I recently had the opportunity to attend a conference entitled Brain Solutions. I was excited to see that Natasha Trenev was one of the speakers and would be filling us in on recent advances in the understanding of the gut-brain-microbe axis. But as the conference went on I felt increasingly annoyed by the hyping of expensive products.

As those of you who follow this blog know, I am nearly as skeptical of the supplement industry as I am of the pharmaceutical industry (depending on the product). I prefer to find ways for us to take care of our own health as much as possible without the addition of a middle man to sell us overpriced gimmicks. Don’t get me wrong, it is true that our world is so contaminated and the soil so depleted that it is often necessary to use some kind of a supplement (nascent iodine is one I feel is necessary in our increasingly radioactive world).

Take probiotics for example. In the past 3 years or so the amount of information coming out about the importance of probiotics for our health is mind-boggling, and I fully appreciate the studies and research put into this area. Natasha Trenev is one of the leaders in this field, in fact she was the one who promoted the term ‘probiotic’ in the first place. I have a lot of respect for Natasha Trenev, therefore I don’t want to belittle the work she has done, but I disagree with the idea that homemade probiotics are not as good as the ones that have been scientifically engineered to be sold to us at high prices.