Broccoli, Banana Plantain Fibers Found to Restore Gut Health, Treat Crohn’s Disease
We at NaturalSociety have always taught that what happens in your gut affects the entire body. Your digestive system is essentially the mechanism by which your entire body receives energy to fuel all functions. It also plays an important role in immune function and disease prevention. Your gut health, in essence, is an indicator of your overall health. So it’s exciting to hear when research finds that foods like broccoli and banana plantains hold part of the solution for poor gut health and subsequently ailments like Crohn’s Disease.
Broccoli and Banana Plantain Fibers Treat Stomach Disorders
Interestingly and not surprisingly, the modern processed food diet has negative effects on your gut ecology. It discourages healthy bacteria, needed to fight off illness and break down foods, and fills your body with chemicals and concoctions truly not designed for digestion. The result is often digestive issues like inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn’s disease, or food sensitivities.
Crohn’s disease is a digestive ailment marked by chronic inflammation of the bowel. People who suffer from this disease experience pain and digestive discomfort on a regular basis. Researchers from the University of Liverpool, however, have recently found broccoli and plantain fibers actually work to regulate digestion and fight the effects of Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis.
In the case of Crohn’s disease, “Your immune system can’t handle the bacteria in your intestines, so the bowel lining becomes a battleground where the immune system is constantly attacking bacteria that attach to it,” explain the authors of The Vitamin D Cure. “It’s like you have an infected rash inside your gut.”
But the research published in the journal Gut indicates plant fibers from broccoli can actually keep these bacteria moving through the digestive system. In addition, the researchers discovered that a common stabilizer in processed foods actually works against the plant fibers, causing the bacteria to stay in the gut longer.
“Our work suggests that it might be important for patients with this condition to eat healthily and limit their intake of processed foods,” says the study.
While eating healthy and limiting processed food intake is not rocket science, any additional research that backs the premise that natural plant foods are better for us than man-made and packaged foods should be embraced and circulated.
In addition to helping these bacteria find their way out of the body, broccoli also encourages better digestive health by nurturing probiotics (good bacteria). Including what are known as “prebiotics”, broccoli encourages the balance of healthy bacteria over harmful bacteria within the digestive system.
For more information, check out these 4 ways to drastically improve gut health and stave off illness and disease.
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