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Get things moving, improving digestive health boosts immune health

By Michael J.E. Greff, MD

Promoting strong digestive health is an important factor contributing to a healthy immune system.

The digestive tract is one of the most complex and extensive com­ponents of the immune system, housing nearly 70 per cent of your body’s immune cells. Additional­ly, approximately 90 per cent of your body’s Serotonin, the feel-good hormone, is produced in the gut. Both our immune system and how we feel is directly impacted by what we eat.

Now let’s talk about constipa­tion! We all have bowel move­ments! We experience changes in our stool!

Constipation happens when you experience infrequent or hard-to-pass stools, hard or lumpy stools or when your bowel movements leave you with the feeling of being incomplete. Difficult and irregular bowel habits can be uncomfort­able, disruptive to our daily rou­tines and diminish our feeling of well-being leading to a decreased quality of life.

The first step towards improv­ing digestive health is understand­ing what is normal for you. Not everyone needs to have a bowel movement each day. Your normal may be anywhere from three times a week to even three times a day!

Perceptions of constipation often vary based upon our own personal experience, family and culture. While approximately 38 per cent of the Canadian popula­tion reports symptoms of consti­pation, it is normal for everyone to experience some of these symp­toms from time to time. If your normal schedule is off, it could be constipation.

In most cases, constipation is a symptom, not a disease. Constipa­tion may be the result of not eat­ing enough fruits, vegetables and whole grains, which all provide us with dietary fibre that can help keep us regular. As we age our di­gestive tract may slow down mak­ing the need to manage our digest­ive health more apparent.

Often constipation can be man­aged through changes to your diet, drinking more fluids, and exercise. When these changes don’t seem to be enough, new and exciting nat­ural health products offer novel solutions to improve not only our bowel health and regularity but al­so our immunity!

At KGK Science, we are con­ducting a study looking at how Flo­radapt™ Mature Immune Defense can improve nutrient uptake, en­hance the immune system and im­prove digestive health in a healthy population. Your participation in our study will help us determine this. Floradapt™ Mature Immune Defense is a specially formulated probiotic containing two propri­etary probiotic strains of Lactoba­cillus plantarum.

We are looking for both healthy women and men aged 50 to 85 years who currently experience constipation in one of the three fol­lowing forms:

– experience less than three com­plete spontaneous bowel move­ments (CSBM) per week. These are bowel movements which are not interrupted or split between bath­room visits. Returning to the bath­room does not constitute a separ­ate bowel movement but the con­tinuation of an interrupted visit,

– at least 50 per cent of your bowel movements consist of sep­arate hard lumps or hard-lumpy sausage-like stool (Bristol Stool Scale – BSS Type 1 or Type 2), or

– have less than five bowel movements per week with at least 25 per cent of these also being separate hard lumps or a hard-lumpy sausage-like stool (BSS Type 1 or Type 2) combined with excessive straining during most bowel movements.

Participating in one of our studies makes you a Health Hero taking part in cutting edge research! We take steps to ensure our study participants are treated with the utmost levels of respect and confidentiality. For scientific purposes, each study has its own set of eligibility criteria that takes into consideration your age, gender, weight, height and/or medical history.

Additional study information will be determined upon online screening. Participants will be compensated $XXX for their time and are required to attend four study visits over a period of 98 to 130 days.

If you are interested in participating in this digestive health study, you can complete our online screening questions by visiting

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