By Aditi Pai

Gut health has gone for a toss for most these last few months. How to take better care

Gurgling sounds from the tummy that can get a tad awkward in a quiet room, a feeling of being full and the belt demanding a little extra space, thanks to an expanding waist these are some of the most common signs of bloating, a condition that is increasingly creeping into peoples lives. With the pandemic forcing us to stay indoors and gyms and fi tness studios out of bounds, physical activity has dropped drastically, which is leading to more complaints of bloating like stomach discomforts.

The main causes, say experts, are improper digestion, a sedentary lifestyle or health conditions, but factors such as stress and anxiety also play their part.

While bloating may seem to be nothing more than an irritant, unless it points to other underlying ailments, doctors say that gut health determines the wellness of the rest of the human body. About 80 per cent of the serotonin production happens in our gut and these are the neurotransmitters that regulate our mood, says Dr Manoj Kutteri, wellness director at Atmantan Wellness Centre. An imbalance in gut health can result in abdominal pain or bloating and gas and also a series of serious disorders such as hormone imbalances, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, anxiety, depression and many skin conditions.

Watch your plateAncient wisdom let food be thy medicine comes handy while avoiding abdominal imbalances. A diet high in carbohydrates, dairy, sugar or processed foods and wrong combinations of eatables are recipe for a sluggish digestive system, which can cause bloating. Fruits and milk or raw and cooked foods, when eaten together, irritate the digestive fire. Consuming foods that do not agree with the body can lead to indigestion and large particles of undigested foods can lead to a leaky gut causing bloating and gas, says nutritionist Karishma Chawla. Water plays a crucial role too; while bloating causes a full feeling, it is essential to keep the body hydrated with fluids to flush out collected toxins.

Mind over bodyEver felt butterflies in the stomach when you are stressed? That, say experts, is the gut-brain connection. What affects the mind, affects the gut and the other way round as well. Bloating, often points to an uneasy mind and emotions that are going out of control. Our gutbrain connection establishes a direct bridge between the emotional centres of our brain to the intestinal functions, says Dr Kutteri. This mutual connection is regulated by neural, hormonal, and immunological pathways.

Any imbalance in the autonomic nervous system, triggered by stress, fear or anxiety, cause a condition called dysbiosis in the gut, which results in diseases such as bloating and indigestion. To counter this, adopt methods that can keep the nervous system functioning optimally such as yoga, meditation and mindful living.

Poor postureSlouching over a laptop and sitting for long hours contributes to bloating and gas build-up as we adapt to the work from home routine. The human body is meant to be on the move, so when you sit for long hours, the stomach gas doesnt pass, says Dr Vidita Kumar, an occupational therapist. Slouching while poring over tabs or the phone screen, she says, also narrows our body and leads to gas being collected. Do not sleep immediately after meals and be on the move in the house. Walk while on work calls or practise working on the laptop while standing, she says.

Yoga asanasAdequate physical activity and regular exercise are imperative to reduce these conditions. With people increasingly working from home, they tend to sit at their desks for long hours. Walking, cycling and yoga are easy ways of getting the required amount of physical exercise every day.

But because you exercise for an hour, you cannot be sedentary for the rest of the day. The approach should be holistic with consistent physical activity and a healthy diet, says Poonawala. An easy way to ensure some activity is to walk or stand for five minutes after every one hour of sitting. Yoga asanas that help the abdominal area of the body are the plough pose, sarvangasana or shoulder stand, the bow pose, forward bends, the seated forward bend and the wind relieving pose. Forward bends and twists that squeeze the midriff and exercise the abdominal organs are very beneficial for digestive health, she says.Eat right

Nutritionists recommend including millets, rice and fresh vegetables into the diet. Raw vegetables and fruits should be consumed an hour before eating a cooked meal and never along with cooked food. Do away with inflammatory foods such as excessive gluten, dairy, sugar and any other foods that you find intolerant. Re-inoculate the friendly bacteria with probiotic foods and supplements, says Dr Kutteri. He also recommends vitamins A and C, zinc, omega-3 and fermented aloe vera, which help repair the gut. Pritika Mehta, nutrition consultant, recommends eating non-spicy khichdi at night to avoid digestive trouble.Do it yourself

Consume grated ginger with rock salt or lemon juice

Changing your cooking habits soak dal and rice overnight to ensure that the phytic acid in lentils doesnt irritate the gut

Avoid aerated and processed foods and sugar loaded foods

Stay hydrated. Gas or water retention leads to a build-up of toxins

More here:
Got That Bloated Feeling? - Mumbai Mirror

This article appeared in the November 2020 issue ofDiscovermagazine as "Gut Feeling."Subscribefor more stories like these.

