I've learned the hard way that the best thing to do for your gut is to just eat plenty of vegetables. Roasting vegetables is as easy as making toast.

Huh, maybe I'll reconsider my kefir and yogurt habit. I have been having a cup of kefir every morning because of its purported health effects, and occasionally I add yogurt to the mix. I haven't seen any downsides, but I haven't been doing it that long, so if it only becomes a problem when it accumulates, I'll just reduce how much I consume.

I guess I need to find a replacement with a reasonably high amount of protein (I've been using it as a pre-workout drink). I'm hoping I can fit lentils in there somewhere.

It seems that one serving a day of yogurt is probably fine, but two a day (about what I have been having) is probably bad long-term. I'll probably continue having yogurt, but I'll only have it once a day and get my protein elsewhere.

I have to admit that I once fell for the probiotics advertising while I was sick with a digestive problem. The probiotics I took made everything worse and they made my thoughts muddy and confused, which meant I continued to take them, like an idiot. I think I'm still suffering from exacerbated digestive issues due to probiotics and I wish I could reverse their effects now.

This is actually kind of exciting because at least the probiotics are doing something. If they're strong enough to make you brainfoggy if you take too much, then maybe they actually can help you recover from depression/anxiety like some of the very popularized but yet still controversial research proposes.

interestingly, the "International Scientific Association of Probiotics & Prebiotics" have an article published 2 weeks later called: "‘BRAIN FOGGINESS’ AND D-LACTIC ACIDOSIS: PROBIOTICS ARE NOT THE CAUSE" [0] along with letter to Nature mag: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41424-018-0057-9

[0] https://isappscience.org/brain-fogginess-probiotics-not-the-...

I eat a metric fuck ton of yogurt, drink the occasional kombucha, and otherwise eat random fermented or brewed items like miso, soy sauce, tofu cottage cheese, cultured cheeses of a number of varieties, and so on. Every once in a blue moon, I might eat pickles, or some kind of pickled item, or vinegar product, like apple cider vinegar.

I don't really drink a lot of beer, but when I do, it's usually thick stouts. I don't drink much alcohol at all anymore. The days when I did, it was more or less a contest or a dare among friends, when out and about.

I drink absurd amounts of coffee. Coffee has some anticeptic aspects, but what role that plays in its interaction with my gut flora is anybody's guess. I have to figure my microbiome has evolved adaptations to cope. Or not. Maybe it's just constant churn, who knows?

I fart constantly. I'm not shy about it. I let silent ones rip all the time. Most of the time, it's odorless air. But when it's not, I crop dust my co-workers shamelessly. They can deal with it. Smell my innards. Inhale the fumes of an ecological menagerie roiling inside me. Gas isn't really an unhealthy thing. It's just a perception of rudeness, like body odor, nose picking and so on.

...oh yeah, I pick my nose too. Like a fiend. Is that considered "bad" or something? Whatever. I look at is as another form of seeding the microbiome, applying the latest patches and AV updates, to harden my system against intrusion.

My shits are huge. They are solid and a brown, like some hue Bob Ross would concoct for the trunks of his trees. When I'm sick, it creeps into an acidic yellow, like vomit, but with an acrid stench.

As for mental fogginess, I can't complain. Maybe the coffee sobers me up.

Reading between the lines, with the gas and the bloating and the fogginess, I'd guess this resembles a drunkenness that draws parallels with anaerobic production of alcohol. Take it too far, and you might be brewing a lightly alcoholic mix, not unlike how kombucha requires ID, even though it's hardly comparable to beer.

I have never been ID'd when buying kombucha, and I buy it quite often.