Boost your Bacteria

We generally think of bacteria as something to be avoided, however, we have more bacteria living in our guts that we have cells in our body.  The right bacteria aid in digestion, modulate the immune system and protect against overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria and yeasts.  Bacteria make up approximately 80% of the dry weight of stool from a healthy gut, so having plenty encourages intestinal motility and increased stool volume.  When the healthy gut bacteria are reduced as a result of antibiotic use the potential for overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria increases. 

Several approaches are helpful in repopulating and maintaining healthy gut flora.  One way is to take probiotic supplements.  You can find these in health food stores.  The probiotics kept in the refrigerated section are usually the best.  A much cheaper option is to eat fermented foods like sauerkraut (raw, unpasteurized), kimchi, fermented vegetables, sour pickles, yogurt with live cultures, kefir (either milk or water kefir),  and kombucha (fermented tea, If you're interested in this let me know, I have starter cultures).  These are all easy and much cheaper to make yourself than if you buy them in the store.  So, this weeks challenge is to ferment something yourself.  Nourished kitchen provides several additional ideas for fermented foods.

 Most ferments take about a week, so next week's challenge is to actually eat a bit of your experiment every day. 

One additional note:  alcoholic ferments (beer & wine) don't count here.  These items tend to promote yeast overgrowth instead of beneficial gut flora.

Learn to Chill

This week we'll address another non-diet related issue.  Stress.  On top of the normal day to day crises, the holiday's are upon us and with it the added stress of dealing with family, not being with family, gift buying and the accompanying financial strain, and ridiculous quantities of junk food.  Stress is unavoidable.  What is critical is that you develop some strategies for dealing with it.  Chris Kresser provides several tips for dealing with stress in this article entitled "Manage Your Stress".  There isn't anything I can add to improve upon the info Chris covers, but here are some highlights from his article for reducing/mitigating stress:
-Learn to say no to unnecessary demands on your time/energy
-Limit your exposure to the news
-Give up pointless arguments
-Reframe the situation
-Learn to accept "good enough"
-Accept what you can't change
-Be grateful
-Manage your time

For the stress you can't avoid, practice some kind of stress management.  This could include going for a quiet, easy walk, yoga, tai chi, contemplative prayer or meditation.  This is the challenge for this week.  Pick one of these stress management activities (there are additional resources on meditation in the linked article) and spend 5 minutes on it every day this week.

Go to Bed

This week's challenge is to get more sleep.  Chris Kresser, an incredible integrative medicine doctor near San Francisco, wrote an excellent summary on the importance of sleep in his blog post "Get More Sleep".   I won't even try to improve on his recommendations, but I do want to emphasize a couple of points.
     1.  You can't be health if you don't sleep enough.
     2.  Sleep in a dark (pitch black room)
     3.  Go to bed earlier
So this week we'll shoot for at least 7 and preferably 8 - 9 hours of sleep every night.  Your body will thank you.