Candida is a genus type of fungi or more specifically yeasts that occur naturally in the human body. However, one may end up with too much and create numerous problems in their health. When we think about or hear the word, “Candida”, it generally is thought of something being negative, of course, this is with due cause. Urinary tract infections, dry mouth, indigestion, lesions in the mouth are all symptoms of possible Candida issues. Although it can cause a lot of health issues, it’s important to note that this yeast is one that our body actually needs.

Candida assists the body with so many functions, but those are often overlooked. Candida helps the digestion process in order for the body to get all of the vitamins and minerals from the living foods you eat. But for Candida to do its job correctly, the foods eaten must be broken down into the most usable or simplest forms available. It goes without saying that it is important for our bodies to metabolize, process, assimilate and remove the foods you eat. In order to do that, many digestive enzymes are needed to break down the different foods we consume daily. Enzymes like amalyse, break down carbohydrates, lipase breaks down fats, protease for proteins, cellulase for fibers, and others go to assist our body in extracting the necessary nutrients.

“There are many functions of the body that Candida is responsible for and ensuring are properly regulated. It helps with the process of digestion so that your body can get the vitamins and minerals from the foods you consume.”

In a best-case scenario, the food is broken down before entering the small intestine and large intestine. Why is this important? When it’s broken down completely, the foods are not immobile, and foods that are being immobile, are never a good thing. When foods are stationary in any part of our digestive system, the likelihood of it purifying somewhere in our gut increases exponentially. Purified food becomes rotten bacteria, and this, in turn, creates a friendly environment for the growth of Candida. So how does the overgrowth happen? Candida loves eating toxic bacteria, and ironically, Candida is also a byproduct of the decomposition of food. So not only does the situation create more Candida because there is so much food (undigested sugars), the bacteria itself produces more Candida. Can you see how this could get out of control quickly? So is there hope to get this under control? The more food is broken down and digested, the less likely it produces additional Candida, and it’s less likely that an abundance of food is created for the Candida to gorge upon.

There are many foods, when broken down, that become sugar for our body. Sugar is produced either by the metabolic enzymes the body produces or by the enzymes from the foods ingested. Although certain sugars can cause Candida to grow, it’s important to note that all sugar is not a bad thing for our body. We should not be afraid of sugars. Our brain and muscles would not work without sugar (e.g. glucose), so they are important, but the more important aspect of this is to limit the types of sugar that cause yeast to grow out of control. These are the simple sugars from processed and refined foods. These types of sugars feed the Candida directly. It’s as if they have an IV directly feeding the Candida, so it’s generally good to stay away from these types of foods. Alhough fresh fruits and vegetables are also broken down into sugars, they serve different functions in our system and don’t affect Candida negatively.

What’s the best way to stop our gut from becoming overgrown with this type of bacteria and thus, encouraging the overgrowth of Candida? If this type of information about bacteria, Candida, and simple sugars is new to you, the best recommendation is to eat foods lower on the glycemic index. (If y don’t know what the glycemic index is or how it’s useful, Google it to find a list of low-glycemic foods you like to eat). Without going into too much detail, think of the glycemic index as a good way to determine the sugar content of foods. When it comes to carbohydrates, the higher the number, the greater the chance that it could feed the Candida and cause eventual problems. This isn’t a hard-fast rule, but it does serve as a good starting point if you want to get the Candida under control through foods, and the best way for men and women to fight this epidemic is through better digestion of foods in your diet.

If you liked this, clap it💚 so other people will see this here on Medium. Then download your free eBook to make your own 73 Fermented Foods Recipes.

Jared Toay is an expert author, blogger, nutrition speaker, kombucha brewer, and CEO of Jared’s Probiotics, who likes to think of himself as a road warrior, building a business to manufacture, sell, and ship products from a highly publicized probiotic food business. His fermented foods and snacks have been praised by the Tulsa People, Explore Tulsa magazine, NBC, and CBS, and his creativity was awarded as the 2016 winner of the Tulsa StartUp Series for his probiotic beer innovation. He likes to be active on all social media channels and has an organic following on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, and was mentioned on NPR for his entrepreneurial style.

​This is a page about finding ways to improve your gut health and digestion so you can be a healthier and awakened human being. This means that you must support your body by consuming gut-friendly drinks, but it also means that understanding that the foundation for those wonderful treats is rooted in the desire to do something better with your health…. To make some change about becoming healthier or feeling better on the inside.

