Yogurt Can Save Your Life: September 2007

LACTOBILLICUS, which can be found in yogurt is most effective at preventing and treating rotavirus and other viral infections. This suggests that probiotics are not just good for you, they actually give you an immunity boost.

Tests have shown measurable increases in immune function in people that included yogurt in their diet. It also protects against inflammation and autoimmunity.It seems to be very helpful in eliminating problems such as inflammatory bowel disease (such as Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis), ulcers, and irritable bowel syndrome. Flatulence and non-specific tummy aches can also be decreased.

Food allergies are caused by the production of antibodies against something in the diet. Normally, a substance in our bodies called interleukin 12 prevents this. A recent study showed that consuming Lactobacillus can increase IL-12, decrease antibodies, and thus help prevent and treat food allergies.

Many children with eczema have flare-ups triggered by what they eat or drink. In one study, a group of children who received yogurt show significant improvement within a MONTH. Some evidence suggests that the recent increase in childhood asthma may be partially from the destruction of our normal, healthy bacteria and that you can actually prevent asthma by eating yogurt.In one study, there was a reduction in upper respiratory infections in children that consumed yogurt! This includes pneumonia.

Even a more recent study on the live bacteria found in yogurt indicated that the heart was protected, preventing and decreasing damage from lack of oxygen to the heart muscle. The effect was attributed to the change in inflammation and the immune system when yogurt was included in the diet.

Is your cholesterol too high? Some strains of active culture yogurt eaten over the course of 8 weeks can help to lower LDL cholesterol and improve blood pressure. Triglycerides were also lowered. Yogurt culture can furthermore protect against liver damage, food poisoning, and toxic substances found in foods such as peanut butter. It can even prevent cancer.

When the doctor puts your child on an antibiotic, they should be prescribed a probiotic like yogurt as well. Since they typically don’t (I haven’t found a doctor yet that did) go buy it yourself, and watch your child get better, rather than worse. There is nothing more painful than watching your child lay in the hospital crib in the oxygen tent and feeling there is nothing you can do. You can do something if your doctor seems to choose not to.

I never would have thought yogurt to be that POWERFUL. But it is. I have seen it in my own daughter, and this is her story…

picture above is her in the hospital, she was getting better in this photo

SHE had just turned one year old and had been quite healthy until this time. She had black circles under her eyes, pale, an cough that wouldn’t go away. Of course, I took her to her pediatrician and what did he tell me? “She’s fine. I can’t hear anything in her chest” Well, I was a young mom so I always took the doctors word for it, so we went home and gave her prescription cough medicine and antibiotic that the doctor prescribed her. It wasn’t working.

She was getting worse so we went back to the doctor again and he admitted her into the hospital with pneumonia. She was there a whole week, on IV antibiotics. She was still coughing when she got out of the hospital and she went home with breathing treatments to be done every about 4 hours. As soon as I got her home, the diarrhea started and did not stop for 5 months… that was not a typo… 5 MONTHS my baby had diarrhea. It came out as pure green water is the only way I can describe it.

About 2 or 3 months later we were back in the hospital again with a long list of diagnosis’s: RSV, Rotavirus, pneumonia, dehydration, weight loss, lethargy, respiratory distress.. the list goes on. To even think about what she went through 2 years later, still makes me cry. I almost lost my baby.

on breathing treatments at home

When she was in the hospital, they would not let her eat anything because of the diarrhea and told me she shouldn’t eat because of that. I told them if you wait until her diarrhea is gone she will starve to death. Needless to say, I snuck her food in. If the child is hungry, they should not be refused. I don’t care what the doctor says. They don’t apparently know everything. And I think that is the only way her strength returned.

These days the doctors won’t give you anything for diarrhea because the suppositories that they used to give were causing seizures, so when I told the doctor that she was having horrible diarrhea, well he told me he really couldn’t do anything. So a few months into the diarrhea problem she went for a checkup and he noticed that she was losing weight. Her head circumference was not growing, and she was so low on the growth chart for her age, she was off the chart. He wondered why.

He knew she had diarrhea we couldn’t stop. Now it was chronic.

So he referred us to a specialist. He feared she may have crohn’s disease. I was frustrated and scared for my baby girl. We went to this specialist for months and ran every kind of test they could run they could not figure out what was wrong with her.

One day, I was talking to my mom, and she suggested I feed her yogurt. It wouldn’t hurt her. So I tried it and 2 years after I almost lost my daughter, she is eating some yogurt every day and has not been sick once since her last stint in the hospital about 2 years ago. To my surprise, it has actually become her favorite food. I think her body knew that that is exactly what she needed. She has not had diarrhea since and is also a fully potty trained 3 year old. My advice: Doctors don’t always have the answers, seek them out and go with your motherly instincts.