Tag Archives: stress

Questions & Answers

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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Questions & Answers

Why You Should Keep Your Gut Flora Balanced

What’s the difference between good and bad bacteria?

It wasn’t that long ago when scientists thought that most bacteria were bad and needed killing. The importance of bacteria to human digestion and health hadn’t been recognized. But now we know very differently.

Bacteria help keep us alive. An imbalance in bacteria causes problems, but bacteria are vital to human well-being.

There are many species of bacteria in the gut. Some have the potential to cause a lot of problems. Some even have the potential to kill you.

All bacteria need to be kept in balance. Even bacteria that are generally beneficial can cause problems if there counts go to high.

Scientists have done enough research to recognize the difference between the good, bad, and the ugly bacteria in the gut. For example, Clostridium perfringens can cause severe problems when it grows too fast. Antibiotics can trigger the imbalance that allows Clostridium to get out of control, sometimes to the extent of being fatal.

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Salmonella is another bacterium that lives in the gut but, through food poisoning