Tea recipe for digestion

[Backtobasics95]

Have to say I'm impressed with this. I've been drinking it twice a day (after big meals in morning & at night) and my bowel movements have been better. Not gonna say it's a miracle drink or something like that to get your hopes up, it's just a nice caffeine free tea that makes your stomach feel nice and warm. If you take a look at the ingredients, you'll see nothing but very healthy stuff so can't go wrong. Taste-wise it's pretty good, but if you're into strong teas or sweet teas than this is not for you. Maybe that's because I drink it without milk... Regardless it's darn healthy so give it a try

meghantelpner.com/blog/tea-...

[Hidden]

Thank you for this and I have just printed the recipe for the tea. I don't like strong tea but like sweetness but I see it lists raw honey as an ingredient.

[Backtobasics95 in reply to Hidden]

Let me know how you find it

[Hidden in reply to Backtobasics95]

Thank you and will do

[Iesgobdafydd]

I *love* turmeric but, sadly, it's on the (very long) list of things I suspect make my IBS worse. So just a warning to others, by all means try the tea, but proceed with caution.

[Backtobasics95 in reply to Iesgobdafydd]

Fair enough. Just to point out, the recipe states to start with half a teaspoon, or any amount you can handle.

[Iesgobdafydd in reply to Backtobasics95]

That's a very good point.. I think I was only adding a quarter teaspoon to my dinner and reacting, but it's true there probably does come a level at which any reaction would become unnoticeable, and possibly at that level the benefits might outweigh the disbenefits. In terms of dinner, the problem is that might come at a point where the flavour is no longer very noticeable, but in a health tea it might still be worth trying.

[Backtobasics95 in reply to Iesgobdafydd]

This has nothing to do with what you've said but there are huge medical breakthroughs being made to do with the bacteria in our large intestines. We are learning that these bacterium are much more important than we thought, and have a large influence on how we act and feel. I am going to be posting a lot of stuff on this in the near future because I feel really passionate about this topic so if you follow me you should see what I post on your home page. I say all this because it seems bad gut health has contributed to all kinds of illnesses/diseases that never existed in past centuries due to processed foods and all that crap they put on the shelves, so I'm just trying to spread the word

[Iesgobdafydd in reply to Backtobasics95]

That's great to hear! I will follow you if I can figure out how that works. I have a strong suspicion that my IBS might relate to my gut flora, since excess gas is one of my most persistent symptoms even on good days, and the little buggers make the stuff, and also because the first diagnosis I had, years before the IBS diagnosis, was low B12 levels, in spite of having been on multivitamins for some time. I was eventually tested and found not to have pernicious anaemia, and being vegetarian, the doctor now attributes the former low B12 levels to dietary insufficiency - but I disagree. I remember coming across a medical paper which theorised that problems similar to mine could be caused by gut bacteria consuming too much of the B vitamins before the body could absorb them, but it was just an idea, not backed up by research, at that point.

[Backtobasics95 in reply to Iesgobdafydd]

I have been reading a lot of medical journals lately, trust me the study of gut bacteria is spreading like wildfire. Look up a guy called Michael mosley, he has written several books about this. I just read his book called 'the clever guts diet', and honestly it has helped my IBS so so much. He said something interesting that caught my eye, and that was we receive our good bacteria from our mothers poo and vaginal fluids. This takes place at birth when we swallow all that gunk that happens to have all the good bacteria in there. The problem, he says, is that with the introduction of antibiotics, more and more of our good bacteria is dying off, so when we give birth our children have less of these bacteria than we did. Than when those children have babies, their children will have less good bacteria. You get the point here. So it is vital that we start eating more probiotic foods, exposing ourselves to bacteria by doing gardening, not being so clean and eating as many different kinds of vegetables as possible. I don't want to say too much about what he talks about, but I assure you, there are multiple experiments he has conducted with proof of results and very good credibility. I advise you to consider reading this book, it's been a game changer for me.

[Iesgobdafydd in reply to Backtobasics95]

I read something similar in Giulia Enders' book "Gut". But what she said is not only do we get our gut flora from our mothers at birth, and supplements from putting things in our mouths when we're still tiny, but also when we're still babies, our autoimmune system develops and then the window of opportunity closes. We can no longer benefit for more than a day or two from new kinds of beneficial bacteria that find their way into us, because our immune system kills them off. Hence, any probiotics you take are only useful if you keep taking them daily. Forever. Unless, of course, they happen to replace a type of bacteria had from infancy but lost completely through taking antibiotics. And for our children to get a richer gut flora than their mother, they need to be exposed to the new bacteria in early infancy. Even then, breastmilk continues to provide some immune protection from the mother to the breastfed baby, but I'm not sure how big an impact it would have. For an adult, I'm not convinced gardening or eating lots of different vegetables is going to make any difference - you would need exposure to the same helpful bacteria every day, and it seems more likely to me that would come from slacking on household cleaning (something I find easy!) and making one's own fermented foods (something I haven't yet ventured into, because I have such a limited range of foods I am confident I can eat without making myself more sick.)

[Backtobasics95 in reply to Iesgobdafydd]

Thanks for letting me know, I will definitely read that. And yes, you are completely right about the window of opportunity a person has at infancy to expand their microbiome range. Michael touched on that in his book, I remember now. And that is very interesting. Honestly, my last resort would be living with a tribe in the Amazon or north America or wherever people still live like the ancient way. Look up 'microbiome of tribe members'. There is a lot of interesting scholarly articles on that. Funny story, there was a guy who proclaimed, I want to have the world's best microbiome makeup! So he went to some tribe, hung upside down from a tree, and got someone to pour the liquid faeces of a tribe member down his arse via a funnel. Imagine that hahaha! He did it for an experiment, and it was found initially he felt really sick, but in the long run his health improved. I would never do something like that, but living with a tribe for a few months? I might consider that. I would have to be 100% sure that they are good people and consider other things, but could be a last resort if my IBS doesn't improve. As for the fermented foods, I highly recommend trying milk kefir. Super super easy to make yourself, and it costs me about $2 a week to make 2 cups a day. Also, fermented red cabbage is my new staple every night (1/2 cup if you're on the low fodmap diet), that's even easier to make than kefir, and even cheaper.

[Iesgobdafydd in reply to Backtobasics95]

Unless the tribe has whatever bacteria I grew up with and lost, I would expect any benefits from living with them to go away again once I stopped living with them, unless the science is more complicated than what I've read says, which is entirely possible. Thanks for the suggestion on kefir, but I tried a bottle from the supermarket as an experiment and it triggered my IBS. Maybe there is too much lactose, or some other FODMAP, in it for me, or maybe I've actually got SIBO. I'll probably try fermenting my own vegetables at some point, but not yet - I'm still working on getting a SIBO breath test out of the NHS, which is supposed to be possible via the hospital here, and it makes sense to me to wait till after that. I also tried some supermarket sauerkraut - before I realized it was pasteurized so no friendly bacteria left alive - and it didn't go down too well either, so I'll probably try and work with another vegetable than cabbage, ideally a low-fibre one with no FODMAPs in!

[Ukbusybee]

Just reading through this thread and Michael Moseley is the doctor that is often on BBC programmes. A recent one was about sleep and gut bacteria was a key element in that too. He advocates taking a combination of probiotiocs and prebiotics to get the gut glora back into balance. Probiotics are the good bacteria that do all the good in digestion, but prebiotics are needed too do that they can thrive (it's like a fertilizer for the gut). I've been taking organic inulin (prebiotics) in my breakfast cereal in the morning with acidophilus (probiotics) and my IBS symptoms have been much improved over the last few months. Worth a try. 👍🏼