For years Company Director David Brown struggled with lethargy, forgetfulness, anxiety and depression until he discovered he has an intolerance to egg white and egg yolk.

Since eliminating them from his diet, his symptoms have disappeared and says he feels ‘reborn’

Hard work and a determination to expand his transport company is paying off for David Brown. Since starting out in 2010 with him and a van moving large, heavy and fragile items between Britain and France, the business has been steadily growing and he’s added more drivers and vans to his fleet, which has given him the freedom to be based in his UK office.

David, 39, who lives in Handforth, Wilmslow, admits that the commitment this requires has taken up all his time and energy, so his personal life has had to take a back seat. “I’ve never been married and don’t have children, but I met someone last month, and while it is very early days, things are going very well.”

Happy, energised and full of enthusiasm for the future, it’s hard to believe that things were looking very different for David a few months ago. Working long hours was taking its toll on his health; he felt constantly tired and lethargic and complained of a ‘brain fog’ that made it difficult to focus and think clearly, which was jeopardising his expansion plans. David recalls, “I noticed my fatigue, irritability, confusion, lack of focus and motivation becoming a problem around the same time I employed my first driver in March 2014. Looking back, this must have been a coincidence, but I went from driving ten to 12 hours a day without any problems, to becoming very tired and unmotivated since becoming office based and spending my days staring at a computer screen. This also had an impact on relationships as I was always angry and irritable. On top of this, I often felt anxious and depressed.”

David tried to eat healthily and exercise regularly to banish his lethargy and tiredness – a struggle after his working day. During workouts at the gym, lifting weights brought on dizziness, even if it wasn’t a particularly strenuous workout. “I visited the doctors on several occasions and my blood was tested for vitamin and mineral deficiencies, as well as diabetes, and I also had my eyes tested to see if that was the cause of my fatigue as I was staring at a computer screen all day. A minor issue was found and since then I’ve worn reading glasses, but unfortunately this made no difference.”

Dave cannot pinpoint when his symptoms began – he recalls suffering bouts of mild depression since the age of 18, but simply ignored it, even telling himself to ‘get over it’. Then in 2004, he suffered a serious head injury, the result of an unprovoked assault while walking home after a night out. This attack resulted in short-term memory and hearing problems. “Luckily, I recovered and got on with my life. There was an increase in my anxiety after this event, but I figured it was to be expected after what I’d experienced, so I dismissed it. I was treating the anxiety and depression as one issue and separate from any other problems, such as the fatigue and brain fog.”

He found the doctors sympathetic and keen to help, but now concludes that he wasn’t explaining his symptoms properly. “Even when I searched the internet for answers, I was always using the words ‘fatigued’ and ‘lethargic’.”

Having tried everything he could think of to help the mental health issues, including hypnotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy, he heard about YorkTest food intolerance testing through his mother who had had a positive experience. The process, which involves sending a finger prick blood sample to the company’s laboratory to test reactions to up to 158 foods, revealed that he was intolerant to egg white and egg yolk, with a borderline reaction to millet. After receiving his results, he also booked a consultation with their Nutritional Therapist, who advised him on how to eliminate trigger foods from his diet, seek healthy alternatives and stick to his new regime. However, David admits it was difficult.

“Beginning an egg-free diet wasn’t easy as I had no idea just how many foods contain it! My previous attempt to eat well had consisted of eating lots of eggs, so unbeknown to me, I was sabotaging my efforts. When I started to explain my symptoms to the nutritionist, she used the phrase ‘brain fog’ which immediately resonated with me. I thought, yes, that’s exactly what it is, like my brain is immersed in fog.” He looked it up later and it was as if the symptoms were written for him. “It was a huge relief to have a diagnosis and to realise I wasn’t alone and there were ways to tackle it.”

