De-Stress With Sauerkraut

A new study published in Molecular Psychiatry has shown that eating more fermented foods and fiber daily for just four weeks significantly lowered perceived stress levels. Forty-five participants with relatively low-fiber diets were split into two groups.

One group met with a dietitian that recommended a psychobiotic diet, which included six to eight daily servings of fruits and vegetables high in prebiotic fibers, such as onions, leeks, cabbage, apples, bananas and oats; five to eight daily servings of grains; three to four servings of legumes per week; and two to three daily servings of fermented foods like sauerkraut, kefir and kombucha. The control group received only general dietary advice based on the healthy eating food pyramid.

Thegroupfollowingthepsychobioticdietreportedfeelingless stressedcomparedwiththoseinthecontrolgroup.Moreover, significantchangesinthelevelofcertainkeychemicalsproducedbygutmicrobeswerefoundintheseparticipants.Some of these chemicals have been linkedtoimprovedmentalhealth, whichcouldexplainwhytheparticipantsreportedfeelingless stressed.Thequalityofsleepimprovedinbothgroups,butthose onthepsychobioticdietreportedgreatersleepimprovements.

Pomegranate May Offer Skin and Gut Benefits

Pomegranate fruit has been widely used in traditional medicine, and a new, randomized, double-blind, placebocontrolled study published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine looked at the effects of taking pomegranate extract for a period of four weeks on different aspects of skin and gut health. Using facial imaging, researchers found the group that received the pomegranate extract had significant reductions in wrinkle severity and a decrease in the rate of forehead sebum excretion. They also found beneficial effects to the gut-skin axis, noting that participants in the pomegranate extract group had a higher abundance of Eggerthellaceae in the gut with accompanying wrinkle reduction. The scientists concluded that the skin benefits from pomegranate extract may be due to the potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties of phytochemicals, as pomegranate contains more than 100 bioactive constituents.