Our Yoga Retreat coming up soon (March 20 to 22, 2026) includes feasting on delicious Vegetarian Ayurvedic food.
Lots of fruits, vegetables, spices and grains with legumes, nuts and for some, dairy, providing protein.
Even though these legumes have been properly prepared to remove any phytates, with the advent of the keto / paleo (no grains, sugar, legumes) diet explosion, there are now more students who struggle to digest grains and legumes.
It’s not a huge issue, as there are heaps of other things to eat, but it’s an interesting dilemma in terms of what’s happening to the modern biome.
Legume fibre (prebiotics) feed the bacteria right at the bottom of your digestive system, and when you remove this fibre, these bacteria reduce and die off.
Why are these bacteria important? For mental health.
A robust, diverse biome is a predictor of good mental health and personality traits like curiosity, sociability, and courage.
Researchers performed a faecal transplant from anxious mice to normal mice, and this caused the calm mice to become anxious.
To prevent leaky gut. A diet low in prebiotic fibre results in starvation and select bacteria die off. In desperation, these bacteria will start to consume the protective mucus layer of the intestinal wall leading to inflammation and a leaky gut.
Finally, the ability to digest legumes is considered the most consistent dietary predictor of survival in elderly populations across different ethnicities.
If your biome is still healthy enough to digest legumes, you are stomping through your golden years!
