Diet
Health Issues Related to Diet
Make Exercise Count For Your Gut Health
Make Exercise Count For Your Gut Health
Not only is exercise one of the best things you can do for the health of your mind and body, it’s also great for your gut and your muscles too!
Still, you may be wondering how exercise really makes a difference in the health of your gut. Is it the intensity that matters or how much you exercise every week?
Researchers from the University of Calgary answered this question among others in a recent study appearing in The FASEB Journal.
More Sweat Or More Time?
Scientists discovered some interesting findings in their recent study that tracked the exercise habits, diet, hand-grip strength and gut health of 443 middle-aged non-athletes who maintained a healthy BMI or were overweight.
These findings may be a little surprising, especially if you’re in the camp who believes exercise intensity makes a gut healthy difference.
The people who enjoyed the most gut healthy benefits were people who maintained a healthy BMI under 25 and exercised with moderate intensity for at least 150 minutes each week.
The same was not true for people who had higher BMIs because “poor dietary habits outweigh some of the beneficial influences of exercise on the gut microbes,” says Dr. Chunlong Mu, a co-author of the study who works in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Calgary.
Everything In Moderation
We’re not surprised patients who worked out with more intensity benefitted less, given that extreme exercise generally reverses the benefits people want to achieve and promotes symptoms of leaky gut in as little as two hours.
Maintaining moderation in many aspects of your life — diet, movement and sleep — goes a really long way toward preventing you from becoming a fatality in the war against metabolic syndrome.
The good news: The health of your gut goes hand-in-hand with your ability to lose weight and keep it off, but you may need some help to get started.
If you do need some extra support, consider EndoMune Metabolic Rescue, a probiotic formulated with Bifidobacterium lactis and the prebiotic XOS (Xylooligosaccharides) that stimulates the release of hormones in your gut that reduces your appetite naturally by promoting a greater sense of fullness.
And, if your weight is healthy and stable, give your body a gut-healthy boost with the 10 beneficial strains of bacteria contained in EndoMune Advanced Probiotic.
References
Could This Superfood Protect Your Gut Health?
Could This Superfood Protect Your Gut Health?
How often do you eat broccoli? (Your responses to this question can range from every day! to no comment!)
No matter how much you love broccoli (or not), health experts consider it a superfood — a natural food that features an array of nutrients your body needs every day, including Vitamins A and C, potassium, calcium and dietary fiber — which is always good for the health of your gut.
A recent study from Penn State University has discovered a new reason to eat broccoli related to protecting your gut health.
Protection From Leaky Gut
If your intestinal wall is healthy, the cells lining it allow water and nutrients to pass into your body safely and screen out undigested food, toxins and other bugs from harming your health, protecting you from problems related to leaky gut.
Some cells lining the intestines absorb water and nutrients (enterocytes) while others secrete a layer of mucus to protect the intestines from being overly permeable (goblet cells) and generate digestive enzymes that maintain a healthy, balanced environment (Paneth cells).
Penn State researchers tested the health benefits of broccoli by comparing the health of mice that were fed a daily diet that included the equivalent of 3.5 cups of broccoli a day for humans to a control group fed a typical lab diet.
Then, they examined the bodies of these test animals for signs of molecular signaling from a specific protein (aryl hydrocarbon receptor or AHR) and often it was activated.
Unsurprisingly, the guts of mice on a high broccoli diet had higher amounts of AHR that protected their tiny bodies from harm.
On the other hand, “The gut health of the mice that were not fed broccoli was compromised in a variety of ways that are known to be associated with disease,” says Dr. Gary Perdew, who works in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Studies.
Good News For Broccoli Haters
All of this news is good if you enjoy cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cabbage and even Brussels sprouts. But there are limits, as you may remember in our recent article on tomatoes.
No matter how good a specific food is for your health, the challenge remains eating enough of that one thing every day to make a real difference. A better, healthier approach is to eat a fiber-rich diet, which takes about 1 ounce (30 grams) daily to do the job.
If you’re not crazy about broccoli and want to protect your gut health, consider taking a daily probiotic formulated with 10 lab-tested strains of beneficial bacteria and a proven prebiotic like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic.
