Healthy Digestion and Using Supplements

TRANSCRIPT FOR BEH PODCAST EPISODE 21

HEALTHY DIGESTION AND USING SUPPLEMENTS

Participant: Hi, my question concerns improving digestion.  I’ve taken a prebiotic, the chicory root extract, slightly sweet.  I was wondering what you thought about taking a product like that.  And the other side, I’ve read about the role of bitters, which is not something we take much of these days.  Would it help to take a sprig of parsley or something, maybe with the minerals before you started eating?

Dr. Miller: Those are good questions.  Let me just start by saying, that it is very important to have a healthy digestion.  What we offer in the basic protocol, the Jarro Dophilus is collagen free, probiotic from Jarro Dophilus.  The reason we use that product and start people on it is that a probiotic is the lowest level of support for your digestion.  A probiotic in pill form is a little better than cultured foods, but cultured foods are also a good thing for everyone to include in their diet.  The prebiotic things like chicory root have something called FOS in them, which is included in the Jarro product. That means its both a prebiotic and a probiotic.  We had a question, a little while ago, about whether you would use that Jarro product for the next ten years.  The answer is no. At some point, you probably want to mix it up with a different product.  We have a couple different products that we will talk about as time goes by.  They’re similar in price, but they’re just a little bit of a different brand.

Coming back to the bitters, they can be useful if you digestive system is not healthy. What do I mean by healthy digestion?  You want to probably be having a bowel movement for every large meal you eat.  So if you eat three large meals a day, you probably want to have at least two, preferably three bowel movements; that’s just the way the gut works.  If you’re eating three large meals a day, and you’re only have one bowel movement in a day, you’re probably a bit constipated, even though it may not feel like it.  If you feel like your food is digesting well, meaning you don’t see a lot of undigested food when you go to the bathroom and your stools are formed.  I know this is kind of an impolite conversation, but if your stools are relatively formed and you don’t drive everyone out of the house every time you have a bowel movement because of the smell, things are probably working pretty well. 

Bitters are another thing to add to your diet. Things like parsley and cilantro, are very excellent things for bitters.  One thing from Chinese medicine that was used a lot is tangerine peel.  Tangerine peel tea is something you can buy.  Other bitter substances that people like, that you want to include those in your diet, those are all fine.  Not everybody needs them, but they’re certainly useful and are even more useful if you’re not having a healthy digestive system.  So bitters are great, I don’t think everybody needs to add them, but it’s certainly the next layer. There’s no down side, they’re inexpensive and often can be done just as food without buying another supplement.