional environment for my new bacteria are:
1) PROBIOTICS
I add them into my daily diet with BOTH store bought brands that have a good track record and my own homemade fermented beverages (water kefir and milk kefir each have unique bacterial strains, so I do both right now).
I also eat probiotic fermented foods regularly like pickles, olives (the brine solution naturally ferments them), sourdough bread, greek yogurt, cottage cheese, aged cheeses, etc.
2) PREBIOTICS
I consume plenty of foods known to be great PREbiotics ....GREEN bananas, potato starch, wheat dextrin (benefiber) psyllium seed powder, oats, garlic, onions, apples, flax seed, spirulina (seaweed).
I feel that if I am going to spend the money on continually adding new bugs, I want to feed them well......which brings me to the next thing
3) GUT ENVIRONMENT
I gave up sugar and processed foods some 6 months ago. It wasn't an overnight success, but I kept pecking away at it and am very used to it at this point. Eliminating one group after another beginning with pure sugar and ending with sugar laden dips, dressings, etc.
Sugar actually tastes nasty these days (ok the occasional bowl of toasted coconut ice cream is still a little bit divine, but I digress.......). Even Jif peanut butter tastes like candy !
Over all I have changed my thinking about food to: FOOD IS FUEL.....both for my own bodies energy and for the beings that inhabit me (I am an ecosystem it turns out,lol). I also think about providing a really nice mix of colorful veggies for these inhabitants.
I continually add things I've read they thrive on and I have been avoiding the things that are said to make our guts imbalanced. Prior to this latest flare my diet had gotten degraded and I was super carb heavy sugars) and tons of protein. I wasn't as prolific with veggies as I am now.
Nowadays I drink dandelion root tea and ginger teas a few times a week (in the beginning it was several times daily) but as I've improved I've been tapering some of my main helpers a tad.
4) IBD-AID diet......I stay away from blatantly inflammatory foods and consume a lot of the anti-inflammatory ones as per the food list on their website. The diet has 3 stages (flare mode, transitional, and remission mode) ----each gets a little more liberal. I am now in maintenance mode and I am adding in a few of the NO NO's even.....and feel just fine.
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So, what do you guys do to enhance your micro-biomes? anything in particular that you can see may be helpful to add to the above regimen? I am always looking to improve things......I also think that my emotional well being is a lot more connected to all this than I can even grasp right now....so that is a work in progress ;-)
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All this said, in addition to all these diet changes, I do believe a major part of the turnaround in symptoms was staying on the mesalamine. So I don't want to imply I think diet alone was my saving grace. Especially now that I know mesalamine does this:
"The U-M researchers discovered that mesalamine targets a bacterial stress response system that otherwise may help microorganisms survive in an environment of chronic inflammation."
http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/24475-u-m-researchers-discover-what-makes-drug-for-ulcerative-colitis-tick