Things that destroy our good bacteria which live in our digestive tract include:
2. Other drugs especially when prescribed for long periods of time, for example, pain killers or analgesics (aspirin, ibuprofen), contraceptive pills, sleeping pills, heartburn pills.
3. Diet, especially a diet high in sugars.
4. Disease, such as, infectious diseases (typhoid, cholera, dysentery, salmonella), diabetes, autoimmune disease, obesity, and neurological conditions.
6. Other factors include physical exertion, old age, alcoholism, pollution, exposure to toxic substances, seasonal factors, exposure to radiation.
Every one of us carries a unique mixture or microbes in the gut. Under the influence of drugs and other factors, listed above, this gut flora will be changed in a unique way in every one of us, predisposing us to different health problems. This damage gets passed along from generation to generation as a newborn child gets its gut flora from the mother. And as the damage is passed through generations, it gets deeper and deeper. For example, a grandmother has mild digestion problems as a result of low-key gut dysbiosis. She passes moderate abnormal gut flora to her daughter. On top of that she decides not to breastfeed, because it is not fashionable. As a result, her daughter suffers from allergies, migraines, PMS and digestive problems. Then she takes contraceptive pills from the age of 16, which deepens the damage to her gut flora, not to mention a few courses of antibiotics along the way for various infections and a diet of fast foods. After 10 years of being ‘on the pill’ she has children, to whom she passes her seriously abnormal gut flora. Her children develop digestive and immune problems, which then lead to eczema, asthma, autism and other learning problems.
From Natasha Campbell-McBride in the book GAPS Gut and Psychology Syndrome (Chapter 4, p. 33-39)