Not All Sugar Is Created Equal: Part 1

This is the first in what is going to be a 3 part series of blogs. Sugar is a complicated topic that warrants a long-winded explanation. Since no one wants to read a long-winded explanation, I am splitting it up into parts for you.

This post is all about what a sugar actually is. It will set you up for understanding sugar metabolism better. Its science-y, so bear with me while I nerd out on bonds and molecules.

To be clear, I will not be talking about artificial sweeteners here. Artificial sweeteners such as sucralose, aspartame, cyclamate, saccharin and sugar alcohols (sorbitol, xylitol, etc) are chemically altered sugars that have a whole host of different health and metabolic implications.

All carbohydrates break down into simple sugar molecules. The most basic sugar molecules are glucose, fructose and galactose. Each of these molecules has the same chemical formula C₆H₁₂O₆ but they have slightly different shapes, which allows them to interact differently with the cells in your body.

In foods, sugars are combined with each other to make longer chains of carbohydrate.

• sucrose — common table sugar = glucose + fructose
• lactose — major sugar in milk = glucose + galactose
• maltose — product of starch digestion = glucose + glucose

Starch is made up of long chains of linked glucose. When they form a straight chain, it is called amylose. A highly branched glucose chain is called amylopectin, which is the chief energy storage unit in plants.

In animals a molecule similar to amylopectin is used to store energy. It is called glycogen. Glycogen has more frequent branches in its glucose chain than amylopectin.

Here is why all of this is important. When your body uses sugar for energy -- actually when it uses anything for energy -- it breaks it all the way down to carbon, oxygen and hydrogen atoms. The process of getting down to these tiny atoms is long and complicated involving many enzymes and cellular checkpoints along the way.

The SHAPE and SIZE of the different sugars, as well as the way that the sugar molecules are linked to eat other will directly affect what enzymes will break the sugar down, how quickly the sugar is broken down and how easily your body can use the sugar for energy.

All of these things affect your blood sugar. Blood sugar impacts insulin levels. Insulin, in turn, affects all of your other hormones including cortisol, leptin, glucagon, ghrelin, thyroid hormone and sex hormones. All of these hormones impact fat storage and metabolic rate.

How you metabolize sugars will also determine whether or not they cause an inflammatory response in the body. Certain sugars or products of sugar metabolism can cause oxidative damage in your body and inflammation.

That is enough science for today.

Next week, we will start to talk about why some sugars are better and worse for you.

How we determine if a sugar is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is by looking at how the sugar impacts hormones, metabolism and if it does or does not cause oxidative damage and inflammation. Lastly, we will factor in the nutrients that come along with some sugars in their natural forms.

Goals or Results?

The idea for this blog came as a ‘thought baby’ from a conversation that I was had with Dr. Jenna about goal setting.

The gold standard idea for writing good goals is that they are supposed to be SMART.

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Realistic

Timely

The epiphany (moment of sudden and great realization) that came out of the conversation was this:

“The problem with goal setting is that most people do not set goals, they set results.”

“What is the difference?”

“Well, if it is a SMART goal, a real goal, you have control over it. You cannot control results.”

Boom!

This is huge folks. Think about it. Results are like symptoms. You cannot control how the things you do to your body will manifest as symptoms. Smokers do not always get lung cancer and people who eat grains do not always have stomach pain. Similarly, seeing your chiropractor may not make your back pain disappear, and eating healthy food does not always result in losing twenty pounds.

Let me use an example to illustrate the difference between goals and results.

If I am athlete and the result I am aiming at is to go to the Olympics, I need to set certain goals.

My goals could be:

Follow a certain training protocol to the letter for the next year.

Hire a coach who has trained other Olympic athletes sometime in the next six months.

Eat protein and vegetables at every meal during my training period.

Go to sleep every night at nine o’clock and wakeup every morning at six o’clock when training.

See how all of these things qualify as SMART goals.

If my goals are appropriately aligned with the result that I am trying to achieve, it will drastically increase the possibility that I will achieve the result (going to the Olympics) that I want to achieve.

The thing is, I could achieve all of these goals and still not qualify for the Olympics. There may be people who are better than me. I have no control as to whether or not I qualify for the Olympics. All I can do is continue to set and achieve goals that will stack the odds in my favor.

The beauty of having goals that are actionable and 100% within my control is that I have a way of analyzing my performance. Did I do everything that I could do? If not, I know how I can change my actions to bring me closer to producing a desired result.

