Did you know that chia seeds can be very soothing for the intestines?

Watch my intern Josh Edelstein, a culinary nutrition student at Johnson and Wales University, whip up a Chia Seed Pudding in a jar. It makes a great easy to make snack that your body will thank you for.

Chia seeds are demulcents, and help to build and repair the mucosal layer in your gut. We need this gel-like layer in the gut for immune defense — to support a diverse community of intestinal microbes, to prevent leaky gut, to quell inflammation, and for normal digestion/elimination.

These tiny black seeds are also packed with nutrition. Chia seeds provide fiber, protein, Omega-3 fats, minerals (e.g. magnesium, manganese, calcium and phosphorus) and vitamins (e.g. B vitamins).

Watch this 1 minute video and you’ll see just how easy it is to be good to your gut!

P.S. Add a probiotic boost to this recipe — add the contents of a MegaSporeBiotic capsule before you shake it all up!

Basic ingredients:

1 C plant milk

4 Tbsp Chia Seeds

1/2 Tbsp Maple Syrup

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Berries or other fruit

(options include ground cinnamon, cocoa powder, ginger)

Looking for a festive, yet healthy (and easy!) recipe for a St. Patrick’s day dessert? My nutrition intern Josh shows you how to make a Matcha Loaf Bread. He added MegaSporeBiotic for the #CookMoreSpores challenge, showcasing how you can utilize this great probiotic addition to any recipe —cold or hot (up to 450ºF).

• Support healthy immune balance and function
• Maintain strong adhesion and colonization in the gut
• Support a healthier gut lining
• Support increased microbial diversity
• Maintain a healthy balance of desirable and undesirable microbes
• Support optimal digestion and absorption
• Provide support for proper bowel function, gut motility, and transit time

Enjoy this 1 minute video and delicious dessert!

NOTE:
You can add 1-2 capsules of MegaSporeBiotic to any warm meals, breads, and in other baked desserts.

The spores are heat stable up to 450 degrees F.

MegaSporeBiotic probiotics have a resilient outer coat that is resistant to not only heat, but also to acids, and radiation.

Looking for creative ways to incorporate healthy probiotics into your and your family’s diet without taking capsules?

Here is a recipe video created by my intern Josh for Berry Layered Overnight Oats, a microbiome-friendly recipe. In this recipe, which part of  the #CookMoreSpores challenge, he added two capsules of MegaSporeBiotic.

You can add MegaSporeBiotic  probiotic to any cold recipe. (And by the way, the spores are also heat stable up to 450 degrees F so you want to use them in cooked recipes!)

The spores in MegaSporeBiotic have a resilient outer coat of armor that is resistant to extreme heat, acidity, radiation, and chemicals. The spore form ensures that spore-based probiotics effectively colonize the gut to maintain total-body health in countless ways. MegaSporeBiotic can help your body:

• Support healthy immune balance and function
• Maintain strong adhesion and colonization in the gut
• Support a healthier gut lining
• Support increased microbial diversity
• Maintain a healthy balance of desirable and undesirable microbes
• Support optimal digestion and absorption
• Provide support for proper bowel function, gut motility, and transit time

This 1 minute cooking video will show you just how easy it is to make a delicious overnight oats recipe that supports a healthy and diverse gut microbiome! Great gut health and great breakfast…great way to start your day!

Basic Ingredients:

1/2 c Old Fashioned Oats

1/2 c Almond or other plant milk

1/4 c Vanilla Yogurt (milk or plant based)

1 Tbsp Chia Seeds

Fruit – 1/2 c sliced bananas, plus other fruit to layer like blueberries, raspberries, peaches

Today botanicals are used as complementary therapies especially for stubborn, chronic infections of the vagina or urinary tract.

Many botanicals have a long traditional and historical use for helping women with conditions such as yeast/candida infections (yeast vaginitis), bacterial infections (bacterial vaginosis) and urinary tract infections (UTI/cystitis).

Botanicals commonly used for women’s conditions:
Berberine (constituent of goldenseal, oregon grape), Calendula, Garlic, Tea Tree, Cranberry, Uva ursi, Pipsissewa, Marshmallow, and Buchu.

Scientific studies have measured treatment outcomes of these botanicals as well as their mode of action.