Every muscle fiber in Tom Peters body seemed to be conspiring to keep him in bed. His depression an occasional visitor for more than a decade had reemerged in the summer of 2019, and his legs and arms felt like concrete. The thought of spending another 12-hour day at his computer filled him with dread. As a technical day trader for stocks, he responded to demanding clients constantly. That felt impossible when his brain kept blaring his past failures at top volume.

Fielding the volley of work messages became a Sisyphean task. Theres always the overriding fear that Im not going to come out of it, that Im always going to feel this way, Peters says. That probably is the scariest thing.

Peters, 50, had read about mood probiotics, gut bacterial strains marketed to help with depression and anxiety, but never felt like they were for him. I was very skeptical, he says. When his wife, who was battling panic attacks, tried mood probiotics and saw her episodes diminish, he began to reconsider. After his depression symptoms returned last summer, and the Prozac hed tried in the past had lost its potency, his wife went online and ordered him a bottle of the same oatmeal-colored capsules she was taking.

For decades, experts scoffed at the idea that gut bacteria affect our mental health. Many called it a fringe theory. Yet mounting evidence suggests that intestinal microbes profoundly shape our thinking and behavior. Human trials are now underway to investigate how these microbes boost our overall well-being. If the results hold up, new bacteria-based therapies could expand a mental health treatment landscape that has been mostly stagnant for decades.

Current treatments [for mental health] are not great, says University of Calgary psychiatrist and microbe researcher Valerie Taylor. When they do work, many of them are intolerable. People are desperate.

(Credit: Parameprizma/Shutterstock)

Anyone whos sprinted to the bathroom moments before a speech or felt a wave of nausea after public humiliation knows the gut and the brain are connected. Doctors have speculated about this linkage since ancient times. Hippocrates, who is credited with saying all disease begins in the gut, speculated that black bile spilled from the spleen into the intestines and brought on dark moods.

Theories like these grew more sophisticated over the centuries as scientists learned more about the microorganisms in the human gut. (We now know there are literally trillions of them.) By the late 19th century, doctors argued that melancholia, a then-common term for depression, arose from overgrowth of intestinal microbes. But physicians at the time understood little about what these microbes did in the body. So, early gut-based treatments including major abdominal surgery for schizophrenia were doomed to fail.

Fast-forward a century, and data from speedy genome sequencing of gut bacteria in the 2000s revealed that microbes perform an array of bodily tasks. Further studies showed how some might affect mental health. Each of us, it turns out, is more microbe than human: Bacterial cells outnumber human cells in the body by a factor of at least 1.3 to 1. The human gut plays host to more than 100 trillion of these bacteria a complex, interdependent microbial universe wedged between your ribcage and spine.

While the human genome consists of roughly 25,000 genes, the swarm of microbes in your gut expresses about 3 million distinct genes. Many of these bacterial genes help build molecules that let you digest food, keep harmful microbes at bay, and even feel emotions. For starters, the bacteria in your gut produce about 90 percent of the serotonin in your body yep, the same happy hormone that regulates your moods and promotes well-being.

For Peters, the prospect of a new path looked tantalizing after enduring the marathon of traditional options. He had gone through multiple stints on Prozac a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) and wondered if hed maxed out the drugs potential. I went off them for a while, then I went back on them, and I felt like I developed a resistance of sorts, he says. Its a familiar tale for almost anyone who takes SSRIs for long-term depression.

Years earlier, when Peters old dose of Prozac wasnt working as well, his psychiatrist had prescribed him a new, higher dose, one that brought on annoying side effects. On the higher dose, I felt like I was more sluggish, Peters says. It drove me crazy. The memory of that unrelenting brain fog helped persuade him to give probiotics a try.

In the mid- to late 2000s, John Cryan of Irelands University College Cork was among the first to explore gut microbes effects on the brain. A neurobiologist by training, Cryan had shown that rats stressed from birth later showed signs of both irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and mood disturbance. When they grew up, Cryan says, they had a whole-body syndrome. This finding echoed doctors observations that many patients with digestive symptoms also had mental health issues, and vice versa.

When researchers at Cryans lab sampled gut bacteria from stressed-out rats in 2009 and sequenced them, they hit on somethingsurprising: Stressed-out animals those more prone to mental health issues had a less diverse assortment of gut microbes, or microbiome, than their more relaxed counterparts. It got us thinking if you stress an animal, [maybe] theres a signature in the microbiome thats persisting, Cryan says.

In the past decade or so, more labs have started reporting that gut bacteria produce a smorgasbord of compounds that affect the mind in surprising ways, both good and bad for your emotional health. Some bacteria in the Clostridium genus generate propionic acid, which can reduce your bodys production of mood-boosting dopamine and serotonin. Microbes like bifidobacteria enhance production of butyrate, an anti-inflammatory substance that keeps gut toxins out of the brain. Other species produce the amino acid tryptophan, a precursor to mood-balancing serotonin.

