As predicted in the Dry Run thread, I’m pursuing a goal of eating live culture yoghurts at least six times a week on average throughout 2024. My goal is shanaqui/yoghurts!
I wrote about my reasons in some detail in the Dry Run thread; in short, my gastrointestinal microbiome is probably in a poor state due to my acid reflux, the medication I take for it, and the fact that I have had a cholecystectomy. There’s reasonable evidence that eating live culture yoghurt can help to colonise the oesophagus with beneficial commensal bacteria, at the very least, and quite a bit of evidence that even if bacteria don’t survive stomach acid (which some say they do and others say they don’t), useful effects are found throughout the gastrointestinal tract, including improvements to the immune system.
Ultimately, my goal is to manage my acid reflux through diet and lifestyle alone, to avoid taking proton pump inhibitors forever. If I have to, I have to… but yoghurt’s nice, especially that one with bits of peach in it that I like, and this is worth a try.
I don’t know when or if I’ll need breaks yet, so I haven’t put any. It’s a bit of a gamble, but if the usual live culture yoghurts I eat are not available to me, substitutes like drinking Yakult can count for this goal, provided there are live bacteria in it of the strains that provide the benefits I’m interested in. That should give me any flexibility I need!