healthy eating Archives

Your Gut Needs Water

Diet, Digestive Health, Disease, Probiotics / By @drHoberman

Summary: Drinking lots of clean, fresh water is good for the health of your body and your gut.

There’s not a day that goes by without someone somewhere reminding us about the importance of drinking clean, fresh water for our good health.

This certainly makes sense. As much water as you consume every day, your body is using and losing large amounts of it for vital things like breathing, protecting your skin, transporting waste and toxins out of your system and maintaining your muscle strength.

But experts neglect to remind us about why water is so important for maintaining our good gut health. Here’s a few things to think about.

Absorption: Drinking water improves how your body breaks down food and absorbs the nutrients it needs.

Constipation: The presence of water in your digestive tract keeps your stools softer, preventing constipation.

Your diet: Eating foods containing high amounts of water — such as cucumbers, watermelon, oranges and strawberries — can be a great way to keep up with the water your body and gut needs.

Dehydration: In some cases, your body will lose more fluids than you’re taking in when suffering from acute diarrhea and vomiting, another reason to ensure you’re consuming enough water to maintain good health.

Did you know the source of the water you drink may influence the health of your gut too?

The best water for your gut?

An interesting finding from a 2022 study taken from data collected by the American Gut Project on 3,000 patients in the UK and America concluded that the source of the water you drink (tap, well, filtered or bottled) may have some influence on the makeup of your gut microbiome.

Compared to filtered, tap or bottled water, patients who drank well water had greater fecal microbial diversity, considered an important measuring stick of good gut health.

For example, patients who drank well water had lower amounts of bacteria from the Odoribacter family that is associated with gut-related health issues and problems with stool consistency and the Bacteroides family that is linked to a less diverse microbiome.

This direct benefit to the gut sounds great until you look at the numbers away from the study that really matter. For one, only 15 percent of Americans (43 million) have access to well water, according to the EPA.

What’s more, having access to well water is no guarantee that the water is safe to drink. Flooding and other environmental problems can also allow toxic substances to leech into well water, exposing you to high amounts of arsenic, nitrites and chemicals from fertilizers that certainly aren’t safe.

If your main source of drinking water comes from a well, experts recommend that you have it tested once a year to monitor those chemicals.

The fact remains that your water intake goes hand-in-hand with good gut health, but the good news here is that you don’t need access to well water to improve it.

The safest and most effective way to protect the health and diversity of your gut is also the simplest, if you take a probiotic formulated with multiple strains of beneficial bacteria like those found in EndoMune Advanced Probiotic every day with a glass of clean, fresh water.

Resources

Journal of Nutrition

Gut Microbiota For Health

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Could a Probiotic Help You?

Digestive Health, Drug interactions, Mental Health, Probiotics, Women’s Health / By @drHoberman

Probiotics seem to be everywhere right now; in the cereal aisle at the grocery store, lining the supplement shelves, we’re even seeing them in the beauty and skincare section! Hearing about all the benefits of probiotics may have you wondering, “Do I need to take one?”

Defined by the World Health Organization, probiotics are “live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host.” They are not chemicals like antibiotics, but cultures of live bacteria or yeasts that help to maintain the balance of good and bad bacteria in the gut microbiome. When your gut becomes unbalanced it can cause many health issues, such as gas, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and obesity. Probiotics have been shown to help “restore the healthy composition and function of the gut microbiome” and thus, help combat many of these troublesome issues.

Think taking a probiotic supplement could benefit you? Below we’ll discuss a handful of reasons why people may be adding a probiotic supplement to their daily routine.

When you need immune system support

Do you feel like you get sick every flu or cold season? If yes, then you may need to strengthen your immune system. 70-80% of your immune system resides in your gut and the health of your microbiome directly impacts the overall health of your immune system. Probiotics are a great way to help support your immune system and protect your body against harmful viruses.

When you’re taking antibiotics

Antibiotics are used to kill disease-causing bacteria in the body. This is good, but sometimes taking an antibiotic can trigger diarrhea. That’s because these strong antibiotics can kill our good bacteria while targeting the bad bacteria resulting in an unbalanced microbiome. Taking a probiotic while on antibiotics is a great way to help your body stay in balance and prevent a case of antibiotic-associated diarrhea.

It’s important to remember to take your probiotic supplements at least two hours after taking your antibiotics to ensure the antibiotics do not kill the good bacteria in your probiotics!

When you’re having digestive problems (and when you’re not!)

