260 Diet Wise
gift to her child. Because of it, the baby’s immune system comes into contact
with typical human flora. It is educated by contact.
We now realize this education process is more than just a good
idea; it’s essential and if it doesn’t happen in an orderly way—and to the
right organisms—the baby gets off on completely the wrong foot and...
guess what? It suffers with food allergies, rashes, atopic disease, rhinitis, ear
infections, all the usual stuff which results when the immune system is not
performing properly.
In mice kept sterile of microbes, immune tissue fails to mature
properly and carries fewer of the signaling molecules that sense and react
to pathogens. The immune system does not perform properly, as it should.
Once again Nature has confounded us with her simple wisdom.
Moms and doctors running around with antiseptic wipes and bottles of
disinfectant have misunderstood the issues completely. We need our germs.
They live with us; they help us; they are us!
We need healthy bowel flora, like we need food and oxygen.
Disordered bowel flora or dysbiosis is a serious disease. It means ill health
in spades. It means our human-ness is lost. No wonder then, that blasting
it all to ruin with broad-spectrum antibiotics means there is a price to pay.
So now you are really “Diet Wise”!
Probiotics
This is where probiotics come in. In a nutshell; we need to get our
bowel flora back to healthy and fast. That means more than just removing
the offenders and re-colonization with suitable, friendly flora.
It means we have to re-grow our entire gut garden. Just like a
gardener, we have to pull weeds, plant good crops, feed and nurture those
crops till they flourish and avoid the factors which favor weeds.
In other words, we change our diet, to avoid sugars and junk; get
decent fresh and natural foods to eat; we replace the unfriendly microbes
with more suitable ones: our own bacterial friends and allies.
Most well known among these friendly bacteria is Lactobacillus
acidophilus, the yoghurt-making germ. Many supplements of ‘acidophilus’
are currently being marketed. Some contain very few live bacteria and are
of poor value, if not completely fraudulent.
In fact Bifidobacteria and Bacteroides are much more prevalent
in the gut; both are anaerobic, comprising some ninety percent of natural