Without a doubt, our gut bacteria directly influences our health.
BFL
What is the difference between the two?
Some bottles contain both PREBIOTICS and PROBIOTICS on their label.
.
ping
Yeah, I bought some kefir beans on amazon and dropped it into whole milk. A day later I had a quart of good kefir. Good stuff. Lots of good probiotics. Taste is sweet and savory. Good stuff
I had an H. pylori infection 10 years ago. Doc prescribed the standard “triple therapy” treatment which uses three antibiotics. It cured the H. pylori infection but wipes out your gut biota. I didn’t have any problems with the treatment. Doc didn’t mention supplementing with probiotics and prebiotics.
Five weeks ago this coming Tuesday I was scheduled for a ureteroplasty - basically a graft of skin from my cheek over some scar tissue in the left ureter.
After a pyelogram, and a second one to confirm the first plus a couple of other tests, the surgeon declined to perform the graft. Seems my scar tissue was gone.
This is pretty rare. Not unheard of; the surgeon estimated it was a 1 in 100 probability.
I had made just one notable lifestyle change in the months prior. Over the holidays I started drinking kombucha, the fermented tea. I was prompted by reading a 2021 study called “FeFiFo” by a couple of guys from Stanford, including the guy who runs the “Sonnenburg Lab”.
Amongst the fermented foods docs recommended to the “Fe” group was kombucha. I decided to give it a try. Found out I generally liked the stuff. I immediately picked out the “GT’s” brand and their bottles tout the amount of probiotics and its a much larger number than other brands.
I drink a bottle of the stuff each day.
I know its a longshot, but the kombucha may have enhanced my body’s ability to deal with the uretral scar tissue.
There are other, more immediate salutary effects I’ve enjoyed. But if it helped with that scar tissue it likely saved my life.
See, during that almost-procedure I also got a bag & line change on my nephrostomy. It’s a prep stage for the graft. During this work I contracted sepsis. Wasn’t until I got out of the hospital - 4 weeks ago Tuesday - that I fully comprehended just how close I came to dying.
Had that graft been performed the ensuing sepsis would have been MUCH worse. It’s highly unlikely I would have survived.
It might not have made a difference, but I’m going to drink 16oz of kombucha every day for the rest of my life.
To save on cost I’m gonna start making it myself.
Anyway, that’s my story. Happy to see this article posted.