How Your Gut Affects Your Entire Body

I have seen everything from IBS, colitis, ulcers, celiac disease, constipation, chronic diarrhea, and many other digestive disorders vanish after consuming cultured foods. So how do these microbes heal and restore the gut? They do it when you have enough of certain strains of bacteria (those that work to repair the gut lining) that will make a protective barrier to keep out pathogens and reduce inflammation. Then they do something even more exciting - they help you digest your food and get more nutrients from the foods you eat. When you add enough of certain strains of bacteria, they assist in the ridding of food allergies. Researchers have found that most food allergies are caused by overuse of antibiotics. I have found this to be the case in my body. Antibiotics kill certain strains of bacteria that help us digest our foods. When you put these strains back into your body, it is important to try to consume them at every meal. I did this with my daughter, and her food allergies are no more. The bacteria do the work inside of you. They do what you cannot do on your own because they’re designed to do this for you. All you have to do is feed them the right things and let the magic healing begin.

Approximately 80% of your immune system is located in your gut. If your gut bacteria are properly balanced, your immune system will most likely function properly and help ward off illnesses. Do you get sick a lot? Well, you shouldn’t. Most likely you’ve taken a lot of antibiotics and not built your microbes back into their proper place, and then you struggle terribly because your microbes can't do their job for you. To help you understand it better, consider that you have helper T-cells - some kill foreign invaders and others alert the cells that there is something that needs to be destroyed. The amount of your good bacteria will determine how much of an army you have that fights for you inside your gut.

One of the newest things I have discovered is how much these microbes detoxify you. I always thought it was mostly the liver that detoxified you from harmful chemicals and toxins, but 50% of the body's detoxification is handled by the bacteria in your gut. For instance, Bisphenol A (BPA), a toxin linked to over 40 diseases, is found in everything from thermal printer receipts, paper money, canned food liners, dental composites, and of course plastics. BPA is a powerful endocrine disrupter and it is now found inside everyone. Researchers have found that two common probiotic strains, Bifidobacterium Breve and Lactobacillus Casei, help the body detoxify itself from BPA by reducing the intestinal absorption of this chemical. In addition, the good bacteria in cultured foods can detox pesticides in foods. For instance, kimchi - one of my favorite cultured vegetable foods, has been known to degrade a variety of at least five chemical compounds. It degrades these chemicals by 83.3 percent after 3 days of fermentation on your counter and up to 99% in six days.

Another study found that kimchi contains a strain of bacteria capable of breaking down sodium nitrate which is linked to a variety of chronic degenerative diseases, including cancer. The study found a depletion of sodium nitrate by up to 90.0%. Sodium nitrate becomes toxic when it is converted in food products, but bacteria can degrade this chemical. Four lactobacillus strains were capable of breaking down this toxic byproduct. Lactobacillus bacteria are found in so many of these cultured foods. It can play a huge role in detoxifying heavy metals from the body that can damage our cells and it does this without us even knowing that it's happening. Don’t you think that’s super cool?!

Perchlorate is an ingredient in jet fuel and fireworks that widely contaminates the environment and our food. Sadly, even organic food has been found to contain high levels of this toxicant, making it exceedingly difficult to avoid exposure. But Bifidobacterium bifidum is capable of degrading this chemical.