A recent front page headline in The NZ Herald caught my eye, “Probiotics help dodge baby blues”.

The article states that probiotics could help women avoid post-natal depression and that researchers involved with the Kiwi study were surprised at how much difference the Lactobacillus rhamnosus probiotic made. What surprises me is how long it has taken to ‘discover’ this. 

Hippocrates said more than two thousand years ago ‘’all disease begins in the gut’’ and the ‘gut’ brain connection has been known for a long time. I have previously written about this with the gut being referred to as our second brain. 

A lot of time and money has gone into the recent nationwide campaign highlighting the challenges of mental illness and while talking about it is clearly very important, simple nutritional interventions that could treat the cause should be taken very seriously. Let’s hope the Ministry of Health doesn’t ignore the findings of this well conducted probiotic study. Sadly at present all the talk seems to be about drugs and significantly more costly interventions. 

As to why probiotics could make such a significant impact one only has to look at the way we are addicted to a diet of refined carbohydrates and ‘dead’ food. This has resulted in serious nutritional depletion and thus compromised gut health.  Add to this the overuse of antibiotics and chlorinated water which we drink and shower in every day, and it not hard to understand why our gut flora is so out of balance.

It’s not just mental health either. If a simple probiotic could have such a profound positive effect on post-natal depression, what about the many other nutritional interventions which are also readily available?  We have some great researchers in this country who would almost certainly welcome opportunities to test dozens of common nutrients to assess their impact on illnesses that are currently costing our health system billions of dollars.  

Vitamin C is as important for the integrity of our blood vessels, the cartilage around our joints and for protecting us from the impact of toxins as it is for our immune system.  Studies looking into the role of vitamin C in the prevention and treatment of heart disease would almost certainly show similar results to those of the probiotics study. For blood pressure and heart rhythm problems, magnesium, coenzyme Q10 and omega 3 are waiting to be ‘rediscovered’. 

Heart failure patients who suffer from an energy depleted heart could be assessed when taking a simple cocktail of nutrients including Coenzyme Q10, D-Ribose, L-Carnitine and Magnesium.

Diabetics could be studied when embracing a diet based on raw food while taking a multi-vitamin containing key nutrients such as chromium, alpha lipoic acid and gymnema sylvestre.

There are a number of potentially powerful nutritional interventions for inflammatory diseases such as arthritis. Nutrients such as curcumin (from turmeric) boswellia (frankincense) ginger and omega 3 have been putting their hands up for years. 

For the eyes we could be looking into lutein, zeaxanthin and bilberry extract. 

The list is almost endless, so there is a lot of work to do. The first step, as I see it, is to somehow overcome the bias which is associated with using nutritional interventions. How will we ever find out what works and what doesn’t unless we are willing to open our eyes. I have previously written about Dr Paul Marik (U.S. critical care specialist) who discovered that he could save lives of sepsis patients by using a protocol which included intravenous vitamin C. Every day in the U.S. 860 people die of sepsis and it seems to be accepted as the norm. In August I attended a conference at the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University. Dr Marik was a keynote speaker. To date he has saved the lives of over 500 people who would have otherwise died. It’s a very clear example of why simple nutritional interventions should not be overlooked.

“The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” - Marcel Proust

John Appleton 09 489 9362 john@johnappleton.co.nz  www.johnappleton.co.nz