It takes guts (flora)!

Posted by: Jaime 

Towards the end of 2013 I started taking an interest in gut flora and its relationship to general health (mainly due to the fact that my skin has never been great and I want to finally get to the bottom of what is causing it). But when the Monkey got put on a course of antibiotics to clear up what the hospital thought was an infection (it wasn’t, it was a stomach virus), and already knowing antibiotics weren’t great for gut flora, we had to do some extra research to find out how we could help his gut flora recover.

Now, I’m really no expert and still learning about the subject myself, but very basically gut flora is very important for human health, especially in relation to autoimmune diseases, and antibiotics can have a serious impact on gut flora and, therefore, a person's health.

Avocado yogurt with extra probiotics

‘By altering the gut microbiota, and thus the immune system very early in life, the antibiotics could negatively influence long-term health, particularly by boosting the risk of developing asthma, allergy, and obesity, according to the report. The risk is heightened by the fact that the antibiotic-driven disruption of the microbiota comes at a time "when this population is in rapid flux and can easily be unbalanced," according to the report.’

(Source)

(To avoid me essentially rewriting information from people far more in the know than I, there is a whole host of information online explaining this subject, including here, here and here, with a very recent one here)

So, what to do? Thankfully our good doctor prescribed some probiotics drops straight away, and we have decided to continue adding probiotics to the Veggie Baby's diet for the foreseeable future. We are currently trying ‘Udo`s Choice Infant`s Blend Microbiotics’, although with the package having only just arrived we are too early to say if the Veggie Baby will take to this being added to his juice/milk/yogurt.

In the long term I am hoping to introduce more cultured and fermented foods into our diet, so we are not supplement dependent. This is my bible on fermentation and I’m sure that I'll have my head buried in for some time to come!

(Some great articles on fermentation and gut flora here and here)

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