Sometimes it is a really good idea to be hooked up with some good probiotics. Probiotics are beneficial bacteria that help keep your digestive system healthy. You can find them in health food stores and they are generally quite expensive. You can also take advantage of Mother Nature's probiotics - fermented and cultured foods.
I eat fermented foods or drinks nearly everyday as health insurance (home ferments, not the fermented beverages popular in college dorms). I expect that insurance helped keep me from getting extra ill this week.
I returned home this week from the La Leche League International Conference only to be contacted by the Chicago Department of Public Health about a possible foodborne illness outbreak.
"Oh, that's what that was," I thought.
I was pretty sick on Tuesday through Thursday of this past week and wondered how my immune system got so weak that I was getting sick on a trip. When I heard the word "norovirus" (though that's just a rumor at this point), I thought "whoa, it could have been a lot worse." I laid in a park at Northwestern University between meetings rather than write entries for this blog. My illness was totally manageable on the flight home.
I credit a healthy intestinal tract to being able to keep those meetings and not ending up in a hospital. However, I also credit my recent stress with my getting sick at all (so really I could be doing better).
Integrate some probiotic foods into your diet:
* Buy live culture yogurt.
* Make your own yogurt. (I'll post about this soon.)
* Buy or make dairy kefir.
* Try water kefir drinks.
* Ferment your own foods. To this end, visit Wild Fermentation for sample techniques such as this for sauerkraut or buy the book which is wonderfully written and a super read if only for the stories.
* Consider raw milk. When I realized I had possibly contracted a foodborne pathogen, I took a strategy that many people would consider crazy and I bought a gallon of Organic Pastures raw milk from Watson's Health Food Store in Visalia, CA. It is loaded with beneficial bacteria to help a sick digestive tract. Most dairies take no measures to reduce spreading pathogens on their dairies, so you would not want to drink raw milk from anywhere. You would also want to make sure the cows are grazing on grass which would reduce your risk further. (Read more about the health benefits of raw milk at Raw Milk Facts).