Despite his new-found awareness of his issues, David admits that at first he didn’t commit wholeheartedly to an elimination diet, although he stopped eating eggs and mayonnaise. But as he carried out more research, became more knowledgeable and discovered handy mobile apps to help him avoid his trigger ingredients, he resolved to have the willpower to stick to it. “Funnily enough, I haven’t found it as hard as I thought to make the changes. Shopping and preparing meals isn’t too tough, but I am more concerned about convenience than taste and variety! I am sure that with a little more imagination, my diet could be more varied, but I live alone and rarely have the urge to cook from scratch just for myself and I am fine with being a bit ‘boring’. I tend to have porridge for breakfast, sandwiches with egg-free salad cream for lunch and tea is chicken breast with steamed vegetables or steak and chips, or sometimes a carefully selected microwave meal. I keep an eye out for millet when reading ingredients, but haven’t found it in the things I buy – I avoid seeded bread just in case though.”

It didn’t take long before David noticed the difference in his symptoms. “After about ten days of being 100 per cent egg free, not only was the brain fog lifting, but my anxiety and depression also seemed to fade. This was a revelation for me, as I never in a million years expected such a complete and total change in my health. I honestly felt reborn, like my brain had been taken out, thoroughly cleaned and serviced, then popped back in!

“I am sharper, more motivated, focused and can think so clearly. I no longer get flustered or confused when things are getting stressful and most unexpected of all, my anxiety has gone. I can watch the news without becoming convinced that it’s the end of the world as we know it, I can be in a room full of people and not feel uncomfortable and finally enjoy deep conversations and debates with friends or family without becoming tongue-tied and flustered. Most importantly of all, I’m happy. All this from not eating eggs – I never would have believed it unless I’d experienced it. It is hard to put into words – I am a different person and the brain fog, anxiety and depression have now disappeared. I feel reborn and finally have my life back.”

YorkTest advise that you consult with your GP first if you are experiencing the types of symptoms mentioned in this testimonial.

About YorkTest

YorkTest Laboratories have over 35 years of excellence in laboratory diagnostic testing, and are Europe’s leading provider of food and drink specific IgG antibody testing programmes.
The expert team at YorkTest are passionate about offering health screening services that can support wellbeing, underpinned by the principle that each person’s digestive sensitivities are unique. Endorsed by medical professionals, such as GP Dr Hilary Jones and elite sports players, YorkTest use a scientific method to help pinpoint food triggers that may be affecting an individual’s health and lifestyle.

Beginning with the FirstStep Test and using a simple finger-prick blood sample taken at home, YorkTest’s qualified scientists measure food-specific IgG antibody reactions from its accredited UK laboratory. If IgG reactions are found, then clients can choose from a range of full programme tests which include colour coded results, alongside a 12-week food diary and guidebook, including help and advice about nutrition and optimising your diet.

For those selecting one of the full testing programmes, expert aftercare is provided by 1BANT-registered Nutritional Therapists who provide guidance on an individual’s ‘food fingerprint’ – advising on nutritional optimisation and how to safely remove ingredients, whilst ensuring a healthy balanced diet.

Three out of four people who undertook one of the full testing programmes, and tested positive for IgG reactions, reported an improvement in wellbeing after embarking upon their elimination diet, and for 68% this was within three weeks*.

Dr Gill Hart, Scientific Director at YorkTest, is a leading UK Biochemist and a media-friendly expert on food intolerance. She is a credible and respected authority on a range of related issues including use of diagnostic testing, biochemistry of satiety, appetite and weight loss, IBS and digestive health, nutrition and mental health, fertility, diabetes testing, inflammatory markers and vitamin D.

[1] British Association for Applied Nutrition and Nutritional Therapy
*Hardman and Hart, Nutrition and Food Science (2007)

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How does your garden grow? Well not I hope with silver bells and cockle shells – I’m talking of course about your inner garden; your unique ecosystem and how it impacts your health and well being. If you haven’t been living under a rock for the last fifteen years you will have heard of good bacteria. Found in yogurts and “probiotic” drinks on the supermarket shelves. We were told these were good for us after a course of antibiotics. These came hand in hand with “prebiotics”, foods which help the good bacteria grow. We then discovered we’d been swallowing antibiotics like smarties for far too long, taking them when we don’t need them and building up resistance.

Very quickly we then learned that we should only take antibiotics when we had a bacterial infection. GP’s stopped over prescribing them and we tried our best to stop asking for them at every cough or sniff. With the rise of hospital superbugs we then heard rumours of faecal implants, surely something from star trek and a bit of a joke, now they are being administered for c.difficule patients on the NHS.