Resources
Heartburn Meds and Antibiotic Resistance
Heartburn Meds and Antibiotic Resistance
We remind you a lot about the real health complications associated with antibiotics. Relying on them too often can promote resistance, preventing antibiotics from working when you really need them as they should or at all.
Antibiotics aren’t the only medications people overuse that can promote drug resistance and harm your health.
Heartburn drugs — proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs) like omeprazole (Prilosec) and lansoprazole (Prevacid) — have been available over the counter (OTC) for a long time. Unfortunately, some patients take them long after their issues have been resolved. (Even years!)
In the past, we’ve told you about the use of PPIs creating unhealthy imbalances of gut bacteria that can leave you vulnerable to very serious Clostridium difficile (C. diff) superbugs infections in just 28 days.
A more recent study conducted by a European medical team added another layer of caution when taking PPIs.
More PPI Risks
Researchers from the University of Amsterdam Medical Centers investigated how the daily use of PPIs in a hospital setting increased the risk of acquiring multidrug-resistant bacteria in a study appearing in JAMA Network Open.
To do this, doctors monitored the health of more than 2,200 patients, including 374 who took PPIs, for the presence of two multidrug-resistant bacterial species (ESBL and carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales) over a two-year period.
Patients who took PPIs once a day increased their risks of acquiring both species by nearly 50 percent and slightly more when PPIs were taken twice a day.
Why are PPIs could be a problem: Scientists believe the primary function of these drugs — suppressing the production of gastric acid in the stomach — creates an environment in which harmful bacteria have better chances of survival and causing harm.
Better Ways To Handle Heartburn
A greater vulnerability to multidrug-resistant bacteria isn’t the only reason to be cautious about PPIs.
A 2019 study featured in The BMJ concluded their use was associated with a 17 percent rise in a patient’s risk of death compared to taking H2 blockers like cimetidine (Tagamet) or ranitidine (Zantac).
Here are four simple steps you can take right now that don’t involve a drug to ease your heartburn.
- If you’ve put on some extra COVID weight, it’s time to clean up your diet and make some time for exercise.
- Eat smaller meals and give yourself at least a two-hour break between your evening meal and bedtime.
- When you’re in bed, make sure you elevate your pillow slightly to avoid a nighttime surge of stomach acid.
- Protect the healthy balance of bacteria in your gut and lessen your risks of multidrug-resistant bacteria by taking a probiotic with multiple strains of beneficial bacteria like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic.
References
Improve Your Blood Pressure With Prebiotics
Improve Your Blood Pressure With Prebiotics
We never tire of reminding you about the benefits of prebiotics, the unsung heroes of good gut health.
Derived from carbohydrates and non-digestible plant fibers, prebiotics are commonly known as the food that feeds the bacteria in your microbiome.
More recently, prebiotics have taken center stage for a multitude of reasons, including their natural cancer-fighting abilities and their use as a sleep aid.
Add lowering blood pressure to that list of important prebiotic benefits, according to findings appearing in Nature Cardiovascular Research.
Just Like A Drug
Australian researchers at Monash University conducted a small trial of 20 patients that compared the benefits of taking a high-fiber supplement (20 grams of a resistant starch) contained in meals twice a day to an inert placebo separately for three weeks.
Among the criteria for participating in the study, all patients were required to be untreated for hypertension. Over the course of the trial, patients also maintained dietary diaries and tracked their blood pressure numbers multiple times each day.
The real difference noticed by researchers was more than a 4-point drop in overall systolic blood pressure numbers among patients during the high-fiber phase of the study.
The benefits of this decrease in blood pressure alone were equal to a patient taking blood pressure medication along with lowering the risk for death due to coronary issues by 9 percent and stroke by 14 percent.
How did systolic blood pressure numbers drop so much? Scientists believe taking a high-fiber supplement increased production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and bacteria in the gut that produces them.
Where We Go From Here
Despite the good news reported in this study, Australian scientists believe larger studies will be needed to confirm these findings.
But considering that nearly half of all Americans suffer from hypertension (having a systolic blood pressure reading above 130 or a diastolic blood pressure reading above 80), knowing there’s a non-drug solution that can go a long way toward protecting the health of your gut too is very appealing.
However, you don’t need fiber supplements to take advantage of these extra benefits. In fact, you only need to consume 25-35 grams (about 1 ounce) of prebiotic, non-soluble fiber each day to make a healthy difference.
