The Gut Reset
By now you’ve learned the impact that food and lifestyle can play on our health, so it’s time to kick it up and start applying what we are learning. Let’s start with a quick lesson in how food interacts with the body.
The food we eat comes in and needs to be broken down into usable nutrients. This starts happening as soon as food hits your mouth, saliva contains enzymes and bacteria to start the process, so it is important to chew all food thoroughly. Food then goes into the stomach where acid continues the breakdown process to get it ready for absorption in our small and large intestines. As food enters the small intestines, if the other processes have worked appropriately, it is ready to be absorbed into the blood stream through little finger-like projections called villi. Here’s where it gets interesting. If you’re eating things your body does not like, ie sensitivities, allergies or artificial ingredients, then it can’t be absorbed and our body will try to reject and rid it. When this happens a protective inflammatory process occurs making the villi swell and secrete mucus that contains blood cells to help with the defense. As this occurs repeatedly the villi become permanently damaged and begin to die and break. Repeat this over and over as we ignore symptoms of gas, bloating, and indigestion, and you develop an intense response that cannot differentiate healthy from unhealthy cells and you begin to have openings in the intestinal lining, called leaky gut. Once we have reached this point now tiny food particles leach out into the blood stream, and we have a whole system red alert and autoimmune disease is born. Sounds scary right… it should… but we can fix and prevent it.
Here we will dive into how we can heal it. First let’s add one more level to the gut anatomy, we are supposed to have trillions of healthy bacteria to further breakdown and digest food, but as this inflammation occurs, they die which further increases inflammation and leaky gut. So, step one is to get good pre and probiotics in our diet. Many of us will need a supplement to resupply the bacteria, my favorite is listed in the link tab. Other ways are through our diet, eating fermented foods like pickles, sauerkraut, Kiefer/yogurt (if you handle dairy), and kombucha are a great way to get probiotics. Prebiotics are the food for our probiotic friends to eat and are found in fiber containing foods, veggies. During this time, I highly recommend that if you have not had dietary sensitivity testing you do that now. This is the easiest way to find your gut sensitivities and are very different from allergies found in allergen testing. Check My Body Health is an easy way that gives SO much info for a convenient price, discount code in the link tab.
You’ve made changes and your gut flora is flourishing with probiotics, and you have gotten your gut sensitivity panel back… what now? Now it’s time to make diet changes, this is where eating for YOUR health kicks in. This is where you’re going to want to find a medical provider to look for any vitamin/mineral deficiencies and replace those nutrients. Diet is going to look like this: 1) cut out the biggest category of food sensitivities, this is usually dairy and/or gluten. This will look like making smarter food choices ONE AT A TIME. I DO NOT want you to throw out all your food and buy new…. That’s not realistic and its horribly expensive. (if you still want to do this then donate the food you plan to get rid of to a shelter or food pantry) Let’s make this change both mentally and financially possible. So, the next time you go to the store, shop along the outer walls, these are your whole foods; fruit, veggies, dairy, eggs and less processed items, basically if the item IS the ingredient, you’re good (unless sensitive). 2) Read the labels and avoid the ingredients you’re sensitive too, you can do this by eye or using an app like “FIG”. Also, watch for the word “artificial” (ie dye, color, flavoring) because those are lab created unnatural… your body cannot and will not digest them. Make these changes in small increments, start with pantry foods, and find substitutes and then move to the fresh and frozen categories.
What should I drink? This is easy, water. That’s it with few exceptions. Some tea, coffee, and electrolytes are acceptable, but first and foremost plain, filtered water. Why is water so important? Over 80% of your body is made of water, every single cell MUST have it to properly function, and it is how we rid the body of toxins. No water = toxic build up and decreased or halted cell function and repair. Start slow, especially if you don’t “like” water. But here is the deal, your body NEEDS water… your brain just has an addiction to the sugar and caffeine that is in everything else, I’m guilty here too. I used to be “a pot of coffee a day” kind of girl when I was exhausting myself from nursing shifts…. But I can tell you now, being 4 months without 90%+ caffeine/coffee/soda I have far more energy than that cup ever gave me. Taper these down so you don’t have withdrawal symptoms… yes, all of those can and will likely cause withdrawal… your body is addicted to caffeine, sugar, and processed food ingredients, the same way as a heroin addict is to heroin. THE PROCESS IS EXACTLY THE SAME.
Here’s the deal…. Your symptoms are a warning signal from your body. You have all these things stored in your body…. So, what happens when they stop coming in during the change phase and then you burn all the stores… so you might feel worse at first… but stick with me! In order to become healthy, we must first process the old and broken to create the new and mended.
Until next time.
