<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>

Continuation of extractions...

The best probiotics are living.  Capsules are always questionable because
you don't know if they are still alive or not.  If you don't have severe
milk allergies, I'd recommend kefir.  When you make a batch of kefir, you
know it's alive & teaming with beneficial micro-orgamisms.  It's definitley
the best probiotic I've ever used, hands down.  You can make it at home &
it's much safer that way because there's no added ingredients for you to
react to.  Some commercially made kefirs contain FOS (a starch) that lots
of people have trouble with. Commercial kefirs also contain quite a bit of
sugar & fruit, not good things for a person that's trying to improve their
gut flora.

If you do have cow's milk allergies you may be able to tolerate goat's milk
kefir.  That's the case for me.  You can buy kefir starter & goat milk at
health food stores.  You can also order kefir starters online.  It's simple
to use.  The results my son & I have had with this food is nothing short of
amazing.  It got rid of a long term fungal infection he had been fighting
for years.  For me, it totally cleaned out candida in my gut & restored
more normal function to both my bowel & immune system.  Within a short time
of using kefir, my food allergy reactions significantly diminished.  I've
been using kefir for over two years.  It takes about 4 cups a week to keep
my gut happy.  Drink as much as you can tolerate for the first few weeks.
I drank almost a quart a day at first.  Then you can cut back to the lowest
dose necessary to maintain good bowel flora.

If you can't tolerate any dairy, even goat's milk, I'd recommend you get
hold of some real live kimchee or sauerkraut, both very good sources of
living beneficial bacteria.  These foods will be availabe a large health
food stores or ethnic deli's.  They have to be live & fresh to work.
Canned & processed kimchee or sauerkraut aren't alive.  There's also Primal
defense by Garden of Life.  It's supposed to be wonderful, but I don't
think it's as good as kefir.  It may be your only choice, though. Check out
Dom’s Kefir website for a definition and description of real kefir grains.

It was the care of a skilled naturopath & Sally Fallon's book “Nourishing
Traditions” that rescued me.

It's common that when the GF diet is initiated the immune system is kind of
freed up & turned loose to react & over react to lots & lots of things that
it didn't have the energy to act upon before. Roy Jamron posted something
about the phenomenon last year. It's actually a good thing & part of the
healing process, but it's darn scary & unpleasant while it's going on. And
problems that had been hidden for years can suddenly pop up, like candida &
your joint pain.

The naturopath I saw back then, did allergy testing & put me on B12 shots,
probiotics, etc. He got my GI specialist to prescribe a mast cell
stabalizer (gastrocrom) to help control food reactions for several months.
It all helped & I gradually pulled out of the whole thing. When I started
kefir, it really jumped started my recovery. But man, was it ever hard!!! I
lived on nothing but soft cooked chicken soup for what seemed an eternity!
I can now eat just about anything (except gluten, of course) as long as I'm
careful & moderate. But I still have to severely limit sugar. And, I still
have to use the stomach acid replacement that naturopath put me on 4 years
ago. I'll probably need that for the rest of my life, as stomach acid
production rarely recovers in people with pernicious anemia.
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Candida is a yeast that can thrive when antibiotics are used.  There's a
book called "The Yeast Connection" which gives a good overview of it and
foods that need to be eliminated.  You can be tested for a systemic yeast
infection. http://www.womentowomen.com/LIBsystemicyeast.asp
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Take Culturelle it is a probiotic which helps restore flora and has more
organisms (available at CVS).
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If you need a good probiotic for the yeast, I use Culturelle every day. It
is very good. I took it while I was on antibiotics and I never got a yeast
infection. It is pricey but worth it!
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Some celiacs need to take probiotics as a maintenance thing, so said Dr.
Fasano and it helped our child.  We use DDS+ which has rice starch instead
of corn for the feeder for the 'bugs'.  Culturelle is supposed to be good
for enteric but has lactose in it if that is not an issue for you. There is
a website for culturelle.

~ continues on Summary #3

*Please provide references to back up claims of a product being GF or not GF*