Tag: gut health

Lettuce Be Friends

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Lettuce.

Lettuce who?

Lettuce be friends.

I think I read that on a Valentine’s Day card… probably in grade school.

Anyway, friends, I wanted to share this awesome organic lettuce we’ve been buying from Aldi.

The box is crammed with organic lettuce varieties like red and green leaf lettuce, red and green oak, red and green chard, Lolla Rosa, tango, spinach, arugula, beet greens, frisee, radicchio, mizuna, kale, red mustard greens, tatsoi, and collards. I’ve never even heard of some of these.

It’s prewashed, and its a full pound.

It’s a good deal, though I can’t tell you the exact price I paid. #worthit

Poopy Love Story (and Another Biome Breakthrough)

This is the most charming love story ❤️. Imagine falling in love with someone who is suffering (and I mean that in the true sense of the word “suffering”) from bipolar disorder and bouts of psychosis, doing research on your own to find a possible solution, experimenting and then finding a durable cure. Imagine that!

And it all comes down to poo 💩.

It is truly fascinating, and I urge you to watch for yourself:

Another Biome Breakthrough!

Check out this amazing research from the University of Florida and Trinity College Dublin:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/08/250821004244.htm

Queuosine is a rare micronutrient crucial for brain health, memory, stress response, and cancer defense. It is “a vitamin-like micronutrient that we can’t make ourselves but can only get from food and our gut bacteria.”

“For over 30 years, scientists have suspected that there had to be a transporter for this nutrient, but no one could find it,” said Valérie de Crécy-Lagard, a UF/IFAS microbiology and cell science distinguished professor and department associate chair, as well as one of the study’s principal investigators. “We’ve been hunting for it for a long time. This discovery opens up a whole new chapter in understanding how the microbiome and our diet can influence the translation of our genes.”

Very iteresting! We are starting to map the microbiota.

We Can Pickle That!

After a couple rounds in the dishwasher, this jar still smells like pickles!

Just wanted to share. Bubbie’s is a brand of fermented foods, and we have tried a couple of their products. They taste great and are fermented so you get a little probiotic boost.

I was thinking the other day that, if every deli and hamburger joint in America started using Bubbie’s pickles, what an improvement we would have in our overall gut health.

https://www.bubbies.com/

The Biome & and Heart Disease

If I ever come into a large sum of money I’d like to put my friend Mike through medical school. He’s very smart, patient, and observant and he would do well in the research world.

He recently sent this article my way:

https://english.elpais.com/health/2025-07-17/revolution-in-medicine-a-molecule-produced-by-gut-bacteria-causes-atherosclerosis-responsible-for-millions-of-deaths.html

Here are the takeaways:

  • Researchers have discovered that gut bacteria produce a molecule (called imidazole propionate) that causes atherosclerosis, the accumulation of fat and cholesterol in the arteries, which can lead to heart attacks and strokes.
  • 63% of the study participants showed signs of the disease.
  • Imidazole propionate enters the blood, interacts with immature white blood cells, and triggers an inflammatory reaction in the arteries, which promotes the buildup of fatty plaques.
  • These results are unexpected, linking microbes and cardiovascular disease — the leading cause of death in humanity.
  • One of the study’s authors had already discovered in 2018 that imidazole propionate levels were higher in people with type 2 diabetes.
  • Blood levels of imidazole propionate are lower in people with diets rich in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fish, tea, and low-fat dairy products.

What I want to know is how could a person know if they have this gut bacteria?

Are there foods you can eat to kill it off?

Not, sure I’ve ever mentioned it here, but did you know that most medical schools in the US don’t require nutrition training?

Maybe that will change soon.🤞 Here’s hoping.

The article ends with this tidbit:

Cases of colorectal cancer are skyrocketing in people under the age of 50, due to unknown causes, doubling in many countries in the last two decades. Another study, led by computational biologist Marcos Díaz Gay, suggested just three months ago that behind this colorectal cancer epidemic is the Escherichia coli toxin. “In young patients, up to 39 years of age, we see that colibactin pattern in one out of every three cases,” stressed Díaz Gay, of the National Cancer Research Center.

Quick Slaw

Another quick, cold, plant-based recipe for you. I’m sorry, I don’t have a more exacting recipe. You’re gonna have to use the force on this one.

Enjoy!

  • Red cabbage
  • Carrots
  • Sunflower seeds or pistachios
  • Raisins or another similar-sized dried fruit
  • Honey
  • Salt
  • Red wine vinegar

Find a bowl you’d like to serve this dish in.

Slice the cabbage very thin. You want enough to fill the bowl approximately 60% full of the shredded cabbage.

Wash the carrots and then either use a hand peeler OR a cheese grater to shred them. Add them to the bowl. These 2 ingredients will take up most of the space in the bowl, so keep adding until it is about 90% full.

