14 New Year New You Health, fitness & nutrition
Give your stomach a boost for the New Year
Saturday 5th January 2019
Excerpt from the bestselling new book The Kefir Solution: Natural Healing for IBS, Anxiety and Depression
By Shann Nix Jones I
f the festive season has left its mark on your mood and diges-
tive system this year, you’re not alone. Some 86% of all British adults
suffered from some sort of gastro- intestinal problem or ailment in the past year, and one in three people in the UK suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). If you’re one of them, you know
that science has had very little help to sufferers of IBS or mood disorder — until now.
Cause of IBS revealed New research has uncovered strong evidence that IBS, along with anxiety and depression that often accompany it, are all associ- ated with an imbalance of bacteria in the gut. A landmark study by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in the US used cultures from the small intestine to connect bacteria to the cause of the disorder. Mark Pimentel, an author of
the study, said: “While we found compelling evidence in the past that bacterial overgrowth is a contrib- uting cause of IBS, making this link through bacterial cultures is the gold standard of diagnosis. This clear evidence of the role bacteria play in the condition underscores our clinical trial findings... Bacteria are key contributors to the cause of IBS.”
In 2017, researchers at Canada’s
McMaster University used faecal transplants to transfer microbiota from IBS patients into germ-free mice, and they found that those mice went on to develop IBS symp- toms and anxiety-like behaviour. It was already known that patients
with IBS have certain kind of bugs in their gut, so the gut bug-IBS connection has been established. But the McMaster study showed that it’s possible to start out with the bugs, and use them to create both the gut-related symptoms of IBS and the co-morbid aspects of depression and anxiety.
has the greatest impact on the bugs inside the human gut. The study was conducted by Dr Michael Mosley, presenter of the BBC TV show Trust Me I’m a Doctor, along with NHS Highland and 30 volunteers and scientists around the country. At the end of the four weeks, the
biggest change in gut bacteria was seen in the group that had taken a probiotic called kefir, a fermented milk drink that originated in the Black Caucasus Mountains. The study confirmed that the
non-transient bacteria in kefir do survive our digestive process — with its strong acid that kills off dangerous bacteria in our food — and reaches the gut to colonise it and suppress pathogens (disease-causing bugs.)
Can kefir help with IBS, depression and anxiety? The American College of Gastroenterology
The study confirmed that the bacteria in kefir survive our digestive process and reach the gut to suppress disease- causing bugs
The science behind kefir Discovering the cause of IBS opened the way for probiotic treatments that can resolve it. In January 2017 the first main-
stream UK study was performed to determine which probiotic food
performed a
comprehensive literature review on the topic, and found that probiotics such as kefir were both safe and effective in improving symptoms and normalising bowel movement frequency in patients suffering from constipation or diarrhoea
related
to IBS. Today, kefir is also poised to
become a major player in a new frontier in neuroscience because of its actions as a ‘psychobiotic’. This is a new term for a combination of live organisms that, when ingested in adequate amounts, produce mental health benefits. While it’s been known for more than a century that bacteria can
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