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The Standard American Diet (SAD) is high in processed food. Quick meals, microwave meals, drive thru meals or meals heavy with government subsided fructose corn syrup (yeah.....the "first bail out" of the food industry that quietly continues to fatten our future adults while coming out of our weekly paychecks......causing people to claim disability and require expensive medication that again comes out of our weekly paychecks) I digress.....when the 36 foot digestive tract of a human is used to taking in low residual, processed meals, it sustains it's job of "melting down" food 3x daily and extracting daily requirements of energy needed by our bodies. The small intestine and colon house about 100 trillion "friendly" bacteria to help breakdown solid material we eat into the building blocks of protein fats and carbohydrates. Think of them as microscopic maggots. The bacteria that coexist in our gut are made up of a variety of species that usually cause no harm. Our first inoculation of the bacteria comes from the birth canal and breast feeding. Continued "inoculations" of bacteria continue while we age and originate from our water, our siblings/partners and our food (like yogurt). Most of these are friendly, every once and a while there will be non friendly inoculations like undercooked chicken, unfiltered drinking water, filthy bathroom faucets or the food handler who just coughed into her hand and proceeded to box your meal. When our gut gets invaded by a bad species of bacteria....it can usually produce white blood cells to kill the species that means to kill us. Occasionally the doctor prescribes antibiotics to "nuke" our bodies and destroy bad invaders....unfortunately the WMD will also destroy good bacteria. (This is why you get diarrhea you get after taking a course of antibiotics.....there is suddenly mass death to the good bacteria and the gut can't break down nutrition into protein, fats and carbs-so the food goes right through)
A similar scene occurs when a change is introduced to our daily regime of eat, breakdown, extract and poop. When the 100 trillion good guys are used to break down the SAD and suddenly get a high fiber plant source (tofu, fruits and veggies, whole food....) some of the bacteria will take the high residue fiber and create a byproduct of methane gas. It is these few species out of the 100 trillion that can also produce gas bubbles in pond scum, bad smelling air in a meat container or shoes that have been worn for 12 hours by a barefoot kid. The colon is just a transit tube of muscle that moves solid material from mouth to anus. It has a "usual" diameter of 2-3 inches but if the irritated species of bacteria is making extra gas, the colon inflates to maximum diameter- (goes from garden hose size to fire truck hose width accounting for your big belly and muscle cramps of IBS) All that gas has to go somewhere and it is usually noted in a car (nasty Monday car pool buddy), under the sheets (dutch oven) or when your relative making a healthy change helps you carry furniture and lets one loose "by accident".
There are ways to introduce a healthy lifestyle change without the bloating and room clearing gas problem:
-Introduce the whole food, mostly plant based diet in slow increments over a scheduled calendar (the benefit of getting help from a registered dietitian!)
-Rev up your digestive power by taking digestive enzymes with new introduction or difficult to digest meals (note that not all enzymes are needed and can cause irritation as well so please consider help from a naturopathic doctor!)
-Smother your digestive tract with 300 billion bacteria in a bottle. Probiotics are a great source of stable, non methane producing bacterial species that will "crowd out" the few guys in your gut that cause problems with high fiber nutrition. (I don't like yogurt due to it's dairy base and it only contains a fraction of what you can get in a capsul/bottle)
Think of the probiotic this way, there are 20 apartments for rent and everyone that lives in the building goes to sleep early. The realtor brings in college kids and suddenly the harmony of the complex is destroyed by noise and trash until the tenant leaves. The neighbors avoid another noisy renter by flooding the realtor's office with older quiet people seeking a new place to stay. Harmony is reestablished. (please click here to see my DrRic Tutorial on Probiotic Use)
So you spouses who have to deal with inhaling the byproducts of healthy living....go out to your local Whole Foods Market or Fruitful Yield and ask which probiotics are the most affordable and popular for maintaining a stable marriage. For use with antibiotics, I suggest add the probiotic for 30 days at least. For introduction of a new diet, I suggest adding a probiotic and considering a digestive enzyme until the 4th month of your change (a harvest). For IBS sufferers, pre-biotics first then probiotics for life (and don't forget the crucial relaxation therapy). As always with any change I create a template for, you must introduce relaxation thinking and activity involving movement - your gut functions way better when emotions are stable and the heart is fine tuned to push blood and white blood cells to the organs that need it most. (click here to see my discussion on DrRic's Antiinflammatory Lifestyle)
