Bloating. Heartburn. Weight gain. Frequent visits to the restroom. It’s no surprise: bad gut health can have a big impact on your daily life. But what if there were quick and easy ways to improve Read More
No matter how diligently we practice a healthy lifestyle, illnesses and injuries still happen. And sometimes, the remedy includes a round of antibiotics. While these medicines can be beneficial, they can also disrupt our gut Read More
How effective are probiotics? I treat many patients with digestive issues and if you suffer from digestive problems, then you know how they can make you miserable. It’s not just the discomfort. It’s also the Read More
Most of us are not mindful of the importance of gut health—or just how far we’ve been distanced from it in the modern world. Many of us were not breast-fed, received countless simultaneous vaccinations as Read More
Probiotics might be your new best friends. After all, you’ve probably heard about the bounty of health benefits that can come from taking probiotics on a regular basis. From better digestion to less stress, immune Read More
In the Beginning – Early formulations of probiotics contained friendly microbes that offered general microbiome support for improved gut health including better digestion and elimination. These commonly included lactic acid producing strains of Bifidobacterium or Read More
Weighing in at approximately 3 pounds– approximately the size of a football– the liver is one of the largest and most important organs in a human’s body. It is located in the right upper quadrant Read More
Clostridium difficile (also known as Clostridioides difficile or C. diff) is a potentially pathogenic bacterium that can be found in the gut of healthy individuals. In states of optimal health, C. diff is kept in Read More
A healthy gastrointestinal microbiome, the population of bacteria in our gut, is known to be important to our overall health. When we have imbalances to our gut flora it can have a significant effect on Read More
When I was a third-year naturopathic medical student in 1973, one of my professors, Bob Carroll, DC, ND, opened the first class of the year with the statement, “Death begins in the colon!” I was Read More
Researchers have revealed that gut health is crucial to our overall health. Your gut influences everything from your immune system to digestion and even your brain. Therefore, keeping your gut healthy is highly important. An unhealthy gut is associated with a wide range of health problems ranging from skin issues to hormonal imbalance, anxiety to diabetes, and even depression and various other issues. To keep your gut healthy, it is important to understand key signs of an unhealthy gut and how you can get your gut back on a healthy track.
In many ways, your gut bacteria has a big impact on many aspects of our health. In the past few years research has looked more closely at how this enormous system of organisms influences—and even improves—health conditions, from heart disease to arthritis to cancer. But understanding how the gut microbiota works, and how you may benefit, can be daunting.
This is a new frontier of medicine, and many are looking at the gut microbiota as an additional organ system. It’s most important to the health of our gastrointestinal system, but may have even more far-reaching effects on our well-being.
What does all this mean? Should you even be concerned about your gut microbiota? A healthy gut microbiota is still important for health. Anything that can feed good bacteria and keep them plentiful is good for overall health. When the gut is happy, you are happy.