Daily reports of how important our gut flora is for nearly every single disease state, shows us how far we have come in a very short space of time. New research articles on the gut microbiome are now linked to all manor or disease states like  Alzheimers, mental health, diabetes, IBS, fertility, autoimmunity and most surprisingly weight loss.  Diversity of what we eat is key – 15,0000 years ago our ancestors regularly ingested around 150 ingredients in a week, now it averages about twenty. Welcome to the fast pace of human gut flora research.

More microbe than human

In many ways you are more microbe than human. There are ten times more cells from microorganisms than from human cells in and on our bodies. Even our genes are outnumbered by one hundred to one by our microbial genes. Most of our microbes, come from our mothers breast milk and the birth canal, and the mix becomes very personal, almost like a fingerprint. Our microbes are super busy; educating our immune cells, providing the first line of defence, protecting our health, they even spew out their own antibiotics – how cool is that! The types vary depending on where they live: mouth, nose, armpit, forearm, scalp, where they have all happily adapted to their habitats. However the largest number is in our gut where we have the most complex and diverse ecosystem fighting infection, regulating metabolism and regulating how much energy we burn and fat we store. The rest of our microbes we collect from pets, food, water, where we live, our accommodation, whether we are outdoors or indoors, from grooming and food sharing.  It’s interesting to note that mice born in a germ free environment have defective guts and poor immune systems with little or no protection.
Your DNA is about 99% the same as the person standing next to you.

However our human microbes are a different story whereby you might only share 10% similarity. There are an astonishing 4lbs of microbes that totally outnumber us: 10 trillion human cells verses 100 trillion microbial cells and our 20,000 human genes are outnumbered again by 2-20 million microbial genes. This is all going on in your nine metres of digestive tubing. Your gut, essentially acting like a bioreactor takes in food that is broken down in the small intestine, where the small simple sugars are absorbed and larger more complex plant material passes through into the colon. Here it’s fermented by bacteria and ends up as short chain fatty acids. It’s a very fine tuned piece of equipment.

Microbes disease and behaviour

The research around microbes and disease states is vast. We can now tell within 90% accuracy if you are lean or obese (obviously you can see that by looking at someone) just by looking at your microbes. If you put the gut flora of an obese mouse into a lean mouse – guess what.. yep the mouse get’s fat.  Hormones in our guts can regulate appetite, particularly leptin, grhelin and PYY which are produced in the gut. Gut bacteria can raise tryptophan generating production of these hormones so our microbes can be impacting on how hungry we are and potentially what foods we choose.

Probiotic food can help produce GABA (gamma amino butyric acid) which dampens down excitable neurones and relaxes you – similar to alcohol and valium. Stress and surgery can also have a negative impact on our microbes. The gut contains a lot of neural circuitry that is present in the brain which is why the gut is often called the second brain. The gut and brain work closely together and the gut itself produces lots of neurotransmitters. If you take morphine (which effects brain function) it shuts down motility in the gut. If you feel nervous you can get butterflies in the stomach. The nervous system in the gut is called the enteric nervous system. The gut is fed into the brain by the vagus nerve.  If this nerve is blocked or damaged through injury it has a  profound effect on appetite which can cause drastic weight loss. Vagus nerve stimulation on the other hand can drive excessive eating behaviour.

Our gut microbes regulate how many neurotransmitters are made in the gut. They can produce substances that block and influence signals that are delivered to the brain – mainly dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine is associated with reward and pleasure and serotonin associated with mood, memory, sleep and cognition. Half of our dopamine is produced in the gut and as L Dopamine is used to treat Parkinsons, you can start to see how influential our gut microbes are.

Nearly all our serotonin is made in the gut and microbes produce factors that can action this. Low Serotonin is linked to depression so again you can start to see the overlapping disease states that are impacted in your gut.  Gut microbes do their own thing in terms of inflammation which is key to many disease states eg. skin conditions. Orally consumed probiotics reduce systemic markers of inflammation both of which can be elevated with acne or psoriasis.  Oral probiotics can also regulate the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines within the skin.

