Love Your Gut.

Recently, I have been reading a ton of articles which directly link gut health to depression and disease. If you have read them as well, I’m sorry to be redundant.  However, if you don’t stay up late reading nerdy science articles like me, then I hope you get something out of this.

Research has shown that inflammation in the gut is very common in people with autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular issues, diabetes, cancer, and depression. Inflammation in the gut is a sign that the healthy bacteria living in there have been severely damaged or killed. These bacteria, which naturally live in our GI tract, do way more than we give them credit for. When we imbalance or kill them off, we can get sick beyond belief.

How do most germs enter our body?  That’s right, through our mouths. Maybe we didn’t wash our produce from the grocery store, or the person cooking our food didn’t wash their hands, or maybe we call out the 5-second rule too often. Your digestive system is the first line of defense against most of the bacteria that you will come into contact with. The healthy bacteria in our GI tract fight off any foreign bacteria that enters our system. That is a pretty darn important job. So, when we damage our poor little intestines with a high sugar and highly acidic diet, or too many processed foods, we are slowly wearing down that defense system and weakening our whole immune system. Weakening the immune system for a long period of time can lead to a serious illness or disease.

In addition, your gut bacteria plays a crucial roll in serotonin regulation and production. It actually produces more than your brain does. Crazy huh? Serotonin literally makes you feel good; a low level of this is directly linked to depression. So if your gut is damaged, you can be sure depression will follow.

What can you do to heal your gut and improve your overall health?

Stop the damage:

Cut back on sugar! If you know me, you know this one breaks my heart. I have a love/hate relationship with sugar. But seriously, it wreaks havoc on our bodies, and it kills that healthy bacteria we need.

Avoid processed foods. If it has an ingredient that sounds like it is out of a chemistry book, then don’t eat it! Cook from scratch more, or find foods with the most basic ingredients.  There are plenty of low-cost all natural foods that can be found at your local grocer (Trader Joe’s, Market Basket, etc).

Choose your meat wisely! Typical meat is loaded with antibiotics.  Meat filled with antibiotics can destroy your healthy bacteria.  Choose hormone free and organic meat; it is worth the extra money.

Build up your bacteria:

Eat probiotics!  Probiotics are the bacteria that live in yogurt, kefir, cheese, and fermented veggies to name a few. Put that high-sugar gogurt down!  I mean some good old fashion yogurt without any added sugar.

Eat prebiotics! These are the foods that feed these bacteria you worked so hard to build up. Keep those little guys healthy and well fed. Prebiotics are your high fiber fruits and vegetables, beans and whole grains.

Now, get off the Internet, clean the junk food out of your cabinets, and eat some probiotics!

Niacin the New Prozac?

Sorry it has been so long since my last post, I guess life got the best of me for a while there. I have had so many things to talk and write about, so I’m back for good now :)

One topic I have always found really interesting is the use of vitamins and foods in place of pharmaceutical drugs. Many people really don't take this seriously, because they don't know a lot about it.  Most doctors are trained in medicine, how to use medication, and when to use it, rather than how to recognize and fix a vitamin deficiency.  Surprisingly many common illnesses are the symptoms of a certain vitamin deficiency.

The other day I was watching the movie Food Matters (very interesting but don't take the whole thing seriously, especially the guy wearing the "RAW" shirt in it), anyhow they started talking about Bill Wilson and I was amazed. Bill Wilson was one of the co founders of Alcoholics Anonymous; he was introduced to the idea that niacin (vitamin B3) can be used to relieve depression and in turn alcoholism. He was depressed for many years and was battling alcoholism, so he gave it a try. Taking 3g a day of niacin, within weeks he felt great. He passed this information on to other friends going through depression, and almost all of them saw similar positive results. 

Bill tried to include this nutrition therapy in the AA program because of these results he saw personally, and in his close friends. However many of the other founders were educated as doctors of medicine and did know much about the effects of niacin. Unfortunately this never made it into AA treatment. If this topic interests you, you can read more about it on this link: http://www.doctoryourself.com/hoffer_niacin.html

Now I'm not saying go out and take high doses of niacin if you are feeling down. Vitamins are great for you, but you need to know how to use them before you do. Niacin for example has a RDA of 16mg for men and 14mg for women daily. A RDA (recommended daily allowance) is the amount of this vitamin that half the population would need to prevent deficiency. So in other words, a lot of people need this amount, but many may need more or less.

On the other hand the UL (upper limit of intake) is 35mg a day for an adult. Side effects can occur from high doses of niacin, these include flushing, itching, high blood sugar, liver damage, and gout. However side effects are normally only seen at 2 grams (2000mg). 

So these guidelines put in place are to meet the needs of most people, not all. Do you think you fall into this group of people that need 14-16mg of niacin daily? 

Also, you should keep in mind that when you are stressed, your body uses a lot more of this vitamin, along with all B vitamins. Let's face it, our society is always stressed, rushed and pissed off. I think everyone could use a B complex supplement.

Anyhow there is a lot of research being done on niacin, studied have shown that high doses can help lower cholesterol, it can slow the progression of atherosclerosis (preventing heart attacks), and relieve depression. Interesting stuff huh? I’ll keep you guys posted on this.

The bottom line to this post is to keep an open mind when finding medical treatment, there are more options out there than what your doctor is telling you. Imagine taking niacin instead of Prozac? Sounds pretty good to me.