Add at least a cup each of sunflower seeds and raisins. Mix well. Salt liberally, unless the sunflower seeds have already done that for you.

Add honey and red wine vinegar in equal amounts to coat the ingredients. Mix well.

It’s crunchy, sweet, salty, and healthy. It doesn’t need to be refrigerated, which makes it perfect for summer, camping, etc.

Once you get the hang of it, swap out white cabbage for red, different nuts or seeds, different dried fruit, fancy vinegars… just make sure you include something crunchy, something sweet, something salty, and something vinegarrey. 😋

Use the force!

30 for 30

I used to struggle to get 30 different types of plant foods in my diet each week. As I’ve been doing this for a while now — and enjoying the benefits of a much healthier tummy — I thought I’d share a few secrets.

Coffee Klatch ☕️

Every morning, I begin with coffee and add to it about 1 tablespoon of chaga, which is a mushroom product.

Two down, 28 to go!

Tea for Two 🫖

Teas count! I usually have a cup of herbal tea after my morning coffee. My favorite is ginger turmeric, but of course, I mix it up… each day is different. 

I’m going to estimate that you’ll get at least 3 plant foods and their wonderful micronutrients in one cup of tea.

Add a lemon, lime, or orange slice? You’ve got 4.

What’s the tally now? Six plant foods! 24 to go!

Nuts to You 🌰🥜🐿

We like to keep a couple of jars of nuts in the den… easy access to healthy snacks when movie time rolls around. We keep a big one just for cashews, a small one for pistachios, and a medium-sized one for mixed nuts from Aldi, which includes peanuts, pecans, almonds and hazelnuts.

Ok, so a handful here and there throughout the week equals 6 of your 30 plant-based foods. And just having them around will help curb your desire for the unhealthy stuff.

Ok, add 6 to the tally. 18 to go!

Shoot Some Salad, Salad Shooter 🥗🔫

I’m making a big salad for tonight, and marinating some chicken for Jimmy to grill.

Here’s the salad ingredients in tonight’s mix: romaine lettuce, baby spinach, baby chard, baby kale, broccoli sprouts, tomatoes, cucumber slices, celery, sweet pepper slices, avocado, olives, and green onion. 

There’s enough for 4 of us to eat, and I’m pretty sure there will be leftovers for tomorrow. I’m not too proud to eat yesterday’s dressed salad. It takes on a giardiniera vibe.

Ok, that’s 12 more plant foods to add to the tally.

If you count the red wine vinegar I use in the dressing, it makes 13! I’m not going to count the dried herbs, though…

18 – 13 = 5 more to go!

Fruit Salad, Yummy Yummy 🍉🍒🫐🍓🍍

It’s summer, and there’s a ton of ripe fruit available, so take advantage while you can.

This morning, we finished a pineapple at breakfast.

My lunch was apple chunks with peanut butter drizzle.

On the dinner table, I set out blueberries, watermelon, and cherries. So there’s 5 more plant foods for today!

5 – 5 = 0! I got 30 in one day! Now, any new veggie to cross my path is just a bonus!

Easy, healthy, and delicious!

Budwig

Came across this recipe, which promises cancer-fighting properties. It was developed by Johanna Budwig, a German biochemist and pharmacist who developed a lacto-vegetarian cancer prevention diet in the 1950s.

Not gonna lie, flaxseed oil tastes pretty yucky. It literally tastes like you are eating oil paint. BUT it contains a lot of omega 3 fatty acids, which most of us are not getting enough of.

Mixing with cottage cheese somehow helps aid in the digestion of the flaxseed oil. It has a symbiotic effect.

She passed away in 2003, a few years before the discovery of resolvins and protectins:

Only recently has it been established that inflammation resolution is an active process with a distinct set of chemical mediators. Several clinical and epidemiological studies have identified beneficial effects of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) for a variety of inflammatory diseases, yet without mechanistic explanations for these beneficial effects. Resolvins and protectins are recently identified molecules that are generated from Omega-3 PUFA precursors and can orchestrate the timely resolution of inflammation in model systems.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2785519/

I do see this in relation to the seed oil info I posted earlier today. If modern man is living in an omega 3/ omega 6 imbalance, and we don’t know about it or understand the damage it is doing to us…. well, that’s a bad thing.

It’s interesting that Dr. Budwig’s daily regimen begins with sauerkraut juice…  the kombucha of 1800s Germany.

Then she blends together flax seed oil (very high in omega 3s) with a dairy product to help it be absorbed easily.

I think the science will catch up to her and what she was able to do… reportedly nurse cancer patients back to health with nutritional strategies.

The Dangers of Seed Oils

I have wanted to write about this for a while but I’m a bit out of my depth, and so I’ve put it off… but it is critically important and the little that I know has really changed my eating habits.

I recently came across this Instagram post by Dr. Mark Hyman, which sums it up nicely.