Hi all,

I’m new here and just wondering if anyone could advise me. I’ve been reading the Clever Guts book and also have the cookbook, and am aiming to introduce more pre- and probiotics into my diet. I want to see if this might help my Chronic Fatigue, which I’ve had for years. Has anyone found that increasing probiotic consumption is beneficial on its own, without the Repair and Recovery phases?

I ask for several reasons. One is that I’ve done various elimination diets over the years, all of which have left me feeling absolutely dreadful for several weeks. I can’t really afford to feel awful now that I have an energetic 7 year old to look after. Also, the benefits (aside from weight loss and a decreased desire for sweet things) were hard to quantify. The other issue for me is that removing so many things in the repair phase takes quite a bit of planning and energy, which I’m particularly low on at the moment!

Any thoughts welcome!

Have you been completing the detailed food and symptom diary (p.187)? Analyse that for the *balance and variety* of wholefoods within and between food grous, as well as identifying potentially problematic foods.

Many DIY elimination diets are very restricted in food types and/ or calories and/ or micronutrients. This can make you feel awful or even be dangerous, so such diets should be medically supervised.

Clever Guts is more about eating a balance and wide variety of nutrient dense wholefoods throughout. It is worth rereading pages 190 to 196, rather than focussing on the example meal planners.

For example “IF you have mild IBS or problems with abdominal pain and bloating, you MAY want to reboot your gut bacteria.” (p.186)

And “we don’t recommend removing too many foods at one time, so it may be helpful to do R&R in several stages.” (p.190)

And “introduce foods one at a time with a gap of at least three days between each one.” (p.193)

From the example planners take away how varied they are, and that nutrients is eliminated foods are replaced by other foods (seeds and nuts instead of grains and pulses).

It is possible to minimise kitchen time whilst still eating healthily, especially if you have a freezer, slow cooker/ crock pot, stick blender, microwave oven.
Frozen vegetables and fruits, canned beans lentils and tomatoes, canned oily fish, cooked smoked fish, frozen seafood all need minimal preparation. It is possible to throw the ingredients for a stew/ casserole/ soup into the slow cooker in literally five minutes. Go about your day and come home to a hot meal.

HTH!

Thanks for such a detailed reply!

The elimination diet was supervised on each occasion, but I did stop having sugar, gluten and dairy all in one go on one occasion, so I guess it makes sense to remove one thing at a time.

In fact this time my GP (who makes her own kefir from raw milk!) suggested increasing my intake of probiotics as she feels it might help my CFS / ME – hence me wondering if it’s possible to increase the health of your micro biome by adding in probiotics etc, even if you don’t necessarily cut out all the ‘bad’ stuff.

I know sugar is probably an important one to quit, but I did feel horrendous last time I did that! I’m asking here partly as it’s v hard to get hold of my GP, and largely because I thought it would be good to have people’s experience to learn from.

It’s great you have a GP who is up to date/ open minded to new approaches. It’s also helpful that you have done those previous elimination diets. Knowing what you *are not* intolerant or *are not* allergic to can help guide where you go next.

Experts from the American and British Gut Projects have repeatedly tested their own, relatives and colleagues gut microbiomes, as well as those of populations eating a traditional hunter-gatherer diet and those eating a junk food heavy diet. This suggests that the microbiome changes seasonally, during and after pregnancy, day to day and even meal to meal.

What is your current diet like in terms of balance and variety? How much sugar, refined/ processed carbs, prebiotic fibre, healthy fats (oily fish, olive oil etc) do you have on an average day?

If your current diet is really far off official healthy eating guidelines, you may need to improve that alongside adding probiotic rich foods. If your current diet isn’t optimal, but not terrible across the board you may well get some noticable benefits from switching in some live/ fermented wholefoods.

My fingers are crossed for you!