New Research Confirms the Benefits of Fermented Foods

Plenty of research confirms what functional medicine doctors have insisted for many years: the gut microbiome plays a crucial role in your overall health. Imbalance in the microbiome, also called dysbiosis, can result in many unpleasant health conditions, including a higher risk of obesity, leaky gut, inflammation, autism, and arthritis.

A recent study at the Stanford School of Medicine shows how one simple change in your diet can improve the health and diversity of the microbiota in your gut while reducing inflammatory enzymes in your body.

What is this simple change? Adding fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, or yogurt to your diet. Let’s take a look at how fermented foods contribute to better health and disease prevention.

The benefits of fermented foods in your diet

In this Stanford clinical trial, 36 healthy adults were randomly assigned to a ten-week diet that included either fermented foods including yogurt, kefir, fermented cottage cheese, kimchi, and kombucha tea or high-fiber foods (such as legumes, seeds, nuts, whole grains, vegetables, and fruits).

The findings seemed very clear. While scientists and functional medicine doctors have recommended a high fiber diet to promote microbial balance and improve all-around health, the fermented foods-enhanced diet was found to be more effective in improving the gut microbiome.