That is better for your self-esteem! If you have achieved all of the things that were within your ability to achieve, that is a huge accomplishment, even if you fall short of your desired result.

Now lets apply this to eating By Design and health. We often hear that people’s goals are to lose weight, lower their cholesterol or lower their blood glucose levels.  These things are all results.

You do not have control over the exact number of points that your blood glucose will drop if you stop eating sugar.

You do not have control over exactly how many pounds of fat your body will metabolize if you start eating 100% By Design.

You do not have control over how many pounds you will be able to deadlift if you start training.

So if your blood glucose only improves by two points instead of three, you lose eighteen pounds instead of twenty-five, you deadlift 290 pounds instead of 305 pounds, does that mean you failed? Does that mean that since you did not get the result that you were looking for that it was a waste of time, energy and effort? Many people feel that way.

How often have you seen a kid play a great game and still cry because they lost? Sometimes the other team just plays better.

Sometimes your hormones do not tell your body to metabolize fat the way you hope it will.

Sometimes having a clear brain-body connection does not mean pain-free.

It is time that we all start looking at what we are capable of instead of the arbitrary number we want to see on the scale.

Consistently doing things that are healthy for your body is good for you, even if the look and feeling you want does not come to fruition.

Keep at it! Write SMART goals that are aligned with your desired results. It will feel great to tick off those boxes, even if you never hit the perfect result.

Do you actually want to? Or do you just think you should?

Are there certain changes in your life that you often think, about or talk about doing, but then never take actions to achieve? Does your diet change always start tomorrow? Did you buy a gym membership that is going to expire un-used? Maybe you play lip service to the 5am Club but then hit the snooze button 7 times – every morning.

I will be honest, I have often been guilty of that last one.

I made joining the 5am club my goal for the 30 day Life By Design challenge that began this past Monday.

In the past, I have made a thousand excuses as to why I cannot seem to get up at 5am. 

I do want to spend an hour on self-development each morning and set each day up for success. Yet I have failed to actually do it consistently enough to call it a habit. For this reason, I spent some time doing significant self-reflection about this goal before the challenge started.

This blog is a product of that reflection.

The limiting factor for me is not the 5am wake up, it is the 9pm bed time. Since I do not function well with less than 8 hours sleep, if I do not get to bed on time, a 5am wake up is not likely.

I am not lazy. I do not lack motivation or discipline. I know this because I consistently achieve other goals. I used to LOVE bread and pasta, but I have not had either in YEARS. I get my body into the gym an average of 4 days per week. I get my spine checked regularly and I paid full price for getting checked even when I was a struggling student. I read and listen to pod casts and work hard on my new business.

So what the heck? How is it that something as simple as getting out of bed at the same time everyday could be so hard. Other people do it. I refuse to believe that all these 5am’ers are somehow genetically inclined to wake up early.

Finally, I arrived at the blatant answer. I do not actually want to get up at 5am. I just think that I should. If I was actually ‘sold’ on getting up at 5am and truly valued it, I would do it.

(*** Key point here folks: If your values are not aligned with your goals, you are setting yourself up to fail.***)

So the problem is that I fail to get up early because I fail to go to bed early. Therefore I need to go to bed earlier to achieve my goal. Why has that not happened?

I LOVE cooking. I find it relaxing and I make food that makes me healthy and happy. I also deeply value companionship and my close relationships. 10 times out of 10 I stay up late either cooking or spending time with (or on the phone with) someone I care about… Or both.

I am staying up late because I value these things MORE than I value going to bed early and getting up at 5am.

Boom! Reflection successful! Problem solved!

Wait a minute... why did I keep my goal for the 30 day challenge to get up at 5am?

I sold myself on the value of it.

Spending more time on developing myself will allow me to create more value in the world. Creating more value will improve the quality of my life, my relationships and allow me to buy better ingredients to cook with.

It FINALLY clicked when I realized, it is not just 5am. It is not just this one morning or one hour or one podcast. It is my career, my life, my ability to impact the world and achieve my purpose. In that context, it is my highest value.

The reason you may not be achieving your goals is likely because you have not built the value of your goals for yourself.

When you tell yourself that just 1 cookie will not make a difference, you truly do not understand or believe the significance of putting toxic food into your body. Or you love cookies more than your health.

If you routinely skip workouts, you do not believe that training is valuable.