You can get your daily dose of prebiotics and some extra cardiovascular protection when you take EndoMune Advanced Probiotic, formulated with 10 battle-tested strains of beneficial bacteria from Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium families and the proven prebiotic fructooligosaccharides (FOS).
Resources
Losing Weight: Why Your Gut Matters
Losing Weight: Why Your Gut Matters
How many times have you made a New Year’s resolution to lose weight and failed to make it past the first week?
Any health-related New Year’s resolution that makes a lasting impact on your wellness requires a vision of what you want to achieve along with a plan and a set of measurable goals to help you get there.
Much of your success in carrying out your weight-loss resolutions depends on incorporating better a healthier diet and more movement into your daily routine.
But, did you know the difference between losing weight and keeping it off for the long haul could depend on the health of your gut too?
Your Gut As A Biomarker For Healthy Eating
Stanford University researchers explored a simple question — what allows some people to lose weight while others don’t? — in a review of data to find some answers in a recent study appearing in Cell Reports Medicine.
Scientists reviewed health data on more than 600 patients who ate a low-carb or low-fat diets largely made up of high quality, minimally processed foods for a year.
For the first six months of data, patients who strictly followed either a low-carb or low-fat diet lost weight but only for the short-term. Yet some patients failed to lose more weight after a year while others did, despite maintaining their exercise goals and cutting calories.
How could this happen?
“We found specific microbiome ecologies and amounts of proteins and enzymes at the beginning of the study period — before people started following their diets — that indicated whether they would be successful at losing weight and keeping it off,” says Dalia Perelman, co-author of the Stanford study and a research dietician.
Another predictor of weight-loss success: The ratio of inhaled oxygen to exhaled carbon dioxide (the respiratory quotient) that determines whether fats or carbs are a patient’s main source for fuel.
A higher ratio means your body burns more carbs, but a lower one indicates your body burns more fat.
The Future
Researchers believe knowing this data before starting any weight-loss plan could be the first step toward more personalized diets, with an eye toward what kinds of quality, healthy foods you can include rather than what foods you should exclude, Perelman says.
But, at the same time, the health of your gut matters, especially at the beginning of your weight-loss journey. And, if you’re older, you’ll need some extra help due to the naturally declining amount of beneficial bacteria in your gut.
If you want to give your weight-loss plan a gut-healthy start, consider EndoMune Metabolic Rescue. This newest member of the EndoMune family is uniquely formulated with 1 billion CFUs of Bifidobacterium lactis and 600 mg of XOS, a proven prebiotic that stimulates the release of hormones in your gut and reduces your appetite naturally by promoting more fullness.
Research suggests the potent ingredients that make up EndoMune Metabolic Rescue may help you improve your fasting blood sugar and insulin levels and lose weight within 30 days.
Resources
Are You Really Eating Enough Whole Grains?
Are You Really Eating Enough Whole Grains?
A critical part of a gut-healthy diet is eating the right amount of dietary fiber every day.
Depending on which experts you study, the amount of fiber you need to consume in order to make a healthy difference varies between 20-38 grams a day. Those numbers may sound like a lot, until you realize 30 grams of fiber amounts to 1 powerful ounce of protection.
When people go to the grocery store in search of good sources of dietary fiber, they often look for processed foods made from whole grains. You can find them listed on the product labels of many foods, including breads, cereals, brown rice and pastas.
Still, you may not be eating enough whole grains and it may not entirely be your fault, according to a recent study appearing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
What’s A Whole Grain Food?
The heart of the problem are overlapping definitions of what really constitutes a whole grain food based on competing interests, ranging from the FDA and American Heart Association to the American Association of Cereal Chemists and Whole Grains Council.
Using data collected from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 2003-18, scientists at Tufts University and New York University compared those definitions of whole grain foods to the diets of nearly 40,000 adults.
Overall, patients participating in the survey ate anywhere from 40-62 percent of the suggested healthy daily amount of whole grains, depending on those same inconsistent definitions.
The confusion between healthy and less healthy sources of whole grains becomes easier to understand, when you know that many processed foods labeled as containing wheat, multigrain or whole grains probably don’t contain nearly enough to make a real difference.
