Are you bothered by abdominal bloating, gas, flatulence, belching or an irritable bowel (constipation alternating with diarrhea, or maybe predominantly one or the other)? You may have a condition called “small intestine bacterial overgrowth,” or SIBO, a relatively newly recognized form of intestinal dysbiosis. You may already know about one kind of intestinal dysbiosis, where candida and/or other bad bugs get the upper hand over the good bugs in your intestines. SIBO is another kind of intestinal dysbiosis found only in the small intestine—that twenty-foot long convoluted tube curled up in your abdomen that leads from stomach to colon. When bacteria and other microorganisms that usually live in the small intestine, with beneficial or at least neutral effects, proliferate abnormally (“overgrow”), a pathological situation develops. This leads to the kind of symptoms mentioned above, as well as to nausea, leaky gut, malabsorption and deficiencies in certain n…

Although Americans need to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, the food gurus these days aren't pushing fruits as much as they once were. That's because more information has come out about fructose, the sugar in fruit. While fine in moderation, in excessive amounts, fructose can be toxic. That's why at Beyond Health, we've always recommended not exceeding more than two pieces of fruit a day. But one fruit the experts still recommend is berries, including strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, cranberries and raspberries. Why? Because no fruit offers so much nutritional value for the calories and fructose it delivers. Berries for Disease Prevention Berries are chock-full of phytonutrients (translation: nutrients in plants) that are some of the world's most powerful antioxidants and anti-inflammatories. Since oxidation and inflammation are fundamental processes in all disease, it's not surprising that scientists have been finding that berries help to prevent and curb every…