(Credit: SeanidStudio/Shutterstock)

Rather than passing from the gut to the brain via bloodstream, some of these chemicals affect the brain through intermediate channels, says University of Pittsburgh clinical research psychologist Lauren Bylsma. A major one, the vagus nerve, functions like a communication superhighway between the brain, gut and other organ systems in the human body. Recently discovered neuropod cells can activate or deactivate the vagus nerve, which interfaces with neurons in the brain. Research shows that certain gut bacteria help activate those neuropod cells.

While researchers continue to map the workings of what theyve dubbed the gut-brain axis the two-way communication link between the GI tract and the central nervous system many already think it creates a major potential avenue for mental health treatment. Talk to psychiatrists about what causes mental illnesses like depression and you get a list of 10 mechanisms, says Philip Strandwitz, co-founder and CEO of biotech company Holobiome. When you talk to microbiome folks and ask them if you can affect those mechanisms, the answer is largely yes.

Since the concept of the gut-brain axis went mainstream, labs have accumulated even more evidence to support the notion. Earlier this year, Cryan and a team of international colleagues gave a group of stressed mice regular doses of a Bifidobacterium gut microbe for five weeks. By the end, the mice were more mobile and active than before. They were also more willing to interact and explore new areas.

The whole time, Cryan tracked changes in the mices gut bacteria. During a treatment with Bifidobacterium breve, their gut bacteria started making more tryptophan. Treated mice also produced more of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which helps new neurons grow.

Even as scientists highlight these kinds of connections between gut microbe treatments and symptom improvement, the question of causality has lingered: Do gut bacterial changes actually drive mood and behavioral changes? A growing body of research suggests they do.

Several innovative studies since 2016 show that fecal transplants can shape behavior profoundly, according to Bylsma and Taylor. When mice in one Chinese study got transplants of feces from other healthy mice, their behavior remained unchanged. But when mice received fecal transplants from donors with signs of anxiety and depression, the mice started to show signs of mood disturbance. A separate study published in Molecular Psychiatry showed mice that received fecal transplants from depressed humans also developed depressive symptoms. On the other hand, stressed-out mice in a 2019 study received transplants from unstressed animals and began acting less depressed. By changing the intestinal microbiome, researchers can actually change the rodents behavior, says Bylsma, who was not involved with the studies. That implies there is a causal effect.

Of course, dialing back depression-like symptoms in mice is a long way from rolling out gut-based mental health treatment to the public. Researchers love to joke about how many diseases theyve cured in rodents. But Taylor is hopeful about the prospects of replicating gut-bacteria treatment successes in people.

Taylors current approach is fecal transplantation, which involves exactly what you might guess: a human-to-human poop exchange. Often, people ingest the feces in a pill. Sometimes, doctors offer poo-rich enemas to seed the digestive tract with new microbes. Taylor has started two small-scale fecal transplant trials the first on people with bipolar disorder, and the second on those with depression to find out whether feces from healthy human donors boosts recipients moods and well-being. She is also taking samples of subjects gut microbiomes before, during and after treatment to track any notable changes.

Human studies of oral probiotic therapy are a bit further along. A survey of small-scale controlled trials found that Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus strains improved depressive symptoms overall, while other studies show similar effects on anxiety. One Australianstudy published in 2017 even suggests that a diet higher in beneficial bacteria can banish depression in more than a third of people. Microbes have also shown promise for less common mental health disorders: In a 2019 paper on a Japanese trial, 12 of 29 participants with schizophrenia who ingested a specific Bifidobacterium strain saw their depression and anxiety symptoms lift within four weeks.

Microbiologist Jeroen Raes thinks the cosmos of gut microbes that affect the human brain may be even larger than these initial trials suggest. Raes and his team at Belgiums VIB-KU Leuven Center for Microbiology have harvested poop samples from more than 1,000 people, scanning for gut microbe profiles that accompany their reported mood symptoms. So far, hes found that people with more butyrate-producing gut microbes such as certain types of Faecalibacterium and Coprococcus have a higher quality of life, while people with lower levels of Coprococcus are more likely to be depressed.

Microbiologist Jeroen Raes. (Credit: Greetje Van Buggenhout)

Ultimately, Raes predicts the emergence of a kind of probiotic therapy that researchers are calling psychobiotics. In that potential treatment universe, people with depression, anxiety or other mental health issues would routinely have their gut microbiomes sequenced. Those with high levels of bacteria tied to poor mental health, or low levels of bacteria that healthy people have in abundance, could receive a tailored probiotic or fecal transplant to fix the imbalance.

The probiotic strains Peters began taking Lactobacillus helveticus and Bifidobacterium longum hadnt been vetted in large-scale human clinical trials. But they have shown some mood-lifting promise in smaller human studies. Even so, before Peters popped one of the capsules for the first time, he felt his natural skepticism rearing up.