If you constantly suffer from stomach problems such as gas, constipation, bloating, and diarrhea, your microbiome may be unbalanced. Taking a probiotic has been shown to help restore the balance of your gut microbiome and improve the functioning of your GI tract.

When you have allergies

Up to 30% of the general population suffers from one or more atopic diseases including allergies, asthma, and eczema. These are usually caused by heightened immune responses to common allergens, especially inhaled or food allergens. Probiotics have been shown to help alleviate allergic inflammation and food allergy symptoms. Another published study demonstrated that the probiotic strain Lactobacillus casei decreased the number of days preschool children with allergic rhinitis were sick over 12 months. If you tend to lock yourself inside during allergy season, then a probiotic may be what you need!

When you experience frequent yeast infections

If you suffer from frequent yeast infections, it could be a sign that there is a disturbance of the beneficial bacteria in your body. Studies have shown that supplementing with probiotics can improve symptoms of yeast infections and may also be able to prevent potential infections. Vaginal yeast infections are surprisingly common, as 75% of all women are likely to have a yeast infection at least once in their lives. While there are many treatment options, beginning to take a probiotic supplement is one of the easiest, all-natural ways to correct the loss of good bacteria and bring your body back into balance.

Convinced yet?

It can be difficult to maintain the balance of bacteria in your microbiome when things like diet, travel, and stress can throw it off. In some circumstances, eating plenty of probiotic-rich foods may not be enough, and a probiotic supplement may be able to help keep everything in line. If you find yourself experiencing any of these health concerns consider taking a probiotic supplement to help achieve a healthy microbiome, strong immune system, and an overall healthy body.

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someone pouring sweetener into their coffee

How Artificial Sweeteners May Hurt You

Diet, Digestive Health, Healthy Aging / By @drHoberman

Artificial sweeteners have found their way into a wide variety of foods — mostly processed products like diet sodas, but even in ones prepared at home — people eat in their efforts to lose weight over the years.

There are always tradeoffs when you make drastic changes in your diet, however, and some may not be worth it based on the state of your health.

Unfortunately, switching to artificial sweeteners could be a serious tradeoff that can cause serious problems for your gut health.

The damage was real, based on the results of a very recent study that monitored the gut health of 29 healthy, non-diabetic Australian patients who consumed artificial sweeteners.

Some patients received the amount of artificial sweeteners you’d drink in 1.5 liters (about 51 ounces) of diet sodas each day for just two weeks or a placebo.

After comparing stool samples before and after the trial, researchers concluded the consumption of artificial sweeteners was enough to change the composition of bacteria in the human gut for the worse.

Not only did bacteria that promote good health significantly decrease, so did the species that fermented foods. Plus, 11 different species of opportunistic bad bacteria increased too.

All of these changes in the gut occurred at the very same time as declines in microbial genes that work to metabolize simple sugars like glucose and a specific hormone (GLP-1) that controls blood glucose levels.

Just to reiterate, all of these changes happened in just two weeks.

A second recent study appearing in the journal Molecules (conducted by researchers in Singapore and Israel) underscored the damage artificial sweeteners could do to your gut health.

This time, scientists exposed modified E. coli bacteria to 1 milligram amounts of a half-dozen popular sweeteners. Interestingly, each sugary substance did its own unique damage, from harming DNA to proteins in bacteria.

Artificial sweeteners are non-natural for good reason. Compared to real table sugar, many high-intensity, artificial sweeteners can be as much as 20,000 times sweeter than the real thing.

For example, the six artificial sweeteners used in the E. coli study are referred to as high-intensity sweeteners, according to the FDA. Here’s why, based how much sweeter they are compared to table sugar.

Aspartame: 200 times
Acesulfame potassium-k: 200 times
Sucralose: 600 times
Saccharine: 200-700 times
Neotame: 7,000-13,000 times
Advantame: 20,000 times

These aren’t the first studies that have called out artificial sweeteners for the possible harmful effects to your gut health, and they probably won’t be the last ones either.

The good news is that you have healthy options that are easy to do. For example, drinking more water keeps you hydrated, and promotes a sense of fullness so you won’t overeat.

If diet drinks are too hard for you to give up, based on this research alone, taking a probiotic — ideally a brand with multiple species of beneficial bacteria like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic — will protect the healthy balance of bacteria in your gut.

And, if you’ve been wanting to lose weight, the unique mix of Bififobacterium lactis and the prebiotic XOS in EndoMune Metabolic Rescue will give your body the jump start it needs to promote a feeling of fullness and protect your gut health too.

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