And on the inside of all of us is our gut…. If you are on a journey to better health, in order to make your journey meaningful long term and have the right mindset, it is important to “Go with your gut, not your logic”….. My philosophy has always been in order to make long term changes health wise, I believe your gut (and digestion) control your success more than your head.

Now granted, if you say you won’t succeed, you generally won’t, but I’m going to make the assumption that you are wanting to succeed. What I am referring to is paying more attention to your insides and how they would or would not appreciate better health more than what your mind tells you is better health.

A great example is how and what you eat for breakfast. You get up in the morning and debate whether you should have cereal with toast, go out to eat at IHOP with your family, make an omelet, or just not eat. Our mind tells us that those are the things that we should be eating for breakfast. That’s what you ate as a kid, that’s what you read about.., that’s what our brains tell us to eat. Digestively, many of those “breakfast foods” are not exactly what our bodies need to become healthy. To reiterate my point, picture how you’d feel after eating 2 “whole-wheat” pancakes, an egg, a piece of organic, grass-fed sausage, a glass of orange juice, and 2 cups of coffee. Our head says, “that was exactly what we needed to start our day.” But I can bet that many of you are thinking about how you’d be so full and/or how you’d spend most of the day in the bathroom or feel bloated most of the morning.

My point is, our head dictates most of what we eat. What looks good? What did you see on The Food Network? What do we have in the cupboard? But, longer term health and success comes from listening to what our gut says about what is good for us….. What will we digest and appreciate and utilize more efficiently? As an example, this morning I was debating whether to have cocoa cereal and toast or just fast till lunch because I didn’t feel like cooking. That was until I saw a huge salad in the back of the refrigerator a friend made for me. “WTH”, I said, and at 7:00 this morning, I ate a salad with too many wonderful vegetables to mention and slices of grilled chicken. My head asks what am I doing, but I am completely confident my gut and my energy levels today will be much more appreciative that I made a choice to listen to my gut, not general logic.

Choose something new today to eat that maybe your head has told you, “that’s gross” or “you can’t do that now”, but you know would be a gastronomic success. Long-term health comes from listening literally to your “gut instinct” more than your logic.

​ If you liked this, clap it💚 so other people will see this here on Medium. Then download your free eBook to make your own 73 Fermented Foods Recipes.

Jared Toay is an expert author, blogger, nutrition speaker, kombucha brewer, and CEO of Jared’s Probiotics, who likes to think of himself as a road warrior, building a business to manufacture, sell, and ship products from a highly publicized probiotic food business. His fermented foods and snacks have been praised by the Tulsa People, Explore Tulsa magazine, NBC, and CBS, and his creativity was awarded as the 2016 winner of the Tulsa StartUp Series for his probiotic beer innovation. He likes to be active on all social media channels and has an organic following on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, and was mentioned on NPR for his entrepreneurial style.

This article originally published on Jared’s ProPops blog at https://www.jaredspropops.com/probiotics-blog/stop-listening-to-doctors-and-listen-to-your-gut.

Probiotics and losing weight are not words that many put together, but have you ever wondered if there was a relationship between gut health and weight loss? Millions of people feel as if they are constantly fighting a war between losing and gaining weight. It seems the daily question is, “which one is winning now?” But don’t despair, if you feel you are not able to lose that last bit of fat around your midsection, there may be a specific reason why you can’t shed the weight. The reason for it may be addressed by looking at the health of your gut. It could be either it isn’t working the way it should or you just don’t have enough helpful gut flora or probiotics in your body.

I’ve discussed it many times before on this blog (Why You Have The Hardest Time Losing The Last 10 Pounds) of the importance of having a proper (and a significant) amount of good, healthy gut bacteria thriving in your microbiome to help maintain an ideal weight. We could actually say having good gut flora is crucial for most hormonal issues, including insulin (blood sugar) and melatonin (sleep patterns), but for the purpose of this article, we are only going to address the hormones required to digest, process, and eliminate foods and ultimately the waste in your body.

​So what is a probiotic and what do probiotics do?

