Functional Foods: Dietitian Q&A Over the past few years, I’ve heard more and more about functional foods and noticed products on the grocery store shelf making claims about improving health. I have read some information on the topic, but I find it confusing and a bit overwhelming. Can you tell me what a functional food [...]
Product Review Larabar® Nature’s Candy is the main ingredient in this widely available gut-friendly energy bar Who said candy isn’t good for you? Cultivated for more than 6,000 years, people have called dates nature’s candy, but these fine fruits provide goodness as well as flavour. High in fibre, low on the glycemic index (35.5-47.2%),1 and [...]
Goodness of Eggs As part of a balanced diet, eggs contribute to a healthy digestive tract and can be helpful during acute digestive problems. In addition to being packed with nutrients, eggs are usually easy to digest compared to some other high-protein foods, such as meat and legumes. Due to their sulphur content, eggs can [...]
Are You Getting Enough Zinc? Zinc is a trace element and an essential micronutrient for humans. Essential micronutrients are vitamins and minerals that are required in small amounts by the body for optimal health. Since the body is unable to synthesize these micronutrients, a dietary source is necessary. Early during digestion, zinc ions present in [...]
Crohn’s Disease Insights Crohn’s disease is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease that can affect any area of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, from the mouth to the anus, either continuously or as isolated areas. The inflammation can involve the inner intestinal mucosal lining, up to the full thickness of the bowel wall, and consists of swelling, [...]
Safe Drug Disposal Don’t Flush that Drug – Don’t Trash it Either Health Canada recently warned, “Traces of pharmaceuticals are being detected in the environment, primarily in water (surface water, coastal water, groundwater, and drinking water) and soil. There is growing evidence that throwing pharmaceuticals (prescription drugs, non-prescription, over-the-counter drugs) and other personal care products [...]
Drug Wars There is a war brewing in Canada over intellectual property (IP); other countries have stronger laws to protect inventors’ rights and we need the same safeguards here at home. Intellectual property rights are the cornerstone of innovation. Some Canadian breakthroughs are world-renowned, such as the notorious work of Toronto-based physician-researchers Sir Frederick Banting [...]
Seniors and Bacteria Bacteria are everywhere. An estimated five nonillion (5×1030) bacteria exist on Earth, a collective biomass that is greater than all plants and animals combined. The intestinal tract alone is home to 100,000,000,000,000(1014) bacteria, which is more than ten times the number of the body’s own cells.1 The diverse ecosystem in the average [...]
Hepatitis C – To Tell or Not To Tell Hepatitis C is a liver disease resulting from an infection with the hepatitis C virus (HCV). In about a quarter of those infected, HCV resolves without serious consequences; however, for the remainder, the disease lingers (becomes chronic). The concern is that in about 25% of these [...]
Prunes vs. Psyllium for Reducing Constipation In a study, published in Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics,1 researchers compared the effectiveness of a popular natural supplement, psyllium (Metamucil®), to a natural food remedy that humans have been consuming for thousands of years, dried plums (prunes). They concluded that prunes are superior in providing safe, effective relief of mild [...]
The Facts behind the Buzz over BPA Whether we are storing, transporting, or heating it up, our food routinely contacts plastic. Are all plastics the same? Absolutely not! Some plastic products may look the same – hard or flexible, soft or brittle – but they could contain very different chemicals and have varying levels of [...]
All About Antibiotics Infections have many origins, such as pneumonia (bacterial), the common cold (viral), athlete’s foot (fungal), and giardiasis (parasitic), to name just a few. The body prevents and fights these infections through its complex immune system. When infections are too strong for the immune system to overcome them, physicians typically prescribe medications. This [...]
Women and Inflammatory Bowel Disease In recognition of International Women’s Day, which is marked each year on March 8th, we present some recent research on the extra challenges faced by women with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Work and Romance A recent study from Sweden found that, compared to men with Crohn’s disease, women with [...]
Medical Cannabis and IBD Note: This is an older article about Medical Cannabis, originally published in the Inside Tract® in 2013. To read our updated article from 2018, and to watch our video on Medical Cannabis, click here. At a BadGut® Lecture in Vancouver a few years ago, an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patient asked [...]
Artificial Sweeteners Could Harm Gut Microbiota Previously, we have mentioned the possibility that sucralose disrupts the gut mucosa, which could be a factor in the development of Crohn’s disease in susceptible individuals. Now, artificial sweeteners are once again under fire. This time, researchers believe that artificial sweeteners could be altering our gut microbiota, resulting in [...]
What You Need to Know about Immunizations Unlike medications and treatments that help reduce symptoms or cure diseases after we contract them, immunizations (or vaccinations) prepare our bodies for defense against certain microorganisms before we ever encounter them. When foreign substances or toxins (antigens) invade our bodies and makes us sick, we respond by producing [...]
Liver Disease in Canada Based on available data, researchers estimate that about 1 in 10 Canadians have some form of liver disease – that’s more than 3 million people – although even this may be an underestimate. The Canadian Liver Foundation (CLF) released a detailed analysis in 2013 outlining the emerging crisis in this health [...]
Gut Bacteria’s Far-Reaching Effects Manipulating body fat, mood, and IBS by mixing up your gut bacteria Non-human cells in and on our bodies outnumber our human cells ten to one. Each person has a unique microbiome, a particular combination and quantity of bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other microorganisms. Each of our gastrointestinal (GI) tracts hosts [...]
Link Between Changing Gut Flora and Obesity Marc Bomhof would like to amend the old saying, You Are What You Eat, to be more accurate. Perhaps something like: You Are What You and Your Gut Microbiota Eat. “It’s estimated that there’s about 100 trillion bacteria living in our digestive tract,” explains Bomhof. “We have about [...]
H. pylori: More than Gastric Ulcers The scientific community used to believe that stress caused gastric ulcers. It wasn’t until 1982, when two scientists, Dr. Barry J. Marshall and Dr. J. Robin Warren, discovered that a bacterium that lives in the gut, Helicobacter pylori, is the real cause of most gastric ulcers. They would later [...]
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