This article from the British paper The Guardian about the connection between eating certain foods and improving gut health contains some new information.

I make (and sometimes buy) fermented foods like kombucha, kraut, kimchi, and kvass (haven’t tried making kefir yet), but there are a lot of other fermented foods, including cheese, miso (which apparently you can make at home — who knew?), olives (!), and vinegars.

The article also mentions prebiotic foods, like legumes (pulses in British English), mushrooms, dark chocolate, and sourdough bread. Sourdough is fermented, so maybe it’s in the wrong category?? Cacao beans, from which chocolate is made, is also fermented.

I had no idea that mushrooms were prebiotics. There are lots of others.

Just gonna mention here that although I don’t bake bread, I do buy a sprouted sourdough made by Alvarado St. Bakery (a California co-op) and sold at Austin’s Wheatsville Food Co-op.

On my own personal healing journey, digestive health was the second episode, after trauma and its effect on my nervous system.

I got food sensitivity testing, was positive for too much candida and sensitive to 14 foods including wheat and corn (but interestingly, not gluten). I did the very strict candida diet, which came with warnings that one slip-up could allow the candida yeast to get out of control again…so I followed it strictly for two-and-a-half months.

I didn’t know what “well” felt like until then.