A quick and condensed version is that from a physiological function, the job of a probiotic is to simply help your body process and eliminate excess sugars and starches from your body. That’s it. If you were to ask people, however, “What is a probiotic?” most would probably say something to the effect that “it’s the stuff that lives in your gut” or “it’s the bacteria in kombucha”. But in a nutshell, think about a probiotic as a living organism that loves to go around and grind up excess waste in your body, a regular bodily trash compactor. ​So now you know it’s main function, let’s take this a step further and think about this metaphorically. Say you have a maid service specializing in cleaning empty or vacant houses for construction companies and home investors. What is the job you are paid to do? You are hired to clean the house top-to-bottom and remove any unneeded clutter that was left behind by the previous tenant. You arrive at a house and decide what is trash and assess how much effort it will take you and your crew to make the house look good enough to start remodeling. But take it one step further. After you have cleaned out the inside of the house and the trash, debris, and excess waste has been removed (I know this doesn’t happen, but) couldn’t you imagine that the house might “weigh” less than it did before you started cleaning it?

Probiotics are like a maid service, only microscopic and living in our bodies

Probiotics go around and search for the undigested sugars and starches in our bodies, which is like the debris left over in the houses your maids are scheduled to clean. So probiotics come in and “clean out” our insides, and just like the example of the maid service, once the probiotics do their job and eliminate the excess sugars and starches (i.e. “trash”) from your body, can’t you see that you may actually weigh less because of that process? Good, quality probiotics could help shed those extra pounds in your weight loss efforts, but how specifically does it do that?

So probiotics travel through your body looking for excess weight in the form of undigested sugars and starches with the only goal of helping them to decompose and pass through the body. Much of the extra weight in our bodies can’t be eliminated because of it’s size or undigested nature of it (think constipation), but once the probiotics begin doing their job, that waste can be broken down into smaller and smaller pieces (think of a clogged pipe). Those smaller pieces have to go somewhere, right? That’s done via elimination.

I’ve heard some people say that after consuming a probiotic drink or eating fermented foods, they experienced a bit of gas, more frequent trips to the restroom, or a slight bought of indigestion. Many times, they use that reason as THE reason not to consume probiotics at all. But it’s important to note, that as long as there isn’t something medically wrong, the probiotics are simply doing its job, and the unpleasant side-effects are telling that they are doing their job. In the bigger picture, if you do experience being uncomfortable after taking probiotics or foods that are fermented, then that may be the body’s way of telling you that you might have some larger digestion issues that should be attended to, constipation, lack of energy, or weight gain.

Extra weight is simply extra waste the body hasn’t figured out how to digest, process, and eliminate. Optimal digestion means optimal weight. — Tweet This

I heard on the radio recently a commercial marketing a supplement that “targeted belly fat”. After a bit of research, try to guess what the main ingredient was in this miracle pill that helped you “lose weight without exercise”? The main ingredients were probiotics. Surprised? The pharmaceutical industry are not idiots. They know that by simply taking probiotics, some people will experience frequent bathroom trips because that is a natural by-product of it’s job. Therefore, they are completely comfortable promoting it as a weight-loss pill, encouraging people to take it daily without telling you in actuality it’s a probiotic supplement.

Do Probiotic Foods Help With Weight Loss?

​

Most people believe taking a probiotic supplement every day like advertised means you will have a gut full of life and teeming with good gut flora. But in many (if not most) instances, the probiotics never get that far simply because it has a bigger and more prominent issue of breaking down sugars and starches in our bodies. Once there are no more foods (waste) to eliminate, then, and only then, can they focus on packing up to find and a new home in your gut. But, as mentioned earlier, if your digestive system is a bit out-of-whack, then the main reason people take probiotic pills or eat probiotic foods (to populate your digestive system with good bacteria) is never addressed; that being to populate your gut with good bacteria. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but believing you need to take probiotics daily to populate your gut is a misnomer (and addressed in future posts).

​Realistically, if you have a properly running digestive system and your gut health is good, then you shouldn’t have a whole lot of weight issues. Extra weight is simply extra waste your body hasn’t figured out how to get rid of and probiotics can help eliminate that waste. If you are looking to lose weight or begin your weight loss journey, I always recommend starting by eating a few tablespoons of fermented foods or drinking a few ounces of a probiotic drink like kombucha or kefir to see how your body responds to that first. How do you know whether those probiotic foods might help you lose a few pounds is determining whether or not your bathroom habits have changed. Are you going more frequently? Once you have the understanding that taking probiotics or consume fermented foods can help you better digest your foods, your digestion becomes healthier by default.