About a week into his new regimen, though, he began to notice a subtle mood shift that soon became more pronounced. I felt sharper, more energetic just a more positive outlook in general, he says. I felt like I was more relaxed at night. Putting in a day at his desk no longer felt like rolling boulders up a hill. It wasnt that he was abnormally happy, or that he had endless reserves of enthusiasm. Instead, what he felt was an anchoring inner calm, as if the choppy waves hed been riding had receded.

The next psychobiotics milestone, scientists say, will be full-scale clinical trials that show whether microbes or microbial cocktails boost well-being beyond placebo effects common in psychiatric treatment studies. You need trials, and you need placebo control in those trials, Raes says. If you have a trial that works, you need to replicate it in an index population.

Well likely be waiting at least two years for those definitive results. One sticking point in the outcome could come from drug companies, and whether they can identify a substantial profit. Many gut-based remedies contain naturally occurring bacteria, which makes them difficult to patent.

Whos making the money? Its not as obvious as in other areas, Cryan says. If this was a pharmaceutical strategy, it would be very clear. (Strandwitz plans to get around this problem by patenting compositions of microbes and a particular way of delivering them to patients.)

Another issue is that, while certain types of bacteria have more profound effects on the brain than others, there probably wont be any magic-bullet strains that work for everyone. Some gut bacteria function best alongside a constellation of varieties, complicating the picture further especially since gut bugs number in the trillions and represent more than 500 different species. One bacterial profile might be good for one person and one for another person, says Bylsma. The findings are not always consistent. And with fecal transplants, it can be difficult to control exactly which bacterial species a patient receives.

If the mix of probiotics, fecal transplants and diets do prove their mettle, Raes says, gut-based therapies will likely be considered an adjunct to treatments like medication and counseling, not necessarily a replacement. Its going to be part of the story. Its not going to be the whole story.

Since current psychiatric drugs dont work well for many people, DIY spins on gut research findings have already begun. In some circles, at-home fecal transplantation has exploded in popularity, fueled by testimonials that sing praises. But experts strongly discourage this, as stool samples that have not been tested could contain bacteria that cause life-threatening illness. It is extremely dangerous, Raes says. You do this at home, you have no control.

Over-the-counter probiotics offer a more mainstream DIY options. While doctors generally regard common strains like B. breve and L. acidophilus as safe for human consumption they appear in foods like yogurt, kombucha and kefir bacteria are bioactive substances, so ingesting them involves some level of risk.

And in the U.S., the supplement industry is largely unregulated. That means consumers have to take companies word that probiotics contain the strains listed on the label.

Given the rapidly evolving state of gut-brain research, experts dont all agree on how to advise patients seeking treatment options. Raes wont recommend any gut-based therapy before it goes through full clinical trials. But Taylor contends that even if probiotic strains effects on mood remain unproven, they dont appear harmful. When patients ask about probiotics, she doesnt discourage them from trying them out.

Peters avoids dissecting the sequence of internal events that banished his depression; hes just thrilled its gone. Stress and time pressures remain constant in his work life, but he feels like he navigates these bumps more gracefully. There are days Im able to focus a thousand percent and there are days Im not as productive, but theres more stability, he says. Its not like a yo-yo, way up one day and way down another. Along with the probiotics, he takes a Prozac dose thats a fraction of what he took in the past. It has kept his old brain fog at bay. To be able to get an extra hour or two out of my day so I can be present for my kids to me, thats amazing.

(Credit: Daniela Barreto/Shutterstock)

Its becoming clearer that some probiotics help make your gut happy. A major review of recent studies shows they can treat irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and various types of diarrhea. But navigating the options (and false claims) can be, well, a crapshoot. For example, a probiotic that treats influenza or common cold symptoms? Theres little evidence to support this.

As for the impact on mental health, larger human trials will help determine their effectiveness. Meanwhile, a decade-plus of experimental study has helped researchers assemble a firststring lineup of promising bacterial strains. But those interested should proceed with caution. The probiotic supplement industry in the U.S. is not FDA-regulated, so there could still be a risk, says Lauren Bylsma, a University of Pittsburgh clinical research psychologist.

Common treatments include:

Fermented foods: Foods like sauerkraut, yogurt and kefir a type of fermented milk naturally contain bacterial strains tied to anti-depressive effects, such as Lactobacillus helveticus or Lactobacillus acidophilus. That might explain the mood lift some people report from eating them.

L. helveticus and Bifidobacterium longum: This bacterial duo a common combo in products marketed as mood probiotics has shown some mettle in both human and animal studies. In one human trial, people taking these two bacteria reported a greater drop in depression symptoms than those on a placebo. The bacteria may boost mood by lowering levels of stress hormones like cortisol.

