Tag Archives: gut issues

Healthy Gut Indicators

How can you tell if you have a healthy gut?

It’s an interesting question that I’ve been asked many times before. Firstly, what is health? Is health purely the absence of symptoms? What does it mean to have excellent gut health?

Having good gut health stems contributes to having good health overall. More and more research is validating the work I’ve been doing for decades.

Most all aspects of your wellbeing are controlled, and have their origins in, gut function. It’s not accurate to say that a person with anxiety has a healthy gut. In most of the cases I’ve seen, people with major anxiety have problems with their gut. Does anxiety cause gut problems or vice versa? It’s hard to know.

Take a good look at your fingernails right now. Can you see any fine lines in them? Do they flake or crack or break easily? What’s your hair like? Has it got a nice shine to it? Does it fall out or break easily? What about your skin? Have you got nice clear skin? Have you got eczema? Have you got psoriasis or acne? Do you have pockmarks all over your skin or other issues with your skin? I find that the people with the healthiest guts have the nicest looking skin.

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What about your joints? Do they click or creek when you move them? Can you feel grinding movements when you rotate your neck? All of these symptoms are are signs of toxicities and mineral deficiencies.

When you have deficiencies, a myriad of symptoms can pop up. The gut is the seat of health providing you’re eating good food, and your digestion works well. If you have healthy gut flora, you are going to be able to digest and absorb the nutrients in your diet. Your cells can utilize the nutrients and help keep you symptom-free.

Provided your food choices are healthy, and you haven’t been pummeling yourself with antibiotics or pharmaceutical medications, you’re going to have a healthy gut. Remember, though, that your lifestyle, not just your diet, influences the state of your gut.

Eating under stress is not good. A horrible relationship, an awful job, or living through a local crisis, will put a huge strain on your gut.

If you’ve got a very happy, balanced, healthy lifestyle, with good family and good friends, the gut should function very well. There should be minimal sound coming from your GI tract. You may get a little bit of rumbling here or there or a little bit of gas, but that’s normal. But huge amounts of gas and bloating is concerning.

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What You Should Know About Garlic and Your Gut

Let’s talk about garlic and bacteria.

Many websites are good at bashing garlic, and saying that it indiscriminately kills good and bad bacteria. They suggest avoiding garlic in your diet. Some sites claim that garlic is too pungent and contains chemicals that have an overly powerful effect on the body. A lot of these websites are Ayurvedic websites that don’t like onions or garlic in the diet in general. But, there are generally no scientific links to support the negative opinions of garlic.

Instead, some studies demonstrate garlic having beneficial properties when it comes to GI health. Garlic has not been shown to destroy beneficial gut bacteria. It turns out that various strains of Lactobacillus are resistant to fresh, raw garlic. There is also evidence from studies that garlic is a prebiotic.

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Of course, everything in moderation. If you eat a pound of raw garlic daily, you’re going to wipe everything out, including your relationships. No one is going to come near you. But, if you eat one or two cloves of garlic per day mixed into your food, you’ll be fine.

Garlic can help keep the blood thin, regulate blood pressure, and increase resistance to viruses in the blood. It’s a superb food but should be used carefully.

It’s not uncommon to read studies that completely contradict each other. When it comes to garlic, I think it helps to look at how it was used for hundreds of years by many different populations. It was used so extensively because of the benefits it generated. This is one of the reasons garlic is still around today.

In my opinion, science has validated garlic as a superfood in terms of its positive effects on the body. I put garlic in the same category as fresh salmon, avocados, blueberries, black currents, and 90% dark chocolate. Regularly consuming small amounts of these superfoods will have a profound effect on your health. Eaten in moderation, I have no concerns about garlic killing beneficial gut bacteria.

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Organic Meat: Is It Better For The Gut?

What’s the best type of meat to eat?

Is it be organic meat? Would it be non-organic meat? I think you know the answer. Anything that you put in your mouth that’s clean is going to be better than something that’s not clean.

If you’re eating non-organic meat, there are chances that it contains chemicals. How do we know that the same chemicals aren’t in organic meat? Unfortunately, there are some unscrupulous people in the organic market so make sure you buy meat that’s certified organic.

In my opinion, organically produced meats are a better grade of meat. They tend to have a different fat composition with healthier fats than found in conventionally raised livestock.

If you’ve opted for non-organic meat, buy lean cuts. Fat is where chemicals such as pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics are often stored. Adipose tissue in the animal holds more toxins than the muscle.

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If organic meat is hard to afford, you could opt for the cheaper cuts such as skirt steak, which is less expensive than sirloin or prime roast.

In terms of health, it pays to shop around to get the best quality of meat. Farmer’s markets are a good starting point. An online search should help you find suppliers of certified organic meat.

I believe organic meat is the way to go to avoid chemicals that can be harmful to your gut and overall health. They use lots of different chemicals on animals these days. If you can minimize the chemical intake in your body through the food chain, it’s going to be a lot better for the gut.

I caution you to be particularly careful with chicken. Here, in New Zealand, they can use up to a dozen different types of antibiotics in the poultry trade. For that reason, I generally only buy free-range chickens. We know the people who run the farm and what they feed the chickens.

My take-home message is to avoid eating too much conventionally raised meat because of the chemical content.

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What Does Soap Do To Your Microbiome?

Have you ever thought about how your gut could be affected by the chemicals in dishwashing liquid?

Why not shift to a more natural kind of a product? May common dishwashing liquids use chemicals like surfactants which break down the grease and grime.

Some of these soaps also consider chemicals like triclosan. Triclosan is an antibacterial substance that used in hand soaps, dishwashing liquids, and chemical cleaning products.

I read an interesting study from 2000 that showed triclosan is associated with methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus, a bacterial problem found in hospitals.

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I recommend being very careful about using products with triclosan because it may disrupt your microbiome.

Another study demonstrated that children whose parents/caregivers hand-washed dishes had fewer allergies than children whose parents used the dishwashing machine.

I think the take-home message from this study is to use natural soaps without harsh chemicals when washing your dishes. The goal is to preserve your beneficial bacteria.

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Regaining Your Gut Health After a Colonoscopy

How do you restore your gut function, especially your colonic function, after having a colonoscopy?

Colonoscopies have come a long way. They’re nothing like there were back in the ’70s and ’80s. They’ve become a lot less invasive, much more technologically advanced, and they use much smaller equipment.

Still, I recommend that you take it nice and easy after a colonoscopy. Try not to have a lot of food. Have smaller portions and don’t eat high fiber fruits or vegetables that could irritate the gut. An essential step is to completely avoid alcohol for at least two weeks after the colonoscopy.

Light soups like chicken broth and steamed vegetables would be good options after a colonoscopy. Nice, soft, white fish filets are also suitable. Steamed fish and chicken breast are quite tender and easy on your gut. Some fruit is okay but not too much and avoid fruit that is particularly high in sugar.

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I’m not keen on the fruit juices and gelatin desserts that some medical websites recommend. I don’t think that amount of sugar is what your gut needs. I suggest keeping sugar to minimal levels when trying to get your gut back to a good state after a colonoscopy.

I’ve read that eating brown rice after a colonoscopy is not recommended. I tend to disagree. If you cook the rice and make it very soft, it’s a perfectly good food to eat after a colonoscopy. I also recommended having a bit of sour Greek yogurt daily, and kefir might be helpful as well.
Probiotics after a colonoscopy can help with your recovery.

In general, rest up and take it easy for a bit after you’ve had the procedure. If you want to know what shape the gut is in after the colonoscopy, wait a month and get a comprehensive stool analysis. That will let you know the levels of your gut bacteria and where you’ve got the right species in the right amounts.

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