But if someone has told you to buy a probiotic pill or probiotic supplement with the expectation that it will populate your gut with good, living bacteria to support your immune system, you may want to first ask yourself how healthy is your digestion. Are you constipated? Acid reflux? Frequent indigestion after eating certain foods? Lactose intolerant? If you do have any of these symptoms, it’s important to note that probiotics would probably focus all of its efforts on trying to correct those issues first, rather than do all those amazing things you read about on the web about what probiotic supplements and probiotic foods can do to improve your overall health.

If you liked this, click the💚 below so other people will see this here on Medium.

Jared Toay is an expert author, blogger, nutrition speaker, kombucha brewer, and CEO of Jared’s Probiotics who likes to think of himself as a road warrior, building a business to manufacture, sell, and ship products from a highly publicized probiotic food business. His fermented foods and snacks has been praised by the Tulsa People, Explore Tulsa magazine, NBC, and CBS. His creativity has been awarded as the 2016 winner of the Tulsa Start Up Series for his probiotic beer innovation and was mentioned on NPR for his entrepreneurial style. He likes to be active on all social media channels and has an organic following on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Get free eBook (73 recipes fermented foods) @ http://bit.ly/2hlfQa9

Originally published at www.jaredspropops.com.

I believe the path to enlightenment is through a healthy gut. I’ve written about it before, and gone into great detail the effect antibiotics and gut health can affect your moods. Most people don’t realize how much their digestive system is under attack on a daily basis through diet and lifestyle.

Your immune system is constantly asking your gut, “Are you ok? Are you sick yet?”

Roughly 70% of your immune system is found and supported in your gut. So how does this relationship between your immune system and your digestion work? Your immune system is constantly communication with the bacteria and yeasts found in your gut. Essentially, your immune system is like that guy in the Verizon commercial, but instead of saying, “Can you hear me now?” he’s asking the bacteria and yeasts, “How are you feeling now?” Those responses that the bacteria and yeast give actually tell your body what to do. In this case, no response is a good response. However, anytime there is something out of the ordinary, a negative response from the bacteria and yeasts elicit a combative response from your immune system.

So if it’s constantly under stress and your gut has any difficulties, it sends a signal to your immune system, telling them, “hey, we have issues here!” Your immune system believes you are sick and in need of repair and sends what it needs to resolve the issue.

The human gut itself has about 10 times more bacteria than all of our human cells in our entire body. So, as a complete nerd and sci-fi fan, I’m fascinated to think we are technically more bacterial than we are human. Couple that with the fact that your cell lining of your intestines is actually just one cell thick and you can see that our gut bacteria plays an important role in our overall health and well-being. The thought that the only thing standing in between your food and an allergic reaction is less than 1/100 the size of a pin head is pretty significant. Now granted, it’s constantly being replaced, but realizing that if you cell lining isn’t good and strong, any slight tear from a food or toxin can get in your bloodstream and cause a significant amount of issues can be concerning and a problem for many. Once you understand that even a little tear in the lining can cause issues, large and small, protecting it should become a priority.

If I was to ask you about your thoughts on digestion and the role it played, I bet your initial response would be somehow bathroom related…. upset stomach, sitting on the latrine…I’m sure you’ve got the picture. But there are so many more things that our bodies do and respond negatively that are digestion related. Most of you are probably not even aware that they are correlated. Migraines, anxiety, depress, joint pains, eczema, allergies, acne…. surprisingly these are caused by having poor bacterial growth in your body.

“In traditional Chinese medicine, the forehead is connected to the digestive system. More specifically, the upper forehead (near the hair line) is linked to the bladder, and the lower forehead (above the brows) to the intestines.”

So how do you fix digestive problems. Normally, I’d suggest you look at the foods you regularly eat because there are always a few foods in everyone’s diet that could be eliminated if you really want to strengthen your gut.

The first food that should be eliminated if you want to become digestively healthier is soda pops or fountain drinks, especially the ones with high-fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners. If you had a soda once in a blue-moon or occasionally, it probably wouldn’t be an issue (of course, I won’t go into detail about the issues with blood sugar these drinks pose), but most people who say they drink soft drinks, probably drink them 3–5 times a week.

I’m sure we all know people who drink Dr. Peppers and Cokes every day or as a “coffee substitute”. It is those consistent consumption of sodas that irritate and continuously remove that small cell lining of your intestine, which in turn causes issues associated with inflammation, food intolerance, and allergies.

The second food I would remove is cereal grains, specifically refined grains. Things like breads, pastas, crackers, cakes all can cause a significant amount of issues in our gut. If we wanted to go into more detail, I would say eliminate all grains that contain gluten (which is a man-made substance that gives dough it’s elastic texture). Think of gluten as something your body can’t properly digest and eliminate, so it just floats around in our bodies causing damage and irritation.