In fact, the lead author of the study, Mengxi Du from Tufts’ Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, admitted having problems identifying foods labeled as rich in whole grains in her own trips to the grocery store.
So, what do you do if food labeling is inconsistent and unreliable and even big organizations don’t agree on what whole grain means?
Know What You’re Buying
There are plenty of things you can do to increase your fiber intake with help from whole grains. Looking back on our recent feature on the benefits of dietary fiber, search for whole grain foods like these in their purest, unprocessed form.
- Brown rice
- Spelt
- Whole oats
- Quinoa
Be sure to examine all food labels very closely. If the list of ingredients in foods feature whole grain or whole wheat at the top, experts say you’re making a good choice.
Foods containing refined grains may contain essential nutrients, but once they have been milled, they lose iron, many B vitamins and dietary fiber.
While you’re on the lookout for good foods to complement your gut-friendly diet, be sure to give your gut all the help it needs by taking a probiotic, ideally with multiple strains of beneficial bacteria and a prebiotic (that feeds the bacteria in your gut) like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic.
References
The Probiotic Benefit For Gastric Bypass Patients
The Probiotic Benefit For Gastric Bypass Patients
With greater numbers of people struggling with a myriad of health issues surrounding obesity, the popularity of gastric bypass procedures that help patients shed extra pounds has grown exponentially over the past three decades.
Although gastric bypass isn’t for everyone who suffers from severe weight-related health problems, this procedure can be an important catalyst toward better health outcomes.
Losing the weight with the help of gastric bypass is merely the first step. It takes a great deal of work and mental determination to follow a healthier diet plan rather than a nutrient-poor Western diet which is often the reason many patients consider gastric bypass in the first place.
However, taking a probiotic formulated with Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium strains may be a very safe, gut-friendly solution that eases some of the issues gastric bypass patients face, according to a recent study.
The Gut-Brain Connection At Work
A team of Brazilian researchers conducted a clinical trial with 101 gastric bypass patients to assess the gut-brain benefits of prescribing a probiotic containing Bifidobacterium lactis and Lactobacillus acidophilus, targeting symptoms of binge eating and food addictions.
(These strains of beneficial bacteria are among the 10 formulated in every bottle of EndoMune Advanced Probiotic.)
Patients received a multi-strain probiotic or placebo for three months, starting seven days after their gastric bypass surgeries, then were evaluated at the 90-day and 1-year marks to assess outcomes.
Both patient groups experienced decreases in symptoms at three months. But, the real benefit of taking a multi-strain probiotic showed up a year later as patients still experienced significant gut-brain relief from binging and food addictions.
What If Gastric Bypass Isn’t An Option?
For many people, gastric bypass may not be the best option to lose weight. You may not be keen on weight-loss surgery, especially if the amount of weight you need to lose is a much more manageable number that can be aided by eating nutrient-dense foods and increasing your exercise.
If you want to lose weight safely and more slowly but need some extra help, you may want to consider EndoMune Metabolic Rescue, a probiotic that can help you maintain the healthy balance of bacteria in your gut and jumpstart your weight loss plan.
EndoMune Metabolic Rescue contains a proven blend of Bifidobacterium lactis and the prebiotic XOS (Xylooligosaccharides) that stimulates the release of hormones in your gut that reduce your appetite naturally by promoting a greater sense of fullness.
If gastric bypass isn’t in your future, it’s good to know you have gut-healthy options in the EndoMune family of probiotics that can make your weight-loss journey a good experience.
References
Are Tomatoes Good For Your Gut?
Are Tomatoes Good For Your Gut?
You’d be surprised by the number of calls we get every time a story pops up on the evening news about the latest probiotic food “discovery.”
Suggestions — whole foods like walnuts — make some sense, but others — beer or kombucha tea — are more challenging and depend on factors largely out of your control.
Recently, tomatoes joined that growing list of foods based on a joint study from a research team at Ohio State and Penn State University specializing in food, crop and animal sciences and the microbiome
Their focus made sense, given that tomatoes make up more than 20 percent of the vegetable intake in the average Western diet and their consumption has been associated with reduced risks for the development of some forms of cancer and cardiovascular disease.
However, there’s always caveats when it comes to evaluating the efficacy of most foods in the laboratory for their microbial benefits, and this case is no different.
