Have you heard of Bifidobacteria?

Have you heard of Bifidobacteria? You should have done. Bifidobacteria are friends of yours...(o: They are some of the little beneficial microbes that live in your gut. They are sometimes referred to as Probiotics.

You've heard of Antibiotics I am sure. Now when we take antibiotics in order to treat an infection, as well as dealing with the baddie bacteria that are responsible for the infection, antibiotics unfortunately tend to kill off some of the friendly microbes like Bifidobacteria. This can lead to gut problems and many other problems, including thrush/candida and BV/bacterial vaginitis/bacterial vaginosis. And the harmful bacteria in the gut thrive and digestion is compromised. The immune system gets damaged and your risk of developing cancer increases.

But never fear! - Send Bifidobacteria to the rescue! - An easy way to increase the friendly bacteria in your gut and decrease the harmful bacteria, is to eat Probiotic dairy yogurt. - The best sort of probiotic yogurt to look for is that made from full fat milk that has come from cows that eat grass in the fields, not those poor cows that live in overcrowded, dark, unhealthy barns and eat pesticide-treated grains and are given antibiotics because of the poor hygiene. And you should avoid yogurt that has added sugar, because sugar feeds the baddie bacteria that cause those yeast infections like thrush. And you should also make sure the yogurt is organic. Personally I eat Probiotic Yeo Valley natural yogurt usually. It's delicious and it's good for your health. But it is not the only good probiotic wholemilk yogurt. - Why not try all the ones you can find? - Give your gut a treat! - Buy it some probiotic yogurt! - You can read more about Bifidobacteria and the ways it benefits our health by reading this Wikipedia article

Bacterial Vaginosis or Vaginitis (BV) is one of those health problems that tend to be associated with obesity

Bacterial Vaginosis (BV) or Vaginitis can cause intense itching and loss of sleep. Maybe you have tried the usual antibiotics and they have not worked, or maybe you would rather avoid prescription drugs anyway. - Well consider the obesity link. - Obesity is easily reduced by cutting down on salt and salty food. This reduces the fluid retention/salt sensitivity which is always a constituent of obesity. So if you lose weight by eating less salt you may find that that helps with the BV problem.

Alternative home remedies variously include wearing cotton underwear and trying to alter the balance of the vaginal flora by eating less sugar, eating probiotic yogurt or by applying the yogurt directly to the vagina. By a happy coincidence, eating dairy yoghurt also reduces excess weight by increasing the excretion of fat from the body via the faeces. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/humanbody/truthaboutfood/slim/calcium.shtml where you will read: "a high calcium intake increases the excretion of fat in the faeces". – In fact, the researchers found that twice as much fat was excreted on a high calcium intake as on a low calcium intake – and this was independent of calorie intake. – They also found that dairy calcium (they suggest eating yoghurt) is a particularly good source for this extra calcium.
 
On one of the links - http://www.vitamins-nutrition.org/vitamins/calcium.html - from the BBC The Truth About Food site, it says: "Calcium is the mineral most likely to be deficient in the average diet. Let me repeat that. Calcium is the mineral most likely to be deficient in the average diet. Calcium deficiency is a condition in which we fail to receive or to metabolize an adequate supply of Calcium," and also: "Calcium helps keep the weight off. Research suggests that if you don't get enough calcium in your diet, you're likely to be overweight." 

There are a number of reasons that overweight people in particular tend to be deficient in calcium. The main reason is that sodium retention/salt sensitivity/fluid retention depletes the body of calcium.
Here are two other very simple reasons:

1. Most fat people are ‘dieting’ most of the time – i.e. they are eating insufficient food for their body’s needs.

2. Fat people are routinely advised to limit their intake of dairy food like milk because their advisors (wrongly) believe that milk is ‘fattening’.

So to reduce fat retention, if it is present, the most important thing is to alter the diet to reduce the fluid retention which is the initiating cause of excess weight and the primary reason for fat people being short of calcium and for fat people ‘dieting’. That means reducing sodium intake and ensuring plenty of fruit and vegetables in the diet (because their high potassium content helps to displace sodium from the body). 

And specifically it also means having a higher intake of calcium, especially, if possible, from a dairy source like yoghurt. – It is also necessary to ensure sufficient vitamin D intake, as this is needed to metabolise the calcium. Insufficiency of vitamin D is quite common, as is widely reported, e.g. here - http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/vitamind.asp

See also www.vitamindcouncil.org.
 

Also read this very informative page: http://www.patient.co.uk/health/Vitamin-D-Deficiency.htm

I hope that cutting down on salt and sugar, and eating more calcium by way of probiotic unsweetened dairy yogurt, will help you to reduce or solve the itching and the lack of sleep and also help you to lose excess weight the safe, fast, healthy way.

Is persistent intolerable itching making you scratch so hard your skin could even bleed? - This may help...

Your skin may have become thinner and more sensitive because of being overstretched by weight gain/fluid retention/salt sensitivity and/or weakened by dieting. - Reducing fluid retention would reduce the weight gain and relax the overstretched skin and thus reduce the itching. - To do this you need to avoid salt and salty food. - It's as simple - and as difficult! - as that...

See Health problems associated with salt sensitivity and fluid retention

Another cause of intolerable itching (especially vaginal or vulval itching: BV, Bacterial Vaginitis/Bacterial Vaginosis) can be a yeast/fungal infection/Candida/Thrush which may have resulted from taking penicillin or some other antibiotic which has altered the balance of your gut flora. Alternative home remedies for this variously include wearing cotton underwear and trying to improve the balance of the vaginal flora by eating less sugar, by eating probiotic yogurt or by applying the yogurt directly to the vagina. By a happy coincidence, eating dairy yoghurt also reduces excess weight by increasing the excretion of fat from the body via the faeces. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/humanbody/truthaboutfood/slim/calcium.shtml where you will read: "a high calcium intake increases the excretion of fat in the faeces". – In fact, the researchers found that twice as much fat was excreted on a high calcium intake as on a low calcium intake – and this was independent of calorie intake. – They also found that dairy calcium (they suggest eating yoghurt) is a particularly good source for this extra calcium.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, angina, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!