Chris Kresser has posted his advice on how to heal your gut

Chris Kresser has posted his advice on how to heal your gut. It's worth reading.

About microbes in your gut that share your body with you

The food you eat influences the proportions of those microbes in your gut that share your body with you. - Personally I favour eating Probiotic, organic, unsweetened, full fat yoghurt from pastured cows in order to increase the proportion of 'goodie' bacteria in my gut.

By contrast, if you eat a lot of sugary food or foods that contain yeast, then the 'baddie' bacteria like Gardnerella, responsible for Bacterial Vaginitis/Vaginitis, and some undesirable yeasts or fungus infections, like candida/thrush, will be more likely to thrive. It is also widely believed that eating sugar feeds cancer...

I suggest that you consider cutting down on the foods that feed 'The Enemy Within'.

Function of the Appendix

When I was at school I was taught that the appendix didn't really have a function these days - that it was just a vestigial organ. Maybe you were taught that too. - But there is another theory now: that the appendix provides a 'safe house' where healthy gut flora are stored as a reserve cache to repopulate the gut if it gets infected and diarrhoea empties it. - Isn't the body a marvellous, intricate wonder?

See the diagram and explanation on Wikipedia.

I urge you to safeguard the health of your amazing, complex body by eating good, nutritious, natural food instead of processed, adulterated, over-salted, sub-standard fodder and diet junk.

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!