L. acidophilus: This much-touted probiotic strain activated moodstabilizing gut opioid receptors in one animal study. It also helps strengthen the intestinal lining, which prevents inflammatory compounds from migrating to the brain.

Elizabeth Svoboda is a science writer in San Jose, California. Her latest book is the Life Heroic: How to Unleash Your Most Amazing Self.

Go here to read the rest:
Gut Bacteria's Role in Anxiety and Depression: It's Not Just In Your Head - Discover Magazine

If you have found your way to this article, I can only assume that we have something in common: both of us want to see a better world where humans and all life on earth is thriving.

Having dedicated many years to researching and communicating the science behind an optimal diet for humans, I understand first hand how our health is inextricably tied to the planet's (as detailed in my upcoming book).

Put simply, there are no healthy humans without a healthy planet. With that said, any time a new study, book, documentary, or other media publication is published I read or watch with great interest.

And of course, having interviewed the co-founders of Kiss the Ground, Ryland Engelhart and Finian Makepeace, in early 2020, I was particularly excited to watch the Kiss the Ground documentary (and I recommend you watch it too if you havent already).

Before we get into a few major claims made inKiss the Groundthat are directly at odds with scientific knowledge, I want to preface this entry by saying that I wholeheartedly support regenerative agriculture as a goal and think the documentary did a great job bringing light to the detrimental impact that intensive animal agriculture is having on our planet.

A degenerative system that decimates life in our soil, releases immense amounts of greenhouse gas emissions into our atmosphere, pollutes our waterways, and disrupts the biodiversity and biology on our land and in our oceans.

I was also pleased the documentary shone a light on food waste and composting these are two things that many of us can introduce into our daily lives with minimal barriers to entry.

Above all, it's great to see this conversation growing from what has very much been a fringe movement to now entering the mainstream.

Talking about the importance of being better stewards of our land, and why we must do a better job at protecting our natural resources and ecosystems, is absolutely crucial if our species is to not just thrive on Planet Earth, but survive. It's within this context, that it becomes so vividly apparent, that in this conversation we are not just talking about planetary health, but at its core, human health.

Where I think the documentary falls short is in three critical areas. I've listed these below in short, and then we will go through each together looking at the claims made and where the science lies: (These have also been covered in detail with Environmental Researcher Nicholas Carter (co-author of this article) in episode 104 and 111 on the Plant Proof podcastavailable below).

1 Claims that holistic grazing can reverse climate change. This form of regenerative agriculture is by no means the 'silver bullet' that its so often portrayed to be and is certainly not what the worlds leading climate scientists are most excited by.

2 Creation of a false dichotomy. The documentary carefully positions holistic grazing as the answer to intensive animal agriculture (including the mono-cropping that occurs to feed factory-farmed animals). I'm sure we can all agree that factory farming is a blight on humanity, and there is far too much mono-cropping, but assuming that it's either this intensive form of animal agriculture or holistic grazing, is not accurate. For a great deal of land, there are other, more evidence-based ways to sequester carbon. Unfortunately, these incredibly superior solutions are less sexy because they are not tying livestock, and more specifically the consumption of beef, to the solution.

3 Unclear about how the proposed solutions would affect our diets. Regardless of the above claims being scientifically supported or not (we'll come to that) if one is to advocate for a shift to holistic grazing this will inevitably result in a dramatic reduction in global meat supply. In turn, this means shifting to more plant-based diets.

(Photo: Adobe. Do not use without permission)

There is enough evidence to support regenerative agriculture being a more environmentally friendly form of agriculture to how we are currently farming, but on the other side, I am also weary whenever a solution is proposed as a panacea for tackling climate change what is arguably one of the most complex problems that the human race is faced with.

There are three main points I want to make about holistic grazing that are important for you to understand.

The first point that I think deserves our attention, before getting into the science on the reversal claim, is the way the producers wanted you to see holistic grazing. It was very much positioned as absolutely crucial to confronting this climate emergency we find ourselves in.The sort of solution you might suspect is at the top of all climate scientists lists.

This positioning starts with the documentary's focus on the Drawdown Report by Environmentalist Paul Hawken from Project Drawdown. This is a review Im very familiar with having read through it front to back a handful of times.

I also thoroughly enjoyed Pauls episode on Rich Roll's podcast where he speaks at length about Project Drawdown. Essentially, Hawken and his team have created a long list of approximately 100 solutions, which when implemented together, would be capable of drawing down more carbon than we are emitting by 2050. And as the documentary states, shifting us from climate warming to climate cooling.

Focussing on this review was a clever move by Kiss the Ground - Paul Hawken and the Project Drawdown are incredibly well respected. However, there is a 'slight' problem with the way they presented the information from the Drawdown report. What's glaringly clear from Hawken's report is that when it comes to our food and greenhouse gas emissions, the two areas we can make the biggest impact are reducing food waste (number 1 solution)and moving to a plant-rich diet (number three solution).