If you do not get your spine checked, you do not know or understand that unhealthy neural function is possibly compromising the health of many organ systems in your body. Or you do not value your health.

We ALWAYS do the things that align with our highest values. People go to jobs every day that they hate because they believe that it will allow them to buy things that they value for themselves and to provide for their families that they value.

So if you are struggling with your goals, it is time to either give up on them because they do not really matter to you or to build the value. You will have to build enough value that achieving your goal trumps the things that you are doing that are keeping you from achieving it. You will also likely have to remind yourself frequently of WHY it is valuable, until you develop new habits.

Eat That Frog!

I recently read a great book by Brian Tracy called Eat That Frog! The book is about prioritizing important tasks in order to get the most important things done in the limited amount of time that we have. 

The title comes from an old saying that if you eat a live frog first thing in the morning, you can get on with your day knowing that you have probably done the worst thing that you will have to do that day.  It’s a metaphor for taking on the most challenging tasks that you are faced with first. Then everything else seems easy.

With the next Life By Design 30 Day challenge fast approaching, I have been thinking about how this metaphor applies to all areas of Life By Design.

For every person, there are parts of Life By Design that are more difficult than others. Maybe you are great at staying on track with Eat By Design but are having trouble developing a good routine for your Move By Design. Or maybe those 5am wake ups and morning Think By Design Power Hour are a real struggle. Maybe you are getting up regularly and have the Move By Design down but have not yet started to get your spine checked. 

If you are completely new to Life By Design, it can be a overwhelming to think about doing ALL of these things.

The purpose of the 30 Day Challenge is to push yourself to be better. No one is perfect. Even the people who have been living By Design for years have slip ups, off tracks, missed work outs and sleep ins. That is life.

Instead of shooting for perfection in all areas, for this challenge, I propose that you think about swallowing your ‘frog.’

My frog is the 5am power hour. I go through a few days of consistently doing it and then a week will go by where I just can not seem to make it happen. My alarm magically is not loud enough, I betray myself by hitting the snooze button 30 times, there are events in my schedule that run until midnight and I would rather die than get out of bed after 4 ½ hours of sleep… Excuses, excuses and very little excellence. This is my frog.

When I DO get up at 5am though – MAN! What a difference. I feel accomplished for just getting that out of the way. Then I have a great focus hour, set my goals for the day and by noon I feel like the most purposeful human being on the planet. Do you know how good it feels to check off all of those little boxes I draw for myself? SO GOOD!

So this 30 day challenge, I am going to stay on track with my Eat By Design, I am going to get checked every week and I will do my best to stick to my training schedule. But my main focus, my ONE big goal is to Eat That Frog! by getting up at 5am everyday.

What is your frog?

Pick the ONE thing that you know is hardest for you to do and put all of your energy into mastering that over the 30 days between November 11^th and December 11^th.  Write it down. Put it somewhere that you can see it every day to keep you focused.

You can do it!

Shots and Bone Broth

It is that time of year.. Everything is ‘going around.’ Kids have runny noses and adults are waking up with scratchy throats. Pharmacies everywhere are bombarding your senses with TV, radio and print ads to come and get your flu shot.

Over the last week, the topic of vaccination has come up frequently and I just had to write a little bit about it.

Choosing to get vaccinated is a personal decision. Please inform yourself and do what is best for you and your family.

Here is a little bit of information.

Every year the World Health Organization chooses the 3 viral strains that they think will be the most common for the season. Based off those predictions, drug companies will mass produce and distribute vaccines. Studies show that when the predictions are good and the vaccines are well matched to the viruses that are circulating, people who have been vaccinated are 50 to 60 percent less likely to catch the flu than people who are not vaccinated. That is when they guess right.

That is just one part of the picture. Every time you are vaccinated you are introducing chemicals into your body. There is a chance that your body my not react well to these chemicals.

Another factor to consider is that your body has many lines of defense against pathogens, not just antibodies. Vaccines encourage antibody production but they by-pass other parts of your immunity. Your skin, mucous membranes and natural flora provide physical and chemical protection against infections.

The immune responses initiated by cells lining the airways, skin and intestines are very important in creating "memory" and protection against the microorganisms you naturally come into contact with every day.

Research in this 2011 article from the Journal of Virology found that the seasonal flu vaccine may weaken childrens' immune systems and increase their chances of getting sick from influenza viruses not included in the vaccine. The unvaccinated children naturally built up more antibodies across a wider variety of influenza strains compared to the vaccinated group.