Botanicals “For Women” Act in Various Ways
Some like Berberine, Garlic, Tea Tree and Uva ursi are anti-fungal (anti-yeast), anti-bacterial, anti-viral and/or may produce a more acidic environment that is “hostile” to the microorganisms that are out of balance. (Yeast loves an alkaline environment!)

Some botanicals exhibit additional properties. For example cranberry’s constituents adhere to mucosal walls of the urinary tract and act as a barrier to E. Coli that also like to adhere to those surfaces. Similarly, Marshmallow, is mucilaginous and acts as a protective layer of the urinary tract, providing a soothing effect to the mucosa and Buchu also provides a protective layer and is a diuretic.

More Complementary Strategies that Can Help Women with Chronic Infections

Use Antibiotics Only if Absolutely Necessary
Antiobiotics kill acid-producing bacteria in your stomach, the GI tract becomes more alkaline and the Candida have “free reign” for overgrowth. (Similarly, acid blockers or antacids also reduce stomach acid, providing an environment for the Candida to take over. Yeast and bacteria migrate between GI tract and vagina and urinary tract.)

Eat a Low Carbohydrate Diet that is Immune Supportive
Keep your carbohyrate intake (starches and added sugars) to a minimum. Sugar is a favorite food source for Candida! Eat a whole foods diet high in vitamin C (ascorbic acid), rich with antioxidants and dietary fiber. Incorporate foods with probiotics, such as yogurt or kefir with live cultures.

Consider Homeopathic and other Therapies
Homeopathic therapies that have been used include: Borax, Hydrastis Canadensis, Boerberis, Kreosotum, Sepia, Calcarea Carbonicum, Nitric acidum, Carbolic acidum. In addition Boric acid suppositories (anti-fungal and acidic) has been used.

Take a Probiotic Daily
Maintaining a healthy and diverse gut microbiome helps keep pathogenic species from overpopulating. The body’s various microbiomes (e.g. gut, urinary, vaginal) are all interconnected. Acid producing probiotics like acidophilus and lactobacillus produce small amounts of lactic and acetic acid, helping to rebalance the pH in your intestine to limit growth of Candida; some strategies also include vagina suppositories of probiotics, to directly repopulate the vagina with lactobacillus strains normally found there. (Acidophilus is not the dominant strain in the vagina.) MegaSporeBiotic is my “go-to” probiotic for total body health.

For more information and specific protocols:
Women’s Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine, 2nd Edition
by Tori Hudson, ND

What is most concerning about the coronavirus and getting COVID-19 is developing life threatening complications — like pneumonia and extreme difficulty breathing.

But what does gut health have to do with COVID-19 and the respiratory complications?

According to this editorial, “2019 Novel coronavirus infection and gastrointestinal tract,” in Journal of Digestive Diseases:

“In early February [2020], the guidance (version 5) established by the China’s National Health Commission and National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine recommended that in the treatment of patients with severe COVID-19 infection, probiotics may be used to maintain the balance of intestinal microecology and prevent secondary bacterial infection.”

In this editorial, the the researchers explain the mechanism of action. They describe how certain receptors (ACE2 receptors) which are abundant in the lining of both the lungs and intestines, are the possible access route for COVID-19.

Part of the function of these receptors is linked to the microbial ecology in the gastrointestinal tract; mutations in these receptors express decreased antimicrobial function and show altered gut microbial composition. This information leads the authors to have the hypothesis that COVID‐19 may, to some extent, be related to the gut microbiota.

Gut–lung Crosstalk

The authors admit that the connection between the lung and the gastrointestinal tract is not completely understood. However, they explain that what is well known is that the respiratory tract houses its own microbiota, and that patients with respiratory infections generally have gut dysfunction or secondary gut dysfunction complications, which are related to a more severe clinical course of the disease, thus indicating gut–lung crosstalk. They observe that this phenomenon exists in patients with COVID‐19.

Numerous studies have shown that modulating gut microbiota can reduce intestinal inflammation and ventilator‐associated pneumonia, and it can reverse certain side effects of antibiotics to avoid early influenza virus replication in lung epithelia.

Preliminary, but Hopeful

That said, at this time there is no direct clinical evidence that the modulation of gut microbiota plays the therapeutic role in the treatment of COVID‐19, but they speculate that targeting gut microbiota may be a new therapeutic option or at least an adjuvant therapeutic choice.

“Although no specific antiviral treatment has been recommended to date, we speculate that probiotics may modulate the gut microbiota to alter the gastrointestinal symptoms favorably and may also protect the respiratory system.”