So removing those two things right there, soda pops and cereal grains, are going to go a long way to actually help to heal your gut. In many instances, these two foods are the ones constantly causing those tears in your intestinal wall that inevitably cause migraines, anxiety, depression, joint pain and lead to eczema, acne, and allergies.

So if you can eliminate those and then in turn supplement your body with good bacterial-rich foods. fermented foods or probiotic foods, or probiotic supplements, like kombucha, yogurt, or kefir to replenish those good gut bacteria, your gut can use that good bacteria to communicate with your immune system and tell it “hey, we are healthy, we are strong. We’ve got lots of good dudes down here protecting us”. The end result? You in turn become healthier, mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually as well, which is where most of us truly want to be.

If you liked this, click the💚 below so other people will see this here on Medium.

Jared Toay is an expert author, bodybuilder, nutrition speaker, kombucha brewer, and award winner who commutes between Tulsa and Oklahoma City to manufacture, sell, and ship products from a highly publicized probiotic food business. His fermented foods and snacks has been praised by the Tulsa People, Explore Tulsa magazine, NBC, and CBS. He is the 2016 winner of the Tulsa Start Up Series for his probiotic beer innovation, and was mentioned on NPR for his entrepreneurial style. He likes to be active on all social media channels and has an organic following on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Get free eBook (73 recipes fermented foods) @ http://bit.ly/2hlfQa9

So I’m gonna try to draw correlation (and most people don’t realize that there is a strong correlation) between your mental health and your gut health. What is amazing to me is how powerful that correlation really is. My thoughts are that in order to have a happy attitude and good mental health, you must first have a good and happy gut.

Did you know the brain and the gut are actually made of the same type of tissues, and there are just as many, if not more, neurotransmitters in the gut as there are in the brain? (This article is not meant to be too technical, but neurotransmitters are simply things that tell your body what to do).

If you turn on any social media channel, you’ll see firsthand how much negativity is being portrayed. Is it just me, or is the default narrative slowly becoming negative? But even with all the negativity in the world and the anger people spew, I’m here to tell you that you can make some powerful and significant changes by simply making some changes in your gut to improve its overall health. Actively changing that good gut bacteria in your body can actually affect the way that you view the world for the better, your own internal happiness, and ultimately a number of happy hormones (I’ll get to those in a second) your body produces.

There have been numerous studies linking mental health and a poorly functioning gut. Scientists have even found significant links between autism and gut health. So it’s really important to me to reiterate that if you have digestive issues, or if you just don’t feel right in your stomach or in your head, understand that mental health and gut health are affecting and feeding (pardon the pun) off each other.

If you have that continuous “brain fog”, it’s important to take a step back and understand that focusing first on better digestive health can actually go a long way to improving clarity of thought in your head.

I know first hand of the delicate relationship between mental and gut health. I had some issues in my past where I had trouble dealing with the stressors in my life; I simply didn’t eat. And when I did attempt to eat, I knew and felt that I wasn’t digesting foods properly.

For those that can relate, when you think about anger or you think about hostility or about just having digestive issues, it’s not a pleasant experience. And having those creates a significant amount of stress in your body. Once I decided to turn the corner and begin focusing on being optimally good and healthy, digestively speaking, things started to change in the ways I processed things and how I viewed how I could adapt and resolve stressful situations in my life.

Let’s first look at stress and digestion from a hormonal standpoint. I’ve found most people don’t realize that the (what I call) happy hormones, GABA, serotonin, and dopamine, can all be produced in your gut. The standard train of thought has been these hormones are produced solely in the brain. If you have a properly running digestive system, your body naturally produces those happy hormones that in turn, affects your mental health. Or how about your immune system? Is there a correlation between your gut and your body’s ability to fight disease and infection? Of course, there is. About ¾ of your immune system is found and regulated in the gut, so taking care of it is monumental.

How about from a physical standpoint? How does anger affect your physicality? First, imagine what it takes to actually be angry. When you are in a state of anger and hostility, your body produces stress hormones to adapt so it can survive. It produces hormones like adrenaline and cortisol and those, in turn, create inflammation in your body. It starts in your gut and then it works outward from there. If you’re constantly angry, unhappy, stressed, or worried, understand that your body’s not thinking about digesting foods. It’s thinking about survival or how to deal with the “fight or flight” action you’ve probably heard before. The stressors take precedent over digestion.-

With this increase in stress and production of stress hormones, your immune system then starts to break down, and when your immune system starts to break down, you’ll find that everything else ca be affected. Inevitably, you aren’t able to digest foods and this leads to a complete another set of physical issues.

