My travel tips for staying healthy: Travel kit and pre-checklist 🍄🦠😎
Question: Why don’t ants get sick? 🐜
Answer: Because they have strong little anti-bodies. 😬😂
In honor of Father’s Day yesterday, I thought a little Dad joke would be appropriate this morning 🤣 Isn’t this little ant amazing ?!?!????
Microscopic bugs, called microbes, can be found in your eyes, mouth, gut, skin, and everywhere else. But don’t be alarmed. Most of your microbes are useful.
Today, I’ll share with you why your personal collection of microbes (including bacteria, fungi, and viruses) are vital for your health, plus what I do to get my family ready for vacation, and what we don’t forget to pack in our Travel Kit 🍄🦠😎
Many fun memories happen while on vacation with friends & family, but doesn’t it put a damper on things when someone in the group comes down with a stomach bug or energy-zapping cold?
To help combat the “I don’t feel so great” issues, I’ve compiled easy instructions everyone calls our “Get Ready to Travel SuperpowerChecklist”. The list includes (3) things you can do to get your body strong and healthy before traveling. Now, our vacations include less down days and more memory-making days!
Before I share my Travel Checklists, if you missed last week’s blog on“Be strong and healthy, not Deprived”, you can use this link, Here.
😎🧳🤩 OK, let’s get ready for vacation 🤩🧳😎
GOOD BUGS, BAD BUGS
Whether you know a thing or two about the bugs called the human microbiome, you might be surprised by a few things today. And, if all else fails, you at least got to enjoy my Dad joke about ants, LOL 🤣
How does your personal Microbiome keep you healthy?
You may not know it, but you have an army of microbes living inside of you that are essential for fighting off threats and viruses.
Most of your microbes are useful. They help you digest food. They prevent dangerous infections in your organs. And so much more. They’re vital for your health.
The microbiome is just as important as the brain, liver, kidney, or heart. Scientists have cataloged the types of microbes that live in the human body. They’ve found that changes in your body’s bugs are linked with many health problems. These include diabetes, obesity, inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), and cancer. They can also cause skin disorders and tooth decay.
Certain things can harm the helpful microbes in your body. These include using antibiotics inappropriately or eating an unhealthy diet. Studies are now uncovering ways to use microbes to improve your health.
I’m a doctor fascinated by the ways bacteria shape human health. An important focus of mine is learning about how the beneficial bacteria populating our gut and bodies combat disease and infection. My ultimate goal is to teach my patients how to enhance the gut microbiome with diet and lifestyle to evoke strong immune responses for all pathogens.
How do resident bacteria keep you Healthy?
Our immune defense is part of a complex biological response against harmful pathogens, such as viruses or bacteria. However, because our bodies are inhabited by trillions of mostly beneficial bacteria, virus and fungi, activation of our immune response is tightly regulated to distinguish between harmful and helpful microbes.
Our bacteria are spectacular companions diligently helping prime our immune system defenses to combat infections. Researchers have found that patients treated with antibiotics eliminating bacteria in the gut exhibited an impaired immune response. These patients had low counts of virus-fighting white blood cells, weak antibody responses and poor production of a protein that is vital for combating viral infections and modulating the immune response.
Another amazing way our bodies microbiome is being used to bring back health is in the treatment of Clostridioides difficile, an especially dangerous microbe bacteria that can grow in the intestines.
C. difficile can cause fatal diarrhea, especially in older adults. It’s often resistant to treatment.
Researchers have developed a type of treatment for C. difficile infection called fecal microbial transplant. A patient is given microbes from the large intestine of a healthy person. This is done by transferring stool (poop) via tubes or pills.
Researchers don’t yet know exactly which of the microbes are needed for a healthy gut microbiome. So for now, they transfer the entire microbiome.
Wow, pretty cool, huh? You can read more about this treatment, Here.
Your healthy microbiome builds a strong Immune System
In the past two decades scientists have learned our bodies are home to more bacterial cells than human ones. This community of bacteria that lives in and on us – called the microbiome – resembles a company, with each microbe species performing specialized jobs but all working to keep us healthy. In the gut, the bacteria balance the immune response against pathogens. These bacteria ensure the immune response is effective but not so violent that it causes collateral damage to the host.