In fact, if we look at the solutions outlined in the Drawdown Report and their potential to draw down carbon from our atmosphere, shifting to a diet that favours calories from plants is twice as powerful compared to shifting to silvopasture and four times as powerful compared as shifting to managed grazing two forms of regenerative agriculture that involve livestock.

There was also no mention of tropical forest restoration which has significantly greater potential at pulling carbon out of the atmosphere compared to grazing cows on land no matter what practice is employed. You can see all of this here for yourself

I'm not suggesting we should only be changing our diet but given it has greater potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions you would think it would have been given more emphasis than putting cows on pasture.

The documentary tiptoed around this, failing to make it explicitly clear that the food on our plate has to change, while seemingly wanting us to believe that holistic grazing on its own can reverse climate change.

It only takes a quick read of the Drawdown Report to realize that this is absolutely unfounded - it's going to take an enormous amount of solutions to radically transform our energy and food systems to reverse climate change, and holistic grazing, while certainly better than intensive farming, is not the miracle carbon-sequestering practice that those watching are led to believe. There's nothing 'Netflix and chill'about that.

The next thing I want to address, and perhaps the most important take-home message here, is the science underpinning holistic grazing is flaky at best. Kiss the Ground gave the microphone to Ranchers Alan Savory and Gabe Brown, but we didn't hear about any legitimate science testing out whether the claims they were making truly hold up?

Sure, it's easy to see with our own eyes that there is more life on land that is managed in a regenerative way, but in order to really know that it is a climate solution, we would need evidence that carbon levels in the soil are not only increasing but increasing by more than the emissions emitted by the animals involved in the system. I thought it was odd that this was left out.

Although, when I watched it for the third time, it became obvious that the biology 101 lessons from 'Ray' were cleverly used to dance around the fact there is no solid science to back up Savory and Browns claims. This is where a report written by Dr. Tara Garnett for the University of Oxford becomes very interesting a report title Grazed and Confusedthat I have written about before here.

After looking at all of the available evidence on holistic grazing, and claims made by the likes of Savory, the report concludes that 'grass-fed livestock are not a climate solution'. Grazing livestock are net contributors to the climate problem, as are all livestock. Rising animal production and consumption, whatever the farming system and animal type, is causing damaging greenhouse gas release and contributing to changes in land use. Ultimately, if high consuming individuals and countries want to do something positive for the climate, maintaining their current consumption levels but simply switching to grass-fed beef is not a solution. Eating less meat, of all types, is.

And when it comes to the Savory Institute and Savorys claims Dr Garnett states that they are 'generally anecdotal, based on surveys and testimonies rather than on-site measurements'.Sounds pretty ambitious to champion this form of animal agriculture as a climate solution without strong empirical evidence?

Estimated annual soil carbon sequestration potential from grazing management, per hectare.

This isn't the only literature review that has found a lack of science to support Savory's claims about holistic grazing with another detailed review of the literature out of Sweden by Maria Nordborg, coming to the same conclusion. Savory's claims dont stand up when you put them under the microscope. Or this breakdown of the many myth's he perpetuates in The International Journal ofBiodiversity.

Now all debates have two sides and Savory has been confronted with this information before. His response: "holistic management does not permit replication", and "you'll find the scientific method never discovers anything."

In other words, his claims cannot be supported by data, replicated by others and he doesnt believe in science. Makes sense why the documentary didn't go there! This is a huge problem. There seems to be an incredibly fine line between grazing just enough and overgrazing, which speaks to potentially whycrediblepeer-reviewed science has to date, failed to produce results that come close to what Alan Savory claims.

This is why science is so important. Anecdote and expert opinion or theories are at the bottom of the evidence hierarchy, and it's not until we see the findings from higher levels of science, reproduced on scale, that we can begin to have confidence in what we are observing. If he is the only one that can achieve the carbon sequestration that he claims, I fail to see how thats a hopeful solution. And let's not forget, this is the same man who ordered 40,000 African elephants to slaughter because he incorrectly thought they were damaging the land.

A major strategy deployed in the documentary is offering two distinct choices for where consumers should source their food: conventional chemical-filled monocrops, or lush open fields of regenerative agriculture.

This is a major oversimplification of our complex and varied farming system. Firstly, just so we are clear, the majority of the world's mono-crops are fed to livestock. So what we are talking about here is how to better use the land dedicated to animal agriculture (83 percent of all agricultural land) that is responsible for 80 percent of food-related greenhouse gas emissions yet provides only 18 percent of our total calories.

The elephant in the room during the documentary is that they completely failed to mention that a significant amount of the land dedicated to animal agriculture across the world (not all but certainly a lot) needs to be restored to forests (the number one driver of deforestation is animal agriculture) to get anywhere close to meeting our climate goals.