What about the physical activities of being angry? If I was to ask you to get angry, what would you do? What do you think about? Would you clench your fist or furl your eyebrows. Your heart may start to speed up just by the thought of it. People that are generally angry or live in a constant state of hostility are known to have an increase in death rates and an increase in blood pressure. Those physical issues are caused by that increase in hormones I mentioned like adrenaline and cortisol. Once your body begins to believe it’s in a constant state of stress, it’s not going to focus on digestion and then inevitably, won’t be able to regulate how to process and eliminate foods or produce healthy and happy hormones. Can you see how big of an issue this can be for those who are angry, unhappy, or hostile?

Ultimately, if you want to be a happier soul, you have to first find a happier gut; focus on what you can do to improve your digestion and the health of your gut. And unless there is something medically wrong with you, generally, improving your outlook and overall happiness is going to begin in your gut. The correlation between it and your mental health is immense.-

So if you want true happiness, I won’t spend time telling you to do yoga or do ohms or go to church; of course, you can do all those things if it helps to reduce your stress. But again, from a physiological standpoint, the first thing that you should be doing is focusing on the things that bring happiness to your gut. And the way that you can do that is to take probiotics or eat fermented foods. Those are the first places that you should be looking at so that you can improve your gut health, do what you can to populate your gut with good, healthy, and happy bacteria. Those bacteria can inevitably help you to better regulate the stressors like adrenaline and cortisol and insulin that cause an overabundance of bad bacteria.

Everybody has anger. But it’s the constant state of anger that creates the issues associated with your gut health. Eat fermented foods, eat a significant amount of good and healthy fats, good healthy proteins, and antioxidant-rich foods (I won’t go into detail about those. You can Google examples) What I am here to do is give you a different perception of happiness and health, which always begins in the gut. Make significant changes there, and you’ll find your days will be brighter and happier.

If you liked this, click the💚 below so other people will see this here on Medium.

Jared Toay is an expert author, bodybuilder, nutrition speaker, kombucha brewer, and award winner who commutes between Tulsa and Oklahoma City to manufacture, sell, and ship products from a highly publicized probiotic food business. His fermented foods and snacks has been praised by the Tulsa People, Explore Tulsa magazine, NBC, and CBS. He is the 2016 winner of the Tulsa Start Up Series for his probiotic beer innovation, and was mentioned on NPR for his entrepreneurial style. He likes to be active on all social media channels and has an organic following on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Get free eBook (73 recipes fermented foods) @ http://bit.ly/2hlfQa9

Not feeling like you were “right in the head” or that you couldn’t accomplish everyday tasks was something that I’ll never really be able to explain to those that have never experienced it before. Based on every bit of information and advice I received, it seemed like the end result was for me to take medications or antibiotics to get me healthy. “It will help me smooth out the edges,” they said. “It will cure what ails me,” they said.

The point of persuading people to accept your conclusions of how to get to better mental and physical health is to help them draw their own conclusions as to why that is important, help them draw a line between two points. For me, this meant I must first understand and deal with the fact that having good brain health means you must first have good gut health.

This inevitably means that if those doctors, physicians, or friends wanted me to actually become a “better person” they might have helped me realize that I had a severe case of gut dysbiosis, and that my significant fluctuations in weight was due in large part to my inability to eat, digest foods, or keep food down, not the other way around, that my mental state was an effect of my weight fluctuations and inability to deal with them.

I decided that drugs and medications would not be the preferred method of dealing with my issues, so I began to learn about the importance of gut health and digestion. Inevitably, most research always ended up with me finding new information on the values of using, eating, and supplementing with probiotics.

Based on my experience in dealing with mental health and digestion issues, I believe everyone, whether or not they have issues, should be aware of the value of probiotics and how these living bacteria can play such a crucial role in helping each of us function and be coherent in thoughts and actions.

Many people have heard of probiotics, some of them know the value, and even less know what specifically they do. What’s a little alarming is that when you ask people about their knowledge of antibiotics, most everyone knows what an antibiotic is, believes what we’ve been told what it can do to “improve” our health, and that if you have any type of physical sickness, antibiotics will generally be the cure.

