Healing Digestion

How can I improve my digestion and gut health?

If you suspect that you have poor gut health, there are ways to naturally heal, starting by managing our stress and reconsidering what we eat. Many of the same foods that we use to fight fatigue are also the same foods implicated in creating gut dysbiosis. Although each person’s list will be highly individual, the common foods which impair gut function include gluten containing grains (wheat, barley, rye, spelt, kamut, oats), sugar, certain dairy foods, as well as foods high in pesticides.

Some of the more obvious signs of gut dysbiosis or poor gut health are:

• Bloating
• Constipation
• Diarrhea
• Bad breath
• Cramping
• GERD (acid reflux)
• Difficulty concentrating or “brain fog”
• Fatigue
• Cramping
• GERD

An unprecedented amount of research has gone into gut health and the microbiome in recent years, giving us an entirely new understanding of how our gut functions and how it can easily become impaired. Functional medicine practitioners now see our gut health as the cornerstone of what may be causing disease.

Our gut lining is comprised of specialized cells that control the absorption of digested food into our bodies. Certain triggers can impair the function of this gut lining:

• Stress
• Certain foods like wheat, excess sugar, dairy
• Chemicals like pesticides and herbicides
• Medications, most notably, antibiotics

Over time, the effects of these triggers accumulate to alter the structure and relationship of the microbes that make up the microbiome as well as injure the lining of the gut.

An injured gut lining allows harmful particles of improperly digested food and other pathogens into the blood stream. Important mechanisms of the immune system lie directly beyond the cells of the gut lining, which sound the alarm that harmful particles have entered the body.

A potentially overactive immune system can become dysfunctional over time, causing mild symptoms like skin outbreaks, digestive distress, and brain fog to more chronic conditions like arthritis or full-blown auto-immune disease.  

Relief can often be found by eliminating or minimizing foods containing gluten (like wheat), sugar and dairy. Although for most of us, longer lasting changes in symptoms are only possible by arriving at your own individual lists, depending on the unique set of microbes at play within your gut.

Relief also usually means working to reduce stress and finding ways to minimize the toxic effects of chemicals in our food and environment.

You can learn about which foods may be harmful and which foods will be beneficial to your gut health by registering for my free Healing Digestion eBook. Not only will you learn why certain foods are hurting your gut and robbing your energy, but you will learn which foods can help heal, as well as how to shop for those foods.