Why? Because not only does this mean less greenhouse gas-emitting ruminant animals, but it means we can draw down more carbon from the atmosphere - forests are typically far better at doing this than grasslands.

In fact, in the Drawdown Report, when you factor in the land that would be freed up if the entire world shifted to a plant-rich diet, this becomes the single biggest lever that each of us can pull to lower our individual environmental footprint. So really, the idea of conservation and restoration, needed to be absolutely front and center if Kiss the Ground truly wanted to educate the masses about how agriculture can help tackle climate change.

They also failed to make it clear why ruminants were required. Yes, there's no doubt ruminant poop can help improve soil quality, but there are many types of regenerative agriculture that do not involve animalsor animal manure and others that act as sanctuaries using animals on their land without sending them to slaughter.

One can only presume that the slaughtering of the animal is not about soil quality, but about profits. Dont get me wrong. Farmer's need to make profits but we need to be transparent here and lay down all solutions on the table to have an open discussion. Until then, it's going to be hard to truly transform our agricultural system to benefit all life on the planet.

As a side note, the documentary routinely employed uses numerous fear-mongering tactics to scare the viewer into grasping for whatever solution comes next. A prime example of this is their claim that there is only 60 years of farming left. That sounds catastrophic. However, this was taken from a United Nations speech, which leading soil scientist's say is absolutely not supported by science.

Finally, the 'elephant' / 'cow' in the room (not sure which is more fitting) during Kiss the Ground is how are we going to produce enough meat using holistic grazing to meet current demands?

There are a few clues within the documentary that speak to this but they are by no means overtly clear to the viewer. The first clue is when the documentary makes mention of the natural history of Bison roaming the United States. They correctly state that Bison would pass through land and not be seen for around a year. To rotate cows like bison, it means leaving land free from roaming animals for at least six-nine months a figure that Alan Savory states himself in the documentary.

This means that compared to factory farms, or traditional grazing where cows are overgrazing and destroying the soil, a regenerative farm using holistic grazing would require a lot more land for any given number of roaming cows.

Unfortunately, overtly telling people they need to cut down on their meat consumption for this change in agriculture to work isnt going to help with the documentary's popularity. But it's the reality we face. Factory farms are good at one thing producing a lot of meat in a short period of time to feed a growing appetite for meat.

If we pull the pin on that, it means one thing and one thing only.Less meat to go around and significantly higher prices per unit. And this isn't just my own speculation. If the U.S shifted away from intensive livestock farming to traditional grazing, it's been calculated that the available grasslands would only be able to produce 27 percent of the countries current beef supply.

In other words, a 73 percent reduction in beef available per person in the U.S. For holistic grazing, that figure would be even higher because it requires far more land per cow and thus produces significantly less beef than the traditional more intensive grazing systems.

As prices go up, pending one spends the same budget they had previously set aside for meat, their consumption naturally falls. Unfortunately, Savory seems to have led himself to believe that his unscientific approach should be expanded across the world - really, tear down more forests to make room for holistic grazing? This sounds like something else that he would likely regret in the near future.

While, there were very subtle hints that people would have only caught if paying very close attention, it was not made overtly clear by the documentary that the proposed solutions means transitioning the world to plant-rich diets.

There was mention of a 'regenerative diet' but what does that mean? Why not let the viewer know what the world's leading climate scientists have to say about diet? Data from almost 40,000 farms, and 119 countries, clearly shows us that a plant-based diet results in less greenhouse gas emissions, less pollution, less ocean acidification, and uses less water and land - land which we can therefore 'free up' and convert to forests to rapidly sequester carbon from our atmosphere. This seems like pretty important information that was left off the table.

Despite the documentary not spelling it out, it's very clear. If we want to lower our environmental footprint the single most important thing we can do is eat more plants. Yes, whats on our plate is even more important than where it's come from or 'buying local'. As Hannah Ritchie, Phd (Geosciences) puts it: "Whether you buy it from the farmer next door or from far away, it is not the location that makes the carbon footprint of your dinner large, but the fact that it is beef."

The bonus being that plant-rich dietary patterns just so happen to also be what major health institutions and progressive Government departments like Health Canada are advocating for to tackle rising rates of obesity and chronic disease, and improve quality of life.

Photo: OurWorldinData.org

The problem is, the lay viewer who is not across the science, and blinded by the message of 'hope', is likely to confuse the role of cows in holistic grazing with instruction that we should continue eating meat at current rates (as long as it's 'grass-fed') and perhaps even double down on our meat consumption.

As long as it's 'grass-fed'. After all, this method of grazing, which Gabe Brown and Alan Savory speak about at length, is being positioned in the documentary as the solution we have all been waiting for to reverse climate change. A powerful message during a time where the climate emergency is without a doubt causing climate anxiety. But what good is hope if it's false?