Instead of getting the flu shot, I take steps to ensure that my immune system is functioning as well as it possibly can be. I get my spine checked so that my nervous system can properly run my immune system. I get extra rest. I eat food that will ensure my immune system has all of the nutrients and energy it needs to be optimal. I also avoid things that cause inflammation (which is extra stressful to the immune system) – grains, legumes, processed vegetable oils and processed sugar all impair your immune system.

If I do feel that scratchy feeling coming on, my strategy is:

A Beef & Swiss Chard Soup made with Bone Broth

1)    See my chiropractor

2)    Whip up a crock pot of bone broth

3)    Go to bed early

Why bone broth?

Bone broth contains minerals in a form the body can absorb easily—not just calcium but also magnesium, zinc, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur and trace minerals. Your immune system needs these minerals to work properly.

 Broth also contains the broken down material from cartilage and tendons. This includes chondroitin sulphates, glucosamine and gelatin. Chondroitin sulphate and glucosamine are sold as supplements for arthritis and joint pain because they decrease inflammation.

Gelatin helps to heal leaky gut and contributes collagen which improves hair, skin and nails. It can help tighten lose skin. It also is anti-inflammatory.

Lots of people in the blog-o-sphere call bone broth a ‘Super Food.’

I really do not like the word 'Super Food.' Food is either healthy or it is not. Bone broth is contributes a wide variety of nutrients that help you immune system and body to work at its best. 

So instead of taking shots or drugs, I have found that the best thing for me is to meet my body's requirements and to build up my immune system against everything -- not just the flu.

Cheers!

To Candy or Not to Candy? That is the Question.

A couple of months ago I wrote a blog called Squishy Buns. This blog was about the dilemma I face when my niece comes over to my place. I know that her parents do not feed her By Design.

At home, she typically has all the bread, pasta, crackers and cereal her little heart desires. But when she comes to my house, it’s my rules. I have decided that I will not compromise my values and feed her food that I know to be unhealthy.

I have a similar dilemma with Halloween. The only difference is that I do not necessarily know these children.

So, do I hand out candy? Does it really make a difference if I add one or two more mini chocolate bars to the mountain of high fructose corn syrup that these children are collecting? If their parents do not care, why should I?

This is why: I am on a mission to change the world.  If I stop telling people the truth about food and health, if the other people like me step back and stop being ‘extreme’ and start falling in line with the cultural norm, then people in our society will continue to get sicker, our children will continue to have more diseases and shorter life expectancies. I am not okay with that. That is why I am a chiropractor. It is why I blog and coach and talk to as many people and families as I can reach.

It would violate my integrity to hand out candy.

I do still celebrate Halloween though. I love dressing up. I love ghost stories. I love seeing the creativity that other people have put into their costumes. 

What is it about Halloween that you love? Is it walking around the neighborhood seeing little princesses and goblins? Is it carving pumpkins? Is it seeing how excited your children get to dress up and be what ever they want for a day?

Can you ensure that you and your children get the fun out of this holiday while staying healthy? Or maybe this is one of those occasions where you do let lose and have some candy.

I am not trying to tell you what to do. I am hoping that you will put some thought into what your Halloween will bring and why you draw your lines where you do.

If you are looking for alternatives to candy, here are a few:

1)    Mini Lara Bars

2)    Snack Packs of Craisins, raisins or Other Dried fruit

3)    Halloween stickers

4)    Mini Play-Doh

5)    Fake tattoos

6)    Halloween themed plastic jewelry

What about for your own kids?

If you have like-minded friends, get together and have a Halloween party! Serve healthy snacks and let the kids play fun Halloween games.

If you do want to participate in trick-or-treating, here are some ideas for what do to with all the candy that your child receives:

1)    You might allow them to keep a few pieces and then trade in the rest to you for a quarter or a dime each. Then you can take them to the toy store or dollar store to get something fun!

2)    If you would rather not give each piece a dollar amount, offer your kids the choice to trade in all their candy for a trip to the toy store or for something else they have been really wanting.  A fun way to do this is to have a Halloween Ghoul (similar to the tooth fairy). The children put their bags of candy on the doorstep at night and in the morning the Halloween Ghoul has replaced the candy with a toy, movie tickets or something else your children will enjoy.

