Your body’s health relies on your digestive system.  A huge percentage of your health is related to what you eat, how you process it, and how it’s eliminated.Let’s start with intestinal or gut microflora and what they do. Colonies and colonies of bacteria are necessary to break down nutrients from your food and help keep your digestive system moving and working the way it should.

They not only break down food but further act as a defense system against unwanted or harmful bacterias, viruses, yeasts and other fungi.

These thousands of different kinds of bacteria are all living symbiotically and functioning like one of your other organs. The ‘good’ and ‘bad’ bacteria dance together in a balanced and healthy system.  Eating poorly, increased sugar intake, and ingesting antibiotics shove your digestive system into an imbalance.  When the beneficial (good) bacteria is reduced or removed the harmful (bad) bacteria thrives increasing toxicity and diease becomes a likelihood.  So it is imperative that you treat this ‘organ’ with the love and respect you would your heart or your brain.

What happens to the micrflora in your body when you eat sugar?   When you eat sugar and foods that act like sugar you feed and grow gut flora that also likes sugar.  In essence, you’ve set the dinner table for a bad flora buffet and the good guys get outnumbered and starve.

What happens to your gut microflora when you take antibiotics? You’re killing off both bad and good bacteria.  However, unless your diet includes recolonization efforts, it’s likely that you’re ingesting sugars again and the bad guy buffet is back up for business, increasing your chances for yeast infections and other digestive problems.

This is a small glimpse into how complex your immune system is and how the first line of defense is diet and digestion.

With intentional or unintentional destruction of your intestinal microflora, what can you do now to help recolonize the good bacteria in your digestive system?  Your gut flora organ actually ferments the foods you eat.  So what if you were eating foods that were already partially digested or fermented?  The nutrients in those foods are not only increased but absorbed without requiring your digestive process to do that job.  Plus the good bacteria that predigested and fermented those foods actually help to maintain or recolonize your beneficial gut flora.

Eating cultured or fermented veggies is one way to help recolonize and maintain the delicate dance with your gut flora.  Our veggies are cultured in a Lactobacillus plantarum (or L. plantarum) brine using Body Ecology’s Culture Starter.  Using lacto-fermentation like kimchi and sauerkraut, our veggies are fermented perfection.  If you are looking at making dietary changes that include pro- and pre-biotics, CVs can help.