How Tomatoes Affect The Gut
To measure the benefits, scientists fed two sets of recently weaned pigs either a standard diet or one that was fine-tuned slightly to include a 10 percent mix of freeze-dried powder made from tomatoes for two weeks.
Gut changes were measured from fecal samples taken before the study started, then seven and 14 days after the tomato-laden diet started. Then, researchers used shotgun metagenomic sequencing, a technique used to sequence genomes to calculate the composition of microbes, to compare those samples.
Overall, the pigs eating a tomato-based diet experienced increased gut microbial diversity, and higher ratios of beneficial bacteria linked to good health outcomes. For example, previous research has linked tomato consumption with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and some cancers.
Although the results were positive and measurable among animals eating tomatoes, scientists did not learn how or why that change occurred.
That said, pigs have GI tracts that more closely resemble those in humans than mice, which suggests a future trial in humans could happen, says Dr. Jessica Cooperstone, senior study author and an assistant professor at Ohio State.
The Takeaway For Your Health
Still, the real unknown is understanding how foods like tomatoes make an impact on human gut health, says Dr. Cooperstone.
Even taking these positive results into account, the real test for any food is to consume enough of it to have a positive impact on the balance of bacteria in your gut without creating more health problems, like worsening conditions like GERD (gastroesophageal reflux) or migraines.
Very simply, it’s hard to eat enough of a single food to make a gut healthy difference, but a diet rich in dietary fiber can do a lot of good and only takes about 1 ounce of fiber a day to notice a difference.
But there’s more you can do to give your health a gut-friendly boost every day, especially if you have a hard time eating enough fiber.
Taking a multi-strain probiotic formulated with beneficial bacteria from the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium families and a proven prebiotic (FOS) contained in EndoMune Advanced Probiotic every day can make a gut-healthy difference in your health.
And, you can save the tomatoes for a salad or your favorite sandwich…
References
Your Gut or Your Blood: What Affects Your Health More?
Your Gut or Your Blood: What Affects Your Health More?
We posted an article last year that asked a provocative question about what affects your health more: Your gut or your genes.
From that report, we learned once again how the quality of our daily diets shaped the diversity of our microbiomes in ways that can leave us more vulnerable to serious health problems or protect us from them.
That’s not all, according to a pair of recent studies conducted in Sweden and America.
The human gut exerts its influence through diet and even the medications you take on the composition of metabolites that drive countless functions throughout your body’s bloodstream.
But how much does your gut really affect your health? Much more than you would ever assume…
The Connection Between Your Gut and Your Blood
Two recent studies conducted in Sweden and America came to strikingly similar conclusions. In both cases, gut microbiomes drove variances in blood metabolites.
After examining the presence of 930 blood metabolites in more than 1,500 patients, researchers from the Institute of Systems Biology (ISB) in Seattle concluded more than 60 percent of those metabolites were tied directly to the gut microbiome, a patient’s genetic makeup or both.
Of that number, 69 percent of those connections were driven solely by the microbiome and an additional 16 percent were controlled by a genetic-microbiome hybrid. Only 15 percent of the metabolites tracked were associated with a patient’s genetic makeup.
Swedish researchers from Lund University and Uppsala University came to similar conclusions, estimating as much as 58 percent of the variances of individual blood metabolites are linked to the microbiome.
Moreover, this team documented more than 546,000 associations between specific gut species and blood metabolites.
The Main Takeaway
So, in simple terms, what does this knowledge really mean for our understanding of the gut microbiome and your own health?
For one, understanding the variances between the composition of bacteria in the gut and metabolites in the blood can help scientists find more targeted approaches to health problems, says Dr. Sean Gibbons, an ISB faculty member and study co-author.
Also, these findings suggest that our gut health drives a majority of the metabolites in our blood, and that they can be treated and enhanced by basic lifestyle interventions.
For example, eating a diet rich in dietary fiber can make a huge difference. Just adding one ounce of fiber is all it takes, and it’s doable if you enjoy nutrient-dense foods like lentils, green beans, oats and mushrooms.
Researchers also suggested taking a probiotic could provide a healthy boost to your metabolites.
To the end, be sure that any probiotic you take is formulated with multiple strains of beneficial bacteria from the Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus families as well as a prebiotic (that feeds the good bacteria in your gut) like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic.
