A problem that is touching a larger and larger segment of our population today is diminished digestive capacity that is caused as a result of inadequate populations of friendly bacteria within the G.I. tract. Experts suggest that a healthy G.I. tract is the home to 2+ pounds of intestinal fauna, often said to be intestinal flora, which is incorrect. Fauna are living creatures or friendly bacteria that feed on food within the digestive tract. Flora is living plant life.

Many things disrupt the healthy environment in the G.I. tract, which in turn leads to diminished populations of friendly bacteria and inadequate digestion. These bacteria are nature's gift to help your body break down the foods you eat so that all the work is not left up to you alone. They are God's digestive grace, if you will and can do for you what you cannot do for yourself.

They are found in the digestive tracts of all mammals, in healthy soil, and even floating in the air and are a critical part of natures grand design. They don't digest your food for you, but feed upon it so they can survive and thrive. They are able to digest much of what we cannot digest. The feed while their is food available, they die, and then decompose to become perfect nutritional uptake for you. Their entire lifecycle is only eight hours, including first life, feeding, reproduction of offspring, death, and decomposition. Their numbers within you shrink and swell according to the food and environment within your G.I. tract.

Now imagine 2+ pounds of these friendly critters of grace that live within your digestive tract consuming what you cannot digest by yourself, when you suddenly go on a meat binge, or a cheese binge, or a soda binge, or a candy binge, or you begin to use a prescription drug, or even a prescription topical cremes, or any other such thing that significantly alter the environment of your digestive tract, leading to a condition that does not allow these friendly bacteria to survive and thrive. What if your prescription medication includes chemicals that are utterly poison to these critical of grace? How will this affect your digestion? 

You guessed it, as you alter the ideal internal environment you diminish their ability to survive and thrive, and your ability to make good use of the simplest of all foods, whole fruits and vegetables, becomes seriously impaired. You begin to develop allergies and food sensitivities to the most important foods in the human diet, and you become convinced that you should not eat fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes or that perhaps the high-protein, low-carb crowd are really on to something that is far greater than God's simple wisdom?

Do such conclusions lead you to enable the dietary wisdom of your creator, or do they lead you to become confused and subject to the wisdom of man? Do you attack the right problem by returning the internal environment to a state in which these gifts from God can survive and thrive, or do you extend the problem further and begin to wander in strange paths?

As you already know by the Spirit of Truth within you, the solution is to correct the environment and to heed God's wisdom that is greater than the wisdom of all the earth. It is likely you will have to eliminate the use of medications and topical cremes or ointments that kill the friending fauna. You should also center your eating on whole plant-based foods and limit your animal-based food intake to a sparing amounts, perhaps 10% or less of your total caloric intake. Since the average caloric intake for Americans should be about 2000 calories, your intake of "all" animal-based foods (meat, dairy, and so forth) in a day should not exceed this amount.

Now, those who choose to eat in such a manner will establish an internal digestive environment that is ideal for friendly digestive fauna to survive and thrive, which means your digestion will also be enabled to survive and thrive. Some today claim you cannot make that jump directly but must consume lots of animal-based foods, lots of cultured vegetables, and lots of pro-biotics. While there is much good intermingled within this wisdom, I like the simplicity that Dr. McDougall teaches about this subject.

Dr. McDougall has worked with thousands of people who have suffered from serious digestive disorders. He suggests that it certainly won't hurt you to consume probiotics that are loaded with these friendly bacteria, and will help to also enjoy probiotic-loaded whole foods such as naturally leavened bread and cultured vegetables, as well as probiotic drinks such as the one show below. You can even take probiotic pills and go so far as to add helpful digestive enzymes to help kick-start the natural digestive processes.

However, the most important thing to do is to re-establish balance through proper diet that will enable the solution to become longterm, and also by eliminating harmful chemicals. Dr. McDougall asserts that once the internal environment of the gut is returned to optimum conditions for fauna to flourish, they will swiftly re-inhabit the gut with or without all the many aids, but that the aids can help to hasten the process.

Some people today suggest that you must go through many interim steps, to re-establish proper digestion, including the use of much meat. McDougall suggest that this is simply untrue and that those who consume a whole, plant-based diet of fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes, will come to re-establish proper balance rather swiftly.

With so much confusing information available today on this subject, I recommend that you trust God and seek to follow His ordained eating pattern for man. And as you boost probiotic intakes into your body trust that His simple wisdom will enable this to occur most rapidly. Remember also, that when you Keep His Commandments, you have the right to call upon the covenant you have made with Him and ask for the power to be made whole through His grace (the Holy Ghost).

Yesterday, my son and I who were both suffering physically, knelt together and asked for the power or grace we needed to be made whole. Because my son and I keep God's commandments, and follow His voice, and remember Him always -- according to our covenants with Him, we laid hold upon God's reciprocal covenant with us, to send His holy Spirit to do for us that which we cannot do for ourselves. It was sufficient to ask for the strength we needed and it was given to us in the moment we asked for it. Never underestimate this important part of your journey in matters of health. Your promised covenant blessings from God are binding when you keep to your end of the covenant. Eat as He has asked you to eat; keep all His other commandments, and ask for that which you need in order that you may do His will in your life, including outstanding health.

Below I've included a fun smoothie that you can enjoy that is loaded with natural probiotics: 

Probiotic Smoothie

Ingredients

1 cup of date water (use less water while making the date water for sweeter smoothie)
5 o 6 ripe strawberries
1 cup of fresh pineapple chunks
1 cup of homemade greek yogurt. 
 

Instructions: Blend ingredients into a smoothie and drink it as is, or leave it sitting out for several hours, even overnight if desired, while the probiotics introduced by the natural yogurt feed upon the other ingredients in the smoothie to create a wonderful probiotic cocktail! 

Summary

To establish or to maintain a healthy environment within your G.I. tract, be sure to follow all of Daniel's Challenge recommendations, which will help establish and maintain these conditions longterm. By so doing, you will also enable this probiotic cocktail of grace to aid in re-establishing 2+ pounds of friendly fauna within your digestive tract. Without first establishing the right internal environment, the smoothie will be interesting and even perhaps enjoyable, but will not lead to improved digestion and may even lead to digestive upset.

All Our Best!