Gut Health

What is Your Gut Trying to Tell You? We have all become a little snack-happy at a party, eaten too much cake, and had to undo the top button of our jeans to make room for the food baby. However, if you feel and look bloated regularly without overindulging, your gut microbiome might be trying to

Fermented foods and beverages, such as sauerkraut, kimchi and kombucha, were a regular part of our ancestors’ diets for thousands of years. Originally a method of preserving produce from harvest time through the cold days of winter;[¹] fermentation involves adding a bacterial or yeast starter to a food. These organisms convert starches and sugars to alcohol or acids, lengthening the food’s shelf life and producing the unique and tangy flavours we associate with fermented foods. Recently, these foods have seen a resurgence in popularity, not for their shelf lives but for their claimed digestive health benefits. As probiotics have also risen in popularity for similar reasons, let us explore how fermented foods stack up against a high-quality probiotic. 

Chances are you or someone you know suffers from IBS, which affects one in ten Australians.[¹] Symptoms range in severity from mild to debilitating and include digestive discomfort, excessive flatulence (gas), bloating, constipation or diarrhoea, or alternation between the two. These symptoms can be associated with three underlying factors: gut inflammation, an imbalance in the number of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ gut bacteria and stress.

The Purpose of Poo

As you read this, your body is working hard to:

• Clear waste produced during its normal, healthy activities
• Remove compounds (e.g. hormones) from circulation that have completed their tasks
• Neutralise toxins that can harm your body, and
• Fight off pathogens (infectious organisms) that could otherwise make you sick

Once it’s completed these tasks, the next step is to eliminate these unwanted substances. It does this by packaging them up and sending them to your intestines to be eliminated in your poo! 

You may have heard probiotics can provide a multitude of beneficial effects, but how do you know which one to choose when you’re confronted by a countless range of options? What probiotic will help your presentation? Do you need a product with one probiotic strain or multiple probiotic strains? With all the choice,

You may be familiar with the concept that certain medications (particularly antibiotics) can disrupt your gut microbiome, impacting the balance of beneficial organisms (such as bacteria, yeasts, etc.) in the gut. For this reason, probiotics are commonly recommended following antibiotic therapy to restore the gut microbiome and support digestive and overall health.

A new study that challenges this notion has been in the media spotlight; however taking a closer look at the research, these findings do not reflect the current body of evidence that strongly supports the use of evidence-based, strain-specific probiotics for restoration of the microbiome and delivering specific health benefits.