BOO Bad Bacteria, YAY Good Bacteria!

Apparently my healthy diet has saved me from a day that can only be described as a potential 'spontaneous colon blow day'. This is a very good thing.

Let me explain.

A friend of mine took me out to a new East Indian restaurant the other night (friend and restaurant names withheld, although perhaps I should warn others about the seemingly inocuous eating joint). Anyways, I always call East Indian buffets "the thousand calorie download" because I'm pretty sure you'd be hard-pressed to find a place where you could wolf down more calories in less time, barring some fast food joints of course.

Oh and we ATE till we hurt.

And we hurt the next day too.

I have to wonder how many of those calories were actually absorbed since my whole meal plus half my intestines and maybe even my appendix escaped out the back of me by noon the next day. I was literally in awe. Hey, if you want to do one of those 'colon cleanses' then perhaps this restaurant is for you. There was seriously about an hour there where my butt was married to the toilet bowl, indefinitely. It was rude. Which is why I had to bring it up on this blog of course, haha.

Yeah whatever.

Here's where my healthy, good bacteria colonized gut saved me. My friend called a couple of days later and said, "uh, how were you feeling yesterday?" I knew exactly what he was referring to so I gave an appropriate description to the world-of-turmoil my intestinal tract had experienced the morning before. He proceeded to tell me that my hour of excrutiation constituted his WHOLE DAY. He couldn't keep anything down. He had cramps. He was at the mercy of the latrine, a jester at the porcelain throne, a hooker to the john... THE WHOLE DAY. And the worst part -- he had a date that night!!!! The poor guy. The details of this he mostly left out, except to say that the call of nature occured on his way to pick her up. He couldn't exactly open the chutes at her house, so he stopped at Walmart and the washroom there had no toilet paper! At this point he had to leave his stall, buy some toilet paper and return to finish his business! I had a pretty good chuckle at his expense, I must say.

The only thing I can figure is that all the healthy bacteria in my gut prevented the bad ones from doing much damage. They ameliorated my diarrhea by "stimulation of the immune system, competition for binding sites on intestinal epithelial cells and elaboration of bacteriocins." (Source: Probiotics in the Treatment of Infectious Diarrhea). Booyah to the little buggers! Now excuse me while I chow down on some yogourt, bananas and barley.

Hmm... I get a feeling that if I ever wrote a column about nutrition, it would be a little less than conventional. But it would get the point across.