3)    Allow your children to donate the candy. There may be dentists in your city who participate in a Candy Buy Back. For each pound of candy they typically give $1. Many dentists will match the cash and donate it to a charity. Some also give raffle tickets for prizes and do other fun activities surrounding the buy back.

Break Ups and Bad Food

Before I get started with this blog, you should know that this is not going to be me rehashing some recent love life drama as the title might have led you to believe.

For those of you who do not know me (Dr. Justine), I am an unmarried, 26 year old chiropractor.

I am now at an age and place in life where many of my friends are either getting married or breaking up. Everyone is concerned with finding Mr. or Mrs. Right.

All of a sudden, many of my peers have decided we are too old to squander the prime years of our adulthood on someone who is not potential marriage material. So I have had MANY relationship talks with friends over the past few months.

Since I am always thinking about food and living By Design, it should not surprise you that I have started to see patterns in these relationship talks and have applied them to eating By Design.

How often have you said and/or heard someone say, “You should end it. Never stay in a relationship that does not make you happy. He/she is not good for you.”

Great advice! Look at the qualities of the person you are dating, determine how much their values align with yours, if they are not making your life better, it is time to walk away. Or you never should have dated them in the first place.

And hey, since you are single and emotional, we should eat a tub of Ben & Jerry’s and drink a lot of liquor.

It is funny how the principle behind this great relationship advice does not get applied to the other areas of peoples’ lives. Like health.

Can we talk about breaking up with bad food, like grains? Well-meaning advice: “You should end it. Never eat food that does not make you healthy. Grains are not good for you.” It’s the SAME advice. Look at the qualities of the food you are eating, determine how much value that food is adding to your health, if it is not making your health better, it is time to walk away. You never should have eaten it in the first place.

And whatever you do, DO NOT get back together.

We all know the on-again-off-again relationships always end badly. You say you want to end it, you say you know it is not the best thing for you, but you keep going back for the familiarity and the comfort. You do it even though it makes you feel crappy, even though it is a roller coaster ride of confusion, self-doubt and self-sabotage.

Eating unhealthy food is the same pattern of comfort seeking behavior. Every time you go back to it, for comfort and familiarity, you get burned. It does not feel good, it hurts your self-esteem, it confuses your body and sabotages your health goals.

In bad break ups and bad food, it is best to cut it off completely and never look back. It is hard, emotional and uncomfortable. But you CAN form new habits with food and people who are healthy for you and contribute value to your life.

Here is a fun activity:

Next time you catch yourself looking at a cup cake, piece of pie or chocolate chip cookie, which somehow got a million times more attractive since your ‘break up,’ think about how much better you are with out them in your life. And maybe, sing a little Taylor Swift – “Weeeeee are never, ever, EVER getting back together!”

What does food intolerance look like?

This week I was doing some reading and researching about great foods for babies. What should be introduced when and how different foods help to meet the requirements of a growing infant. One of the things I came across was a list of signs that indicate a baby is not tolerating a certain food well. Here is what was on the list:

·       Bloating

·       Gas

·       Irritability

·       Fussiness

·       Over-activity

·       Excessive waking/ Difficulty Sleeping

·       Constipation

·       Diarrhea

·       Frequent Spitting Up

·       Nasal or Chest Congestion

·       Skin rashes

There are a couple of things that I found particularly interesting about this list.

One, is that you can use an identical list when talking about food intolerances in older children and adults. The only change I would make is taking out ‘spitting up’ and adding in ‘difficulty focusing.’

Two, is that many of the things on this list are not signs that most people would immediately link to the idea of food intolerance.

In general, people tend to believe that if a food does not cause them to have stomach upset, diarrhea, bloating or cause them to go into anaphylactic shock, then they do not have any problems digesting it.

Studies have shown that all people experience disruption in their gut barrier when they eat grains. All people have an inflammatory reaction to this disruption. What this means is that all people have intolerance toward grains. However, not all people notice that they have had disruption or inflammation after they eat grains.

Inflammation is an interesting phenomenon. The signs and symptoms show up very differently from person to person. Some people experience joint pain and arthritic conditions, others have skin issues like acne and psoriasis. 

Unfortunately, most adults expose themselves to so many different stressors on a regular basis, it is difficult to connect any sign, symptom or condition that they have to just one factor. In addition, most people eat foods that cause inflammatory reactions so routinely that they think their body is behaving normally.

There is a big difference between your body behaving how it always does and your body functioning properly.

