Frequently asked questions
Is there a specific diet to eat during the course?
If you are feeling stable with your current diet then stick with it. In general, my advice is to avoid dairy, too much starch, and oily food/sauces. Consume starches which are easy to digest and in line with our evolutionary history: potato, sweet potato, etc.
Example 1: Salmon, broccoli, mashed potato.
Example 2: Ribeye steak, sweet potato, broccoli.
Example 3: Chicken-Avocado-potato salad.
Fruit in the morning or as a dessert.
What do I do after completing the course?
Continue taking 1 sachet of prebiotic per day; first using what you have remaining in your Elixa course, and then continuing with the Elixa Prebiotic 1-month supply of sachets. This will stabilise the improvements you accrued during the course and will even lead to further improvements over time.
However - if you judge your gut still has room for improvement, embark on one further round of the full course. In serious and longstanding (multi-year) cases of gut dysbiosis, consider a 16-day course (which is not identical to two 8-day courses, fyi).
Please try to maintain whichever diet is most conducive to you feeling physically energised and mentally happy. On that last point I am referring to mental happiness throughout the entire day; not brief moments of fulfilling a craving followed by feeling bad later in the day or the following day.
When do I repeat the Elixa course in the future?
After you've gained as much improvement as possible in the first round (see 'What do I do after completing the course?') I recommend that people only need to repeat the course on an 'as needs' basis. In other words, take another course only when you experience a regression in gut health (for whatever reason... holiday eating, overdoing the booze, taking antibiotics, excessive stress, diet mishaps).
If you anticipate an assault on your gut health (e.g. you're about to travel to India or take antibiotics or experience significant stress) then you can preventively take Elixa, if you wish to.
Asides from that, I tend to recommend taking the course on an 'as-needs' basis rather than a predefined schedule. It is the most cost-efficient strategy for my customers.
Is the 8-day course enough for me?
I recommend all new users start with the 8-day course. It is the most economic and time efficient method to see the results of Elixa for yourself. From there you can either maintain with the prebiotic only – or – you can take another course if you are tackling a stubborn and substantial gut dysbiosis.
Should I take the daily prebiotic on an ongoing basis?
Yes. 1 sachet per day.
Here's some elaboration:
If the Elixa Probiotic course has been effective for you then it would be helpful to continue with 1 prebiotic sachet per day on an ongoing basis. However, missing the occasional day or week is not a problem. A healthy gut should be able to maintain itself; even in the face of brief stints of less-than-ideal diet and lifestyle. The aim with Elixa is to achieve robust, long-term improvements that begin in the gut and propagate throughout the body. We are not here to achieve fragile improvements that would regress at the slightest hurdle- no thank you!
So the reason for needing a prebiotic on an ongoing basis is to simply stack the cards in your favour when it comes to the ongoing and unavoidable problematic factors of modern lifestyle and diet which act against gut health. Put another way: we don't all live in situations where we can replicate the hunter-gatherer diet and lifestyle!
The daily prebiotic acts to provide a safety buffer to help avoid your gut going off the rails again – an important consideration for those who have suffered with gut problems for years on end and just want to be done with it and get on with a healthy life and other pursuits.
This is getting a bit beyond the scope of an FAQ answer but something that is important to consider is that the health benefits of resolving gut dysbiosis begin quite rapidly in the gut and some other systems of the body. However, for them to propagate fully through all the systems which the gut dysbiosis had been negatively affecting, it takes time. And you want that 'timer' to start ticking as soon as you resolve your gut dysbiosis. Ergo, you want to avoid disrupting this process with blips in gut health. Put another way: It is important to aim to maintain as perfect gut health as possible - for at least 2 or 3 months - after the course is finished - so as to allow all the affected systems in the body a chance to recover completely. After that is done you can be a bit more lax with things.
Which probiotic species does Elixa Probiotic contain?
Six strains from the following species/subspecies of the genus Bifidobacterium:
Bifidobacterium adolescentis
Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis
Bifidobacterium bifidum
Bifidobacterium breve
Bifidobacterium longum subsp. infantis
Bifidobacterium longum subsp. longum
The strain selection is industrial know-how. These are unique and special strains – and that's an understatement. It makes a difference for manufacturing quality and effectiveness in the human gut. It's one of the most important reasons for Elixa's effectiveness.