Tuesday’s Tips (Week 7) – Baby Steps for a Healthy & Happy Life

By emie • February 20th, 2009

Today’s Tip for a Happy and Healthy Life: Add Foods Containing Probiotics to Your Diet

Digestion is the complex process of turning the food you eat into the energy you need to survive. So, obviously it is extremely important for everyone and even more so for those who trying to lose weight. The best diet in the world won’t help if you aren’t digesting your food properly. Fortunately, there are some very simple steps we can take to improve our digestion but first let’s look at some symptoms and problems caused by poor digestion.

Chronic fatigue
Premature aging (reason enough to improve digestion in my book!)
Arthritis
Poor skin and hair quality
Toxicity
Gastric ulcers
Allergies
Insomnia
Joint and muscle pain
Nausea
Skin disorders
Sugar cravings
Heart burn
Cancer
Many other diseases

Our bodies host over 100 trillion bacteria most of which are necessary to sustain health. The presence of beneficial bacteria in the intestines aids digestion, inhibits the growth of disease causing micro-organisms like E. coli and salmonella and even helps lower cholesterol. These friendly bacteria are called intestinal flora or “probiotics.” The additional benefits of beneficial bacteria are numerous.

A healthy lower intestine should contain at least 85% friendly bacteria to prevent the over colonization of disease causing micro-organisms. We can maintain our health with 15% unfriendly bacteria, if we have at least 85% probiotic friendly bacteria. Most people have this percentage reversed so…

Foods containing probiotics

Yogurt: Check the label to make sure your yogurt contains live and active cultures

Fermented Cabbage, Brined Olives and Salted Gherkins: Sauerkraut in Germany, kimchi in Korea, curtido in Central America or choucroute in France, fermented cabbage is consumed wherever cabbage itself can be grown. Be adventurous and try new things. Some fermented products might take a while to get used to but once you do your tummy and digestive system will thank you!

Fermented soy products such as miso

Kefir: Lifeway offers a complete line of kefir products

Lifeway kefir

Cultured dairy products: Buttermilk, raw milk & cheese, acidophilus milk and Horizon Organic sour cream and cottage cheese with added “health-promoting live and active cultures for digestive health.” raw milk.

Organic Pastures Raw Milk

LaLoo’s Goat’s Milk Frozen Yogurt: It’s yummy and naturally chock-full of S. Thermophilus, L. Bulgaricus, L. Acidophilus and Bifidus… win/win!

LaLoos Goat

Good Belly probiotic juices

Verb Good Belly Juices

Perfect Food: The name says it all. Not only does it contain a probiotic blend but one serving of Perfect Food Super Green Powder is equivalent to 140g of fresh grass juice. We make a great shake with it using o.j. & bananas, it is very green but tastes great. Your body and immune system will love you!

Perfect Food

Attune Foods: Chocolate & Granola Bars

attune bars

Kashi Vive Probiotic Digestive Wellness Cereal: One of the first cereals with probiotics added to it, Vive contains one billion CFUs of Lactobacillus acidophilus per serving.