Gut Microbiome, Essential to Health, In General 

A healthy and diverse ecology of gut microbes is fundamentally essential to good health. In fact, when our gut health and gut barrier are compromised, we also have a higher risk of acute and chronic diseases.

Did you know that many scientists are finding that an imbalance of the gut microbiome is an underlying root cause for the onset of diabetes?

Here’s a simplified explanation the relationship between the gut microbiome and the onset of diabetes:

Chronic inflammation in the gut from microbial dysbiosis and lack of microbial diversity can lead to damage of the gut mucosal barrier. Eventually this inflammation leads to gaps in the intestinal lining, known as leaky gut.

Through these gaps, toxins, pathogens and dietary antigens can get through and trigger an inflammatory immune response.

Over time, this immune response may eventually develop into insulin resistance and hyperglycemia and the eventual development of Type 2 diabetes.

Leaky gut also leaves those genetically predisposed to Type 1 diabetes with a poorly educated immune system, more vulnerable to viral triggers of the disease as well as damage to pancreatic beta cells.

One of the most important jobs of the gut microbiome is to tend the gut lining. If the gut microbiome is out of balance, it poorly performs that job. We rely on our gut microbes to help us reduce intestinal inflammation and maintain the mucus barrier and tight junctions of the gut lining. The gut lining is a critical way that the body protects itself from the outside world.

I work with clients to rebalance their gut microbiota, through diet and lifestyle changes and supplements. My nutrition strategies are designed to increase microbial diversity as well as specifically increase populations of microbial species that are known to tend the gut lining.

My nutrition gut strategies are designed to support species of microbes that produce anti-inflammatory metabolites like butyrate and keep the gut mucus layer strong and the cell junctions tight.

Here’s an illustration from Microbiome Labs comparing a healthy gut lining with a leaky gut lining.
It shows that gut dysbiosis, with decreased microbial diversity and a deficiency of butyrate producing and mucin supporting bacteria, can lead to leaky gut.

Why do some friends or family members seem to eat virtually anything and not gain weight?

Why do others eat more healthfully and struggle with unwanted weight gain?

This paper from Microbiome Labs, reveals recent scientific discoveries to shed some new light on this matter! 

First of all….the Myth. 

We typically credit being lean to an individual just being lucky to be born with a high metabolism. Or with someone who is very conscious about the calories they eat.

But there’s more to it.

According to the latest research, “as it turns out, our gut bacteria and the type of species we have in our digestive tract, play a critical role in determine if we are going to be lean or obese.”

“The latest research has shown that the type of bacteria you have in your gut controls the amount of calories you extract from the food you eat, the types of food you crave and also what food is converted to in the digestive process.

Foods consumed, especially carbohydrates, can be converted to compounds that lead to insulin resistance, fat storage, gas production and metabolites that cause inflammation.”

Let’s Look at the Good News

This presents the opportunity to support the right bacteria in your gut for a better health — to support insulin sensitivity, increase fat burn, prevent fat storage, reduce inflammation, reduce gas production and improve satiety.

In essence, we can reprogram our metabolism by supporting the ratio of different strains of bacteria in the gut.

But How Can You Reprogam Your Metabolism?

Number One. This means both consuming foods that are high in fiber AND eating few simple carbohydrates and sugars. But you have to do both — eat more fiber and only minimal amounts of simple carbohydrates and sugars to be effective. Why? This combination supports your gut bacteria to produce “fat busting compounds” known as short chain fatty acids (SCFA’s). Just eating a high fiber diet alone doesn’t achieve this. Neither does just keeping your simple carbohydrates low, such as on a Paleo diet.

Number Two. The second important microbial technique is to get the right probiotics in your system, with meals. For example, MegasporeBiotic probiotics is formulated with a unique combination of probiotic bacteria that have been shown to convert fibers in the diet to the much desired SCFA’s which affect the metabolic process.

There are additional variables too like giving the gut a 12 hour + fasting window (e.g. no food between 7 pm and 7 am) and considering how genetics play into it.

For more tips and detailed science, read the full Metabolic Reprogramming paper by Microbiome Labs.

You can also check out the MegaSporebiotic product as well as the Total Gut Restoration protocol (which includes MegaMucosa (or MegaIgG2000) and MegaPreBiotic.)