I decided it was time to sit down and evaluate the supplements I take and decide if anything needs to be changed up. While doing some research on GreenMedinfo, I kept seeing probiotics come up as a benefit to inflammatory markers for various diseases. Then it made a lot of sense how so many people have gut issues coupled with autoimmune (like my own daughter!)
While I was sitting at my computer, I kept wondering why I've been hurting the past couple of days, to the point that it was distracting and even debilitating at times. That's when I remembered that I was taking a week off from Vitamin D, since I hadn't had my levels checked and I wanted to make sure I didn't take too much. I decided I should take it to see if it helped, and when I opened my supplement cabinet to get the Vitamin D, there was my mom's probiotic looking back at me.
My mom came to live with me for six months before passing away on April 21. She had been in assisted living across the country (near my brother) and had been hospitalized many times for oral cancer surgery, c-diff and complications from that. She nearly died, but even after she recovered, was dealing with Lewy body dementia with Parkinsonism. She had almost constant UTI's, like many elderly, as well as constant diarrhea after the c-diff. Most of her life she had "little pebbles" and still told doctors that whenever they asked, even though it was not true when she lived with me!
I wanted to keep urinary tract infections away, and knew that she had gut issues, so I had been giving her Nexabiotic from DrFormulas. I like showing that I actually purchase the products I recommend...
She was on pureed food due to swallowing issues from her last oral cancer surgery (and probably dementia, but who knows?) so I opened the capsules and put them in with her other medicines everyday. Her diarrhea cleared up in about a week. She had been dealing with it for MONTHS in assisted living. While she was still independently toileting, dementia caused her to forget to flush quite often (and she blamed it on my daughter!) so I saw what her bowel movements were like. They were normal. Not pebbles. Normal. I couldn't believe it. She spent most of her life constipated, and knew that she wasn't drinking enough water. Now that she was getting more fluids through her pureed food, and probiotics to improve her gut, she was going regularly with normal smooth movements. AND she only had one minor UTI in 6 months.
I was worried a bit when she kept losing weight despite eating a LOT of food, especially for her level of activity. But her weight loss stopped at 8 lbs. and she plateaued there. That's when I realized that she probably had pooped out a lot of remnants that had been hanging around in her intestines for years! You would think diarrhea would do that, but I learned recently that you can be constipated and have diarrhea at the same time! So you can have waste lodged in nooks and crannies of your intestines and watery stool go right on by. Anyway, enough of that talk... we'll just say I was shocked at the difference.
When I looked at the variety of strains in the Nexabiotic, I saw a lot of the same ones that were studied in the articles I had just read on inflammatory markers. So now I'm trying it to see what results I get for pain and inflammation. Here are the strains:
I think the only reason I've not taken a probiotic more frequently is because I eat plain yogurt everyday. So my gut is "decent." I think I can do better. Stand by...
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