OldNuc wrote:Try taking a daily probiotic of the high potency 10+ strain variety as most of these issues are related to the condition and health of the gut flora and not coffee. Increasing the intake of coconut and/or olive oil will help.

Whatever you take, don't take Green Vibrance. I took it once and it got me really sick. (I reported and wrote a review on my experience but the vendor had Amazon pull my review, then later I find out the product had been recalled due to salmonella, via a notice from FDA). Just an FYI.


Regarding coconut, I tried this all natural coconut coffee sold by Costco recently. It was good but very sweet. BMs thereafter were noticeably easy going.

Wow, lots of good info. Oldnuc, as usual you've got a gem. I never thought of that one, always assumed the gut fauna was more or less constant unless you went for a course of antibiotics/surgery. Hmmm, my physician friends pretty much tank a bunch of yogurt nearly daily, which I've wistfully watched as it isn't exactly vegan. I try to avoid milk and cheeses, although i'm willing to break some rules to get at a great espresso I might have to make an exception but want to try getting by without it first. Its a little complicated when you start stripping things out of your diet... personally I've been trying to avoid:
1) sugar 2) salt 3) fat 4) oil 5) meat 6)milk 7) cheese fish or seafood. I'm not adhering to it strictly as I know that unless you live in a village in a 3rd world country or in a rainforest, you can't really expect to avoid all dietary sugar and salt; but I just don't want to scoop the stuff into my bowl. And lately I've allowed some limited amounts of raw fish (I am japanese, after all) and I do make some home made kim chee with very reduced amounts of salt.

I've gotten a big twin batch (from costco) of their psyllium based metamucil copy from kirkland. This stuff expands like crazy in water and gels into a slimy mass... really neat stuff. Reminds me of the chia seeds, which do the same thing. I'm on the 2nd day of a trial of limit 1 espresso in any 24 hour period and taking 2 teaspoons in the morning and 2 teaspoons at night with tons of water and seeing if that will get me by in reasonable comfort. I don't want to try anything with laxatives; I don't think I have an innate problem, as abstaining from espresso quickly reverts my body to a normalized condition. Its more related to excessive response of the smooth muscles to the level of caffeine in the presence of some other compounds in the espresso, near as I can figure. I will report back when I have more data on this single person trial.