Remember, I’m not a doctor, and I can’t diagnose, treat, or prescribe. This is just my personal story and opinion.
When I first started working on my overall gut health, I was amazed at everything I didn’t know about this area of health. All I know is that I had 12 recurrent yeast infections in twelve months (you read that correctly). Talk about being itch as h#ll. I went to Hershey Medical Center and the OB specialist put me on Diflucan every single day. I had to have a liver function test every thirty days and the medication made me feel terrible.
It was after that I started really researching anything I could get my hands on about yeast overgrowth, and I quickly chose to eliminate all dairy and grain from my diet. Not only did this completely eliminate all of my yeast symptoms, it also took care of my psoriasis as well. So then I started researching inflammation in the body, and how it affects overall health.
This was around the time I also started taking Life 9 probiotic from Young Living, and watching anything I could get my hands on by Dr. Jim Haggerton. It was then that I really started seeing a change in how I felt. It completely eliminated my Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and helped me feel so, so much better on a daily basis. To understand Kombucha (a Prebiotic), you have to understand probiotics first.
I discovered that probiotics are needed to help with the gut lining and had many evidence based health benefits. Not only do probiotics optimize digestion, they also help improve the absorption of necessary vitamins and minerals. They provide our gut with protection against bad bacteria (good bacteria need to outweigh the bad), and safeguard against infection. They also help boost our immune system as well. They do many other things as well, include helping you have bowel movements on a regular basis, and fight against allergies).
Since antibiotics destroy good gut flora while killing bacteria in the body, probiotics help replace the good bacteria in the gut. Even my local pharmacy hands out a paper about why you should take a probiotic when you pick up an antibiotic. This is why I take a high potency probiotic. Life 9 probiotic from Young Living This high potency probiotic has nine different strains of bacteria and over 17 billion live and active cultures.
So now that you know all the good things probiotics do, you’ll need to know that Kombucha (and anything fermented), is food for probiotics. Kombucha is actually a fermented tea made from a “mother.” The probiotics actually feed off the prebiotic, and Kombucha is considered a prebiotic. I like to compare this to the game of Pac Man. All my little probiotics going around and eating up the prebiotics! So, everyday I drink Kombucha, and I’m super careful about finding one with the least amount of sugar and calories. While Kefir is also considered a prebiotic, I don’t do well with dairy and haven’t found any with a lower amount of sugar.
Some people have asked me how this affects my yeast overgrowth, considering the fact that its fermented. To be honest, I have been taking my Life 9 for so long and have worked really hard to repair my gut health, that I have not had any trouble with this. I also have worked really, really hard over the last year or two on my diet and the stress in my life, which have also helped my gut health as well.
In addition to the Life 9, I also use Essentialzymes-4 from Young Living which have drastically helped my overall gut health as well. These four enzymes break down fats, proteins, carbohydrates, and fiber in foods to make them more digestible and easier on the stomach and GI tract.
Do you have gut health issues? Comment about what things have helped you as well. Please remember, this is my own personal story. 🙂
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