Stool testing

Stool testing is a great way of knowing exactly what is going on with your gut and there are a few stool tests around at the moment. Analysing what you have and what you don’t gives you a targeted idea of what you need to be eating more of or less of and no it’s not always fibre – its far more complex than that. Map My Gut is the latest gene sequencing stool test developed by Professor Tim Spector at Kings College which provides a personal comprehensive analysis of your gut microbiome.

Through determining the variety and number of microbes living within your gut, we can form links between your nutritional status, immune system function and some disease states. From only a small sample of a bowel movement, they use the latest state of the art DNA sequencing technology to discover your individual microbiome that is unique to you. From your results Map My Gut scientists at the forefront of microbiome research will deliver a comprehensive constructive report on improving your personal gut microbe diversity for better health and longevity.

Stool testing starts at about £170 which can measure your good and bad bacterias and goes up to £300 – fairly pricey yes but for those who have spent hundreds on weight loss programmes it’s possibly a drop in the ocean depending on where your priorities are. Just taking probiotics and a healthy diet does not necessarily ensure all is well as your ecosystem may need extra help. What we are aiming for is as many different good bacteria as you can, microbial diversity is key for your overall health and longevity. The Map My Gut test measures Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes and, Proteobatceria. You want more Akkermansia which will prevent obesity and give you better insulin sensitivity. It is also an anti inflammatory bacteria which increases with fasting. You want good levels of Bifidobacterium and good levels of Christensenella. which is the “skinny” bacteria. Low levels of F. prausnitzii give you a higher risk of autoimmune and allergic reactions.

Your microbiome acts like an organ performing vital functions; breaking down food, protecting from infection, training the immune system, manufacturing Vitamin B12 and Vitamin K, regulating blood sugar and metabolism and sending signals to the brain that can effect mood anxiety and appetite. Additionally they reduce allergic reactions and even alter whether you have a sweet or savoury tooth. We now know that those who are obese or have diabetes have altered gut microbes. As our bacteria are a whopping 30% lower than they were 50 years ago, we have a way to go to get them up to optimal levels. For anyone who has bowel issues, IBS and IBD, diabetes, any autoimmune disease, allergies, skin conditions, depression, anxiety or obesity or inability to lose weight it is worth looking at stool testing as a way forward to targeted personalised results that can really work long term.

If you would like further information about stool testing, or the Map My Gut test please call Kate on 01323 737814. For more information on Map My Gut go to www.mapmygut.com

The post Your gut microbiome appeared first on Wellbeing Magazine.

The traditional way to kick start your digestion back into healthy functioning is through bitter herbs, such as dandelion leaf, artichoke, wormwood and hops. Bitters stimulate bitter taste buds to cause the release of saliva and stomach juices, and to encourage the pancreas to release digestive enzymes and the liver to release bile, which helps the breakdown of fats. Improving the digestion with bitters will help absorption of essential nutrients, as well as improving digestive symptoms to have you bouncing back in no time.

Medical herbalists use a combination of herbs with dietary and lifestyle advice to gently coax the body back to wellness. Herbs have been used for healing for hundreds of years and modern clinical science has helped to back up many of the traditional uses. The holistic approach taken by herbalists is a gentler way to heal that aims to get to the root of a problem, with the focus on supporting the different organs of the body to help them work more effectively.

Herbalism can treat a broad range of conditions, and there is evidence to support the use of herbal medicine to treat: IBS and functional dyspepsia, premenstrual syndrome, back pain and osteoarthritis, mild to moderate depression, acute respiratory infections such as rhinosinusitis, colds and ‘flu, as well as migraine.

At Brighton Apothecary, the friendly herbalists are always on hand to advise you about the best remedy or supplement for your specific health needs. They offer free mini-consultations for minor health complaints and can tailor make herbal remedies.

Brighton Apothecary
Unit 6, The Open Market Marshalls Row
Brighton, BN1 4JU

07477 886 777

10am-5pm Mon-Sat (excluding Tues)

brightonapothecary.co.uk
@BrightonApoth
facebook.com/brightonapothecary

The post The herbal route to healthy digestion appeared first on Wellbeing Magazine.

Covering: East Sussex, Kent and Central London

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