And as we all know, this creates a slippery slope. Consumers falsely see meat as part of the solution, and although they may do their best to seek out regenerative meat (

Despite all of this, my fear is that many will be left with a complete misunderstanding of where environmental science truly lies. Why? Because where Kiss the Ground lacks in science, it makes up in celebrity power with the likes of Woody Harrelson, Jason Mraz, Ian Somerhalder, Gisele Bndchen, and Tom Brady all featured.

The documentary is well-produced and in the eyes of a layperson an extremely compelling case for changing the way we grow food. However, given the notable absence of well qualified environmental scientists discussing evidence to support their ambitious claims, in favor of anecdotal experience from ranchers, just how much of the information in this documentary can we trust and reliably use to shape our food system and inform our food choices? Unfortunately not as much as I had hoped.

So if Kiss the Ground had taken a more evidence-based approach and included dietary recommendations what would it have looked like?

I would simply build on the work of Michael Pollan, a well-known science writer: "Where possible eat regenerative food, not too much, mostly plants."

Practically speaking this looks like the plate below perhaps this could be The Regenerative Plate that Kiss the Ground adopts in their communication going forwards.

A plant-rich dietary pattern that places emphasis on regeneration but really could be chopped in a number of ways to suit the individual Mediterranean, paleo, pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan, etc can all be done in a plant-predominant manner. The central tenant is that its a diet that places enormous emphasis on calories from plants and de-emphasizes calories from animal products. I'd be willing to donate it to them.

If I was to describe this plate in short I would simply build on the great work of Michael Pollan. Where possible eat regenerative food, not too much, mostly plants. An adaptation from his famous quote "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

Regardless of the label that we choose to adopt, eating this way will nourish the soil, reduce emissions from agriculture, and at the same time reduce the burden of chronic disease in our communities.

For me, it's a plant-exclusive diet and for you it might be eating plant-based before dinner - often the perfect place for people to start.

Either way, shifting the typical diet in such a way is a certain win for humanity and all life on Earth, and thus something that not only should have been made clearer in Kiss the ground, but something that everyone reading should strongly consider.

Read more:
OPINION: Is Documentary 'Kiss The Ground' Just A Last Ditch Effort To Keep Meat Relevant? - Plant Based News

Eating may become disordered for some pediatric patients. A presentation at the virtual 2020 American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference & Exhibition gives guidance on how to identify and manage eating disorders in pediatrics.

For many children, eating is merely a way to power the body for all of the activities of life. However, for other children, eating can be a disordered habit than can lead to significant negative health outcomes if left untreated. In his presentation Identifying and treating disorders in children and adolescents, Neville H. Golden, MD, chief of the division of adolescent medicine at Lucile Packard Childrens Hospital in Palo Alto, California, shared some guidance with attendees of the virtual 2020 American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference & Exhibition. Initially, he spoke about the shifting epidemiology of eating disorders, sharing that it was becoming more prevalent in younger children, males, and minorities. He also spoke about the sex differences that are noted in eating disorder prevalence, stating that the 9:1 ratio of girls to boys only seems to apply to teenagers and young adults. In children aged 9 to 10, the ratio is 1:1.

Golden then discussed the eating disorders that pediatricians may find in patients. He covered the 2 most well-known: anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Anorexia is characterized by an intense fear of gaining weight and restricting energy intake and bulimia is characterized by recurrent binge eating and recurrent inappropriate compensatory behavior to mitigate the binge eating. However, those eating disorders made up 48.7% of eating disorders. Other disordered eating included avoidantrestrictive food intake disorder, which has no fear of weight gain or body image distortion, but is characterized by avoiding foods for sensory reasons and worry about choking or vomiting.

The medical complications related to eating disorders are myriad and can include:

He also discussed when hospitalization for eating disorders would be indicated. Patients should be hospitalized if there is failure of outpatient treatment; physiologic instability; severe malnutrition; dehydration or electrolyte abnormalities; and electrocardiogram abnormalities. When working on weight restoration in hospitalized patients, clinicians need to be vigilant for refeeding syndrome, which can occur during aggressive nutritional restoration. Recent studies have found that higher caloric intake than recommended by some guidelines can reduce the length of stay, without increasing the rate of refeeding syndrome.

The presentation concluded with a discussion on managing obesity and being careful to avoid messaging that could trigger an eating disorder. When counseling patients on obesity, clinicians should not encourage dieting, skipping meals, or using diet pills. The focus of the counseling should be on healthy habits that can be sustained for a lifetime and should encourage frequent family meals. Clinicians should also closely monitor weight loss in patients who need to lose weight to ensure that the patient does not develop an eating disorder. Patients who arent properly monitored could develop anorexia nervosa, which would not present the same way as the stereotypical case.

View post:
Watching out for eating disorders in kids and teens - Contemporary Pediatrics