Now, why do you take an antibiotic? Mostly it’s because your immune system has broken down, you’re sick, or you don’t have the ability to fight disease or an infection. Your immune system becomes compromised because of some imbalance and it begins to break down.

So what people do is take a prescribed antibiotic or medication to get rid of the bad bacteria or harmful toxins in their bodies. (Just to clarify, the antibiotics are supposed to wipe out all the bad things, but even antibiotics don’t work 100% of the time). What most consumers of antibiotics are not aware of is that it also wipes out all the good and healthy bacteria as well. It eliminates the things that are there to protect us and keep us healthy.

Now, why is that important? It’s important because the way your body works is that in order to have a strong immune system is to have a strong gut. And having a strong gut requires having a significant amount of probiotics; you want those probiotics there. When you become sick, it means the bad bacteria are overpowering the good bacteria creating a toxic and unhealthy environment in your body and probiotics can help reverse that.

When people take antibiotics, it basically wipes the proverbial “gut” slate clean. In theory that sounds great, get rid of the bacterial troublemakers, but as mentioned, you wipe out the good bacteria as well, essentially requiring your immune system to start over from square one. Unfortunately, most people’s lifestyle does not allow them to do that, start from a place of better health. The typical American lifestyle usually means they get right back into the routine of having things, taking things, and consuming things that generally can help to break down their immune system. Unfortunately, it’s a vicious cycle. Bad bacteria means bad health. Bad health means limited good bacteria and antibiotics. Limited good bacteria means bad health again.

To help bring this point home let’s pretend that you are a mayor of a small town. And let’s say everything’s going great, everybody’s happy, but all of a sudden there’s a rash of burglaries, some vandalism, maybe a robbery, frankly, it doesn’t matter, but something nefarious has happened. Something has happened that is not good for the overall health of the town. As mayor, what can you do?

The first thing that you should do, if you’re the mayor of that small town, is asking the police to start questioning people. You find out specifically what happened, who was around when it happened, and you talk to witnesses and people you believe might have been the culprits. The point is that you question people and try to find the root of the problem, which is that person, or persons, or group of people that are causing the problems. As a mayor, it’s generally not advantageous to make rash decisions without gathering all of the facts.

But what would happen, let’s say, that while mayor, all of a sudden you have a rash of burglaries, and you decide the way to solve the problem is to just throw everybody in jail. It doesn’t matter who, you’re just gonna round up everybody and throw them all in jail, the good, the bad, the culprits and the innocent. And based on your decision to round up everyone, you might not even be sure the culprits lived in your town or just passers by.

By throwing everyone in jail, you may solve the problem and not have any future burglaries or vandalism. Why? Because everybody’s in jail and there wouldn’t be anyone who could make those bad decisions. Now, of course, we know that’s not the way that you do things, but that illustration gives an idea of what happens when you take an antibiotic. You are throwing your gut into chaos. Antibiotics are not indiscriminate. They don’t care what they do. Their pharmaceutical job is simply to kill living bacteria.

What’s the end result? What happens when you have some sort of sickness and your doctor says you should take an antibiotic? I’m not saying to disregard your doctor of course, but if you do decide to take an antibiotic, you should most definitely consider replenishing that good bacteria so that it will be ready to combat the bad bacteria when it inevitably makes another appearance. Can you imagine if you are a thief and stumble upon a town where there would be no one to stop you if you decided to go on a burglary spree?

So whenever you take antibiotics, take double the amount of probiotics or eat more fermented foods that would be to actually replenish and make sure that you have the good guys in there as well. Going back to the mayoral example, if you have an increase in crime, you can try to throw everybody who lives in your town in jail, but if you choose that route, just make sure you work as hard to get good, hardworking people to move into your town that is inevitably going to do great things for that community and actively live there for future generations to come.

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Jared Toay is an expert author, bodybuilder, nutrition speaker, kombucha brewer, and award winner who commutes between Tulsa and Oklahoma City to manufacture, sell, and ship products from a highly publicized probiotic food business. His fermented foods and snacks has been praised by the Tulsa People, Explore Tulsa magazine, NBC, and CBS. He is the 2016 winner of the Tulsa Start Up Series for his probiotic beer innovation, and was mentioned on NPR for his entrepreneurial style. He likes to be active on all social media channels and has an organic following on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Get free eBook (73 recipes fermented foods) @ http://bit.ly/2hlfQa9