Tag Archives: probiotics

Eat to boost immunity – Tufts

Like everything else in our bodies, the immune system depends on nutrients to function properly. According to a paper by Simin N. Meydani, PhD, a professor at the Friedman School and director of the Nutritional Immunology Laboratory at the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, and her colleagues, mounting evidence suggests ensuring you get adeqate amounts of certain nutrients may help optimize immune function, including improving resistance to infection. Here is what we know so far:

Vitamin E is an antioxidant that protects cells, including immune cells, from oxidative damage. Evidence suggests vitamin E supports optimal immune function. While vitamin E supplementation can increase risk for bleeding and stroke, dietary intake is perfectly safe.

Vitamin E is found naturally in foods like plant oils (especially sunflower, safflower, and wheat germ oil), nuts, and seeds. This vitamin is sometimes added to processed foods like breakfast cereals (check Nutrition Facts labels). Green vegetables, such as spinach and broccoli, also provide some vitamin E.

Photo by Andre Moura on Pexels.com

Vitamin D receptors are found in most immune cells. Adequate vitamin D levels may help maintain the body’s defense against infection.

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Experts on fermented foods rise in popularity

The increasingly trendy trio of kefir, kimchi and kombucha may not be familiar to you, but experts say fermented foods like these can help the home of most of your immune system – your gut.

How and why some (not all) fermented foods work is an unraveling mystery that goes back to hunter-gatherer humans. Today, nutrition scientists say to look beyond “probiotic” and “prebiotic” labels to select the right fermented foods for you.

piotr_malczyk/iStock, Getty Images)

Don’t fall for the “best superfoods” lists that rank fermented foods highly, warned the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP) in January in a consensus statement published in Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology. The science is still mixed on the specific nutritional benefits, and the organization calls for more randomized controlled trials to bear out some of the promising effects researchers have seen in labs.

These tips from experts can help sort what’s hype and what’s the real thing. First, a primer.

What is a -biotic anyway?

Your gut is home to trillions of microorganisms. While an antibiotic medicine stunts or destroys microorganisms, a prebiotic is non-digestible fiber that feeds good bacteria.

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Can gut bacteria affect Alzheimer’s?

As a person who has lost three family members to dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease, this new information on the subject knocked me out.

Please see my Page – Important facts about your brain (and exercise benefits) for more.

Tony

New research finds the microbes in your gut may play a major role in escalating the chronic brain disease. A raft of recent studies has shown that the microbiome is a factor in the development of obesity, type 2 diabetes, asthma, and cardiovascular disease. Now, we can add Alzheimer’s disease to the list. A new […]

via Can Gut Bacteria Affect Alzheimer’s Disease? — Our Better Health

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Gut wars! Arm yourself with yogurt and prosper

I posted on the value of yogurt several days ago. Now comes Vinny Grette with a further and fuller explanation.

Cook Up a Story

Grilled pineapple, sweetened greek yogurt, cinnamon & almonds Yogurt, yogurt everywhere!

 En garde!

Trillions of bacteria live happily in our gut. The goodies among them help us digest our food and absorb its nutrients. They also help our body make vitamins, absorb minerals, and get rid of  toxins. They make our immune system strong. And best of all, they work on our brain cells to help them battle anxiety, stress, and depression. Friendly bugs in our gut make up the army that protects us from disease, including mental illness.

Good bacteria, called probiotics, come to us in fermented foods. Buttermilk, pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi, sour dough bread, raw-milk cheeses and kefir all harbor the good guys. For many, though, probiotics march forth  into our gut in yogurt.

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Eating Probiotics Regularly May Improve Your Blood Pressure

“We believe probiotics might help lower blood pressure by having other positive effects on health, including improving total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein, or LDL, cholesterol; reducing blood glucose and insulin resistance; and by helping to regulate the hormone system that regulates blood pressure and fluid balance,” Sun said.

Cooking with Kathy Man

Eating probiotics regularly may modestly improve your blood pressure, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension.

Probiotics are live microorganisms (naturally occurring bacteria in the gut) thought to have beneficial effects; common sources are yogurt or dietary supplements.

“The small collection of studies we looked at suggest regular consumption of probiotics can be part of a healthy lifestyle to help reduce high blood pressure, as well as maintain healthy blood pressure levels,” said Jing Sun, Ph.D., lead author and senior lecturer at the Griffith Health Institute and School of Medicine, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. “This includes probiotics in yogurt, fermented and sour milk and cheese, and probiotic supplements.”

Analyzing results of nine high-quality studies examining blood pressure and probiotic consumption in 543 adults with normal and elevated blood pressure, researchers found:

  • Probiotic consumption lowered systolic blood pressure (the top number) by an average 3.56…

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