Although I cant even find complete agreement on what the best fermented food are for you to eat, I do believe that they play a large role in your immune system and in breaking down your foods.  There is a ton of research and focus on “probiotics” lately.  Basically your gut has around 3 pounds of friendly bacteria which kill off bad bacteria, help you digest food and fight off infection.  Many believe that it is so important it deserves to be called an organ or an organ system.   Depending on where you live the actual strains might be a little different.  Been to Mexico lately ?  Well their guts are obviously different then ours.

The one we are all the most familiar with is Yogurt.  But if its full of sugar and you are lactose intolerant than its not a good choice for you.  You probably never gave it much thought but pickles, sauerkraut are also some more of the “good guys”  I even read a post that said sauerkraut helps to prevent cancer cells from forming.  But to be clear, I dont like to throw out stuff I read on blogs as truth unless I can find a real medical school study at the National Institute of Health,  ( hang on I will check)  Pubmed.com  Ok there are some studies that show it does inhibit the expression of some cancers.   And sorry for another detour, but Pubmed.com is like google for medicine.  Dont listen to people trying to sell you stuff.  And the studies literally pour in to that website.   Every day the latest research from medical schools all over the world are being submitted to pubmed.com . This is the real deal, research that uses established standards of proof and many with placebo controls as well.

Back to fermented foods.  sauerkraut, kefir, kimchi, miso soup, tempeh, kombucha, Pickles, Natto.  Most people agree on these.  But there are whole websites dedicated to probiotics.  Many list dark chocolate and brine cured olives as well.  This is a big topic.  Suffice it to say find some that you like and introduce them into your diet.   You may even find weight loss more easy when probiotics are part of your diet. PS beer and wine count too, in moderation.

December 2021 Women’s health. I think I have a valuable contribution to make. When it comes to vaginal health, who hasnt had an infection of some sort ? Ill give you a hint every female has dealt with this numerous times. I did some research today. I was actually surprised that its not only mainstream and countless products are being sold. But the research is all over PubMed The National Institute of Health website. The NIH website only shows published research with hard core data peer reviewed often with placebo groups, often from either med schools or major pharmaceutical companies. Which is one and the same since they fund the research in medical schools. I thought it was only fringe doctors. I remember 20 years ago sitting with my good friend Celebrity Nutritionist Oz Garcia when he was counseling a patient. At that time he counseled her to douche with probiotics and rotate the three different ones. He gave her a jar of each. By the way the patient was extremely wealthy and had gone to every top doctor in NY and was really in bad shape had to drop out of college. She had been working with Dr Oz for 10 years was not only back in college but had completed Med School. At that time we were considering me working with him in a more hands on way counseling patients. I did formulate his Longevity Pak. I put a lot of work into it. I even visited a number of vitamin manufacturing facilities from NJ to as far away as Arizona. I forget all of the experience I have had sometimes. Sorry for the segue. So fast forward to today. They do sell countless probiotics and probiotic suppositories. And if you want to read the research yourself, I made a search for probiotics and vaginal health on PubMed There were 447 articles and over a dozen in just the past 2 months. I tried reading for an hour and concluded that its almost impossible to standardize a treatment with living organisms and even harder is to get funding for that. Ironically but not surprising was that a drug maker had two groups one with the drug and one with the drug with probiotics. Thats often the only way they can get funding. So I went back and looked at gut health and probiotics. So its actually not that different yet I saw a promising article on alzheimers and gut health published just this month December 2021. I guess we are back to square one with probiotics as well as vitamins and my favorite expression. We all get to place our bets in life. I can find you someone over 100 years old that smokes cigarettes and another one that swears by a glass of scotch every day. Ironically when I googled vaginal health and probiotics a Harvard Health article popped up from 2018 which pretty much was negative about the idea. However when I googled how many people take probiotics ( 4 million by the way) another Harvard Health article from 2020 popped up which said how great they are for gut and vagina. So its obviously an evolving science. They did have one caveat to know the source of your probiotics. That goes double for vitamins as well. When I was helping Dr Oz Garcia with his vitamins the facility I visited in Arizona was also certified to make drugs. In fact we had to sign in and out, wear little booties and a paper like space suit to make sure we didnt contaminate anything. They pointed out to me how they inspected the “stainless steel mixing drums” yet later that month when I inspected a facility in NJ who manufactures for many common products that we all buy they were scooping protein powder with a shovel. So in my opinion you should take vitamins and enzymes and probiotics and you should look for some certifications like NSF, UL I like Consumerlab.com as well.

I didnt mean for it to get that complicated. Lets go old school for a moment and look for correlation ( which doesnt neccearily mean causation but its a good place to start) I dont know if you are old enough but there was a yogurt commmercial that featured Georgians. My parents are Armenian next door to Georgia in the middle east. They ate yogurt every day lived to their mid nineties. I recently asked my sister if my memory is any good because I dont remember either of them ever being sick not even a cold. Not only did she agree but she believes it was the yogurt. And she was having the same experience. PS it was home made. They actually always saved some yogurt to start the next batch. So you were literally saving the bacteria to “curdle” the next batch of milk with the same bacteria. No scientist measured what was in there but it was handed down for generations and each grandmother swore hers was the best. If you ate the last bit of it which was needed for the next batch all hell would come down on you.

We do know that your body is an ecosystem that has mostly non human cells trillions of them. Here is a revised estimate its not 10 to 1 but an average 150lb man is about 30 trillion human cells and 39 trillion bacteria, say Ron Milo and Ron Sender at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and Shai Fuchs at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada. I think our science it going to continue to evolve on the majority of the cells in our body which are non human and killing them with an “Antibiotic” which does kill certain infections is not the most elegant way to treat your body. However it is often necessary and life saving. Dont fall into the trap of 100% holistic. Sometimes you need an antibiotic to kill off a life threatening pneumonia and countless other diseases that can kill you. However a little self care can go a long way. My conclusion is do your best with going crazy. Actually back to where I started the article try to eat some fermented foods even yogurt. I believe activia did a study, oops they got sued and lost here is their revised claim from the lawsuit “As part of the settlement, Dannon agreed to make changes to its ad campaign to bring it in line with the product’s actual benefits (or lack thereof). Dannon will change the wording on the Activia® yogurt products. The company also promised to make changes to the yogurt’s labels and packaging. It will now say that the Activia® yogurt will help to regulate your digestive system if you take it for 2 weeks and also participate in a healthy lifestyle. They will remove the statement that says that it has a positive effect on the immune system. But some supplements and probiotics will do the body good. Actually check out my research on vitamin D. Sorry its complicated but its easy to take a few supplements and eat some fermented foods even if its merely a yogurt. PS try plain yogurt and add what you like fruit, jam or even honey. Ooh great idea for another topic love the benefits of honey, pollen and propolis.