Bacteria in our guts can elicit an effective immune response against viruses that not only infect the gut, but also those infecting the lungs. The beneficial gut microbes do this by ordering specialized immune cells to produce potent antiviral proteins that ultimately eliminate viral infections. And the body of a person lacking these beneficial gut bacteria won’t have as strong an immune response to invading viruses. As a result, infections might go unchecked, taking a toll on health.
You can read more about the research, and why your healthy microbiome is SUPER important, Here.
Microbes: An Army of Helpers for Cancer?
Research on the interactions between resident microbial species and the immune system is revealing many new opportunities for progress against cancer. Achieving a better understanding of how bacteria interact with immune cells in patients with cancer have lead to entirely new therapeutic approaches, as well as improvements in existing treatments. In the future, it may even be possible to develop "bugs as drugs," using genetically engineered microbes to promote potent anti-tumor immune responses.
Researchers have only scratched the surface in understanding the complexity of the immune system and microbiomes in the context of cancer. With continued investment in these areas, scientists will discover new strategies to prevent cancer and improve the lives of people who develop it.
If you are interested in reading more, Here is an interesting article you can read.
What do I do Before and During our family trips?
So, today we’ve learned why our bacteria are spectacular companions that diligently help prime our immune system defenses to combat infections and diseases. Pretty cool, huh?
Knowing this, now you know why my family loads up (or hyper-doses) on our probiotics for 2-weeks before heading out on a trip. We take 100 Billion CFU’s 3-times a day! Yes, you read that right; three times the probiotics we normally take each day. This will help us fight off any sickness, or if we do come down with something, at least shorten the length of time it takes our body to get better.
Then, we make sure to take our First Aid travel kit stocked with:
Garden of Life, Raw Ultimate Care, 100 Billion CFU Probiotics(continue 3 per day)
Garden of Life, RM10 Ultra Mushrooms (4 each night) OR MyCommunity, Host Defense Mushrooms (4 each night)
Garden of Life, O-Zyme Ultra, Ultimate Digestive Enzymes (3 capsules 30-mins before each meal, to break down food, keep weight off, and conserve energy for your immune system)
Whether you recognize it or not, your body goes through a lot of stress when traveling. You will be drinking and eating foods grown with different sources of water that may carry different bacteria, and travel requiring a different daily routine is stressful.
Remember back to a Thanksgiving where all you wanted to do after the big feast was to take a nap? This was because your body was instinctively resting from all the stresses you just experienced eating larger quantities of food than normal, not to mention different types of foods - especially if everyone brought something to share from home. This is very stressful for your body and immune system!
Traveling is no different, so give your body Probiotics to keep your gut primed for health, Functional Mushrooms with antioxidants and fiber, plus Digestive Enzymes to break down foods, keep weight off, and conserve energy for your immune system!
THE BOTTOM LINE
“All disease begins in the gut” – It's a quote attributed to the Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates nearly 2500 years ago!
Hopefully you’ve learned a few things about your bodies bugs or “microbiome” today, along with some simple travel tips. This is a HUGE topic, and one of the most important that I look at when talking with patients about their health.
If you would like to read more about the microbiome and how it relates to subjects such as Intermittent fasting, IBD, Antibiotics, Environmental factors, Diet, Rheumatoid arthritis, Skin, Lung, Liver and Cardio diseases; you can access an excellent article on Cell Research, HERE.
In short, if you are restricted on time today, just remember:
Your gut is home to trillions of bacteria that are vital for keeping you healthy.
Some microbes help to regulate the immune system.
The presence of certain bacteria in the gut can reveal which people are more vulnerable to more severe cases of illnesses.
It is so important to meet with your doctor annually, if not more often, to review your baselines. Keeping your microbiome in good shape is more important to your health than many people realize!
As always, to make an appointment with me use this link: HERE.
Or, you can give me a call at (973) 210-3838
I want to hear from you! What questions or insights do you have about your Microbiome, Travel and Illness? Did you find this newsletter helpful?
Share your thoughts in the comments on our
We bring tools such as these to you, our patients, by using proven cutting-edge therapies to extend the health-span, life-span and years of health for everyone (no matter their age)!
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