For the vast majority, it takes removing these offensive foods for a period of time before a person is able to connect the dots between the condition they were in and the food that they were eating.

Then, when the food gets added back in, WHAM! Nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach…diarrhea! (Yes, I did rip that off of a pepto commercial.) Or more subtly, skin break out, trouble sleeping, low energy in the middle of the day, or inability to focus on a task.

The point is, that every time I hear someone say “Ya, but I don’t have problems eating grains” almost invariably, after gentle inquiry, I will discover that they have at least one of the above mentioned signs that they eat foods that their body does not tolerate.

If you think this might be you, try taking the next few weeks without grains or legumes or low fat dairy in your diet. You will probably be surprised by the outcome!

If you need someone to talk to about it, to hold you accountable or work on some good strategies with you, I know a few great coaches who are more than happy to help!

Probiotics 101: Part 3

The last two blogs have been all about probiotics. Why they are good and why you might not have a healthy probiotic culture.

This post is about taking action. There are lots of links that you can follow for more information. Here are some steps you  can you do to get more probiotics:

If you are limited on time and are having difficulty getting your hands on good quality fermented foods, taking a probiotic supplement will be beneficial. 

There are plenty of probiotics on the market. A good supplement will indicate the number of live colonies in each capsule before its expiry date. Shoot for a brand that has several different types of bacteria with a minimum 10 billion per capsule and take the supplement daily. For children, I would recommend buying a probiotic powder that can be mixed into pureed foods or sauces.

One good product that I have looked into is VSL#3. This supplement comes in a powder and has 450 Billion live cultures per packet. For people who have significant GI problems or inflammatory conditions, who are aggressively trying to bring their gut flora back into balance, there is significant research behind this product.

Here are some links if you are interested in seeing some of the research:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23836895

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15984978

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19067432

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16903771

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24029785

That is all I want to say about supplements.

A better way to improve your gut culture is to eat probiotic foods. We only recommend supplements because people do not eat enough fermented foods.

It is always best to get nutrients from REAL FOOD. This is always our first recommendation. There are components in fermented foods that support the growth of the microbes. As well, there is a wider variety and greater number of bacteria in a small amount of food than you would receive in a supplement.

The vast majority of fermented foods that you can buy at the grocery store are pasteurized or contain preservatives that kill all of the bacteria. For this reason, I do not recommend that you purchase pickles or sauerkraut from you local store UNLESS they are a brand you know to be unpasteurized and preservative free. One great brand for pickles and saurkraut is Bubbies. I have seen this brand at several health food stores. You can find it in the fridge. Here is a link to their page http://www.bubbies.com/bubbies_products.shtml

Good options for probiotic foods include:

Sauerkraut (Unpasteurized and preservative free)
This is pickled cabbage that can be put on burgers or hotdogs or eaten as a side dish.

Pickles (Unpasteurized and preservative free)
Whether you like them sweet or dill, pickles contain a good amount of probiotics for your system.

Kimchi

Kimchi is a popular Korean dish that is fermented and pickled cabbage. It can be very spicy.

Olives (in brine, preservative free)
Olives in brine have large amounts of probiotics because the brine allows the probiotic cultures to thrive.

Yogurt
I rarely recommend that people eat yogurt. Most yogurts are filled with sugars and syrups. The milk is pasteurized and then probiotics are added back into it. If you are going to eat yogurt, look for high fat varieties that have natural ingredients and say “live and active cultures.”

You can ferment pretty much any combination of fruits and/or vegetables at home. Here is a link with more information and recipes: http://paleodietlifestyle.com/fermented-food-recipes/

Lastly.. my favorite source of probiotics:

Kombucha tea (fermented tea)

SCOBY

Kombucha is a fermented tea that is contains probiotics.  The production involves making sweetened tea, adding a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast), and letting the SCOBY breakdown the sugar to produce a drink full of B vitamins, amino acids, organic acids, enzymes, and probiotics.

The SCOBY looks like a jellyfish or a mushroom.  It sounds kind of gross, but it is worth it!

Here is a link for making your own:  http://www.westonaprice.org/food-features/continuous-brewing-kombucha

You can buy bottled kombucha at many grocery and health food stores.

Make sure you check the labels. Some kombucha teas are loaded with sugar!

One last note, when you are introducing fermented foods, do it slowly. Give your body time to adjust. 

Enjoy!