04-Apr-2010

Flourishing Flora

Your Inner Culture

Ancient cultures recognized that many diseases begins in the colon and developed different ways to keep the colon healthy, including yoga, acupuncture, herbs, and eating cultured foods such as yogurt, kefir and kimchi.

It's important to keep a good balance of healthy bacteria in the colon. These work to counter yeast overgrowth and promote healthy elimination. There is tremendous consumption of carbohydrates in America today, coupled with fairly rampant use of antibiotics. This is the perfect combination to create yeast overgrowth: The antibiotics kill off all of the bacteria (both the bacterial infection and all of the good bacteria in the colon) and the yeast feeds on the carbohydrates (sugar in all forms, pizza, cereal, crackers, sodas, fruit, juice, chips, bread, rice, corn, etc.). Yeast overgrowth leads to all kinds of symptoms, including fatigue, gas and bloating, skin problems, chronic yeast infections and more.

Simple ways you can begin to build healthier flora in your colon are:

1. Decrease consumption of all carbohydrates.
2. Eliminate sugar, use stevia or other sweetener instead, include live cultures (from good quality unflavored yogurt, kefir or cultured vegetables) in your diet.
3. Increase consumption of fresh vegetables.
4. Eat quality protein, such as found in high protein grains like quinoa, millet, or from seeds, almonds, and cultured dairy.

This delicious recipe will get your belly’s garden flowering!

CUCUMBER-TOMATO RAITA ("rye-tah")
2 cups plain yogurt
1/2 medium cucumber, peeled
2 medium tomatoes, ripe and firm
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley or cilantro
2 tsp. minced fresh mint leaves
2-3 Tbsp. milk or water
1/4 tsp. sea salt
2 green onions, finely chopped
1/4 tsp. pepper
dash cayenne

Peel cucumber, scoop out and discard seeds. Chop cucumber into 1/4" dice or shred, using coarsest blade on your shredder. Blanch tomatoes in boiling water just for a minute. Remove skin. Cut in half, scoop out seeds and discard. Chop into fine dice. Combine all ingredients and let sit for one hour before serving. Adjust to taste with salt and pepper. Add more milk if you desire thinner consistency. Serve with any Indian meal (very cooling with spicy food!).

Siri Ved Kaur Khalsa
Author, From Vegetables With Love
For more information on Candidiasis, read:
The Body Ecology Diet by Donna Gates
orThe Yeast Connection by Dr. William Crook