SIBO
A full guide to SIBO: why the small intestine is meant to be nearly empty and what keeps it that way, how bacteria that behave fine in the colon cause trouble upstream, and why the gas on a breath test tells you which condition you actually…
Blog
Gut health, explained
Evidence-led articles on probiotics, digestion and family health, from the team that makes Flourish. We show our sources.
Articles
Take Probiotics This Cold and Flu Season!
Every autumn the internet decides probiotics are cold-and-flu armor. The evidence is real but modest: the Cochrane review found fewer people caught an upper respiratory infection and rated…
Probiotics for Athletes
Exercise does change your gut microbiome, modestly, and only for as long as you keep training. Hard prolonged efforts also disturb the gut lining, which is why a…
Probiotics and Breastfeeding
Breast milk is already doing most of the work for your baby's gut, largely through sugars called HMOs that your baby can't even digest, because they're there to…
Gut Health and Testosterone
There is a real connection between the gut and testosterone, in both directions, and it's more interesting than the version being marketed. This article covers what's actually established:…
Food Allergy or Food Intolerance?
A clear guide to telling four things apart: food allergy (immune, can be life-threatening), food intolerance (no immune system, uncomfortable but not dangerous), celiac disease (autoimmune, neither of…
UTIs, Yeast Infections and Your Microbiome
Roughly half of women will have a UTI in their lifetime, and about three-quarters will have a yeast infection. There is a great deal of confident advice online…
Gut-Healthy Traveling
New places, new food, new everything, and a digestive system with opinions about all of it. Three separate things go wrong when you travel, and only one of…
Flourish & Synergy
No microbe is an island. Bacteria live in crowds, and what they do to each other in those crowds is stranger and more competitive than the usual telling…
Probiotics and the Immune System
About 70 to 80% of your immune system is in your gut." You've read it on every supplement website in existence. It was on this one, and it…
Probiotics for Men
Search "probiotics for men" and you'll find a whole shelf of them: black bottle, big number, saw palmetto on the back. Men's and women's microbiomes really do differ,…
Getting Dirty
"A little dirt don't hurt" turns out to have a serious body of research behind it, and the research says something noticeably different from the folk wisdom. Here's…
Alcohol Use and Gut Health: A Crossroads
Summer arrives, somebody suggests a drink on the deck, and the question forms: how much is my gut going to hold against me? Rather than hand you a…
