Who hasn’t suffered from debilitating ongoing gut pain, burping, flatulence and irregular bowel function at some time in their lives! The medical establishment has labelled this irritable bowel syndrome for want of a better term for describing this constellation of symptoms but this does not really explain what is causing this disorder in the first place. Mercifully we currently have a much better understanding of what is triggering so much distress to our digestive process. One of the principal causes is thought to be an imbalance of microbes in the gut and more specifically the overgrowth of harmful bacteria in a portion of our bowel called the small intestine. Usually pathogenic germs won’t be able to survive in this robust and immune-rich environment but medications like antibiotics, painkillers, antidepressants, antacids and even the contraceptive pill have the capacity to undermine and cripple our gut function making it far easier for these microbes to survive and cause the kind of mayhem that culminates in the complaints listed above.
The good news is that once we’ve identified that they are present with a combination of breath testing and stool analyses we can eliminate them with a host of natural remedies including dietary modifications, usually temporary to starve these bugs of the foods they need to survive, probiotics, anti-microbial and gut energizing herbal potions and if necessary pharmaceutical interventions. Abandoning the saturated fat and sugar-rich Western diet and consuming more plant-based foods will also help to make it harder for toxic bacteria to set up a home for themselves in an environment where they don’t belong.
