The Owners' Manual for the Human Body--The Importance of Gut Flora

Digestion and Elimination: Understanding the Importance of Gut Flora

Let me just say this up front, loud and clear: I can not overemphasize the importance of gut flora. We are not educated properly on this subject. We are not eating properly in order to maintain the absolutely crucial bacterial balance necessary for health. If your gut isn’t healthy then you aren’t healthy. You must fix this before you do anything else.

There exists a condition called disbacteriosis and sadly, most of us probably have it. Basically it is an imbalance of intestinal flora. Ideally our guts contain both the “good” and the “bad” bacteria, with the good winning out. But when our diets are poor and we introduce antibiotics we allow the bad bacteria to overtake the balance. To give you an idea, a healthy person should have between 3-5 pounds of beneficial flora.

Before we can work on our digestion and elimination health we have to understand what the problem really is and how huge of a role friendly bacteria play in our health.

Necessary Functions Provided by Friendly Flora include:  They keep our digestive system healthy, chelate heavy metals, carcinogens, and other toxic substances and excrete them out of the body, convert food into nourishing substances for the lining of the gut, keeping it healthy, probiotic microbes are essential for feeding our bodies properly and they are the basis of our immune systems.

Signs of disbacteriosis include asthma, allergies, skin eruptions, and chronic infections. You can also tell if your gut is healthy based on whether you are constipated or have issues with gas or bloating.

The Owners' Manual you never received at birth--inspired by the book of the same title--authored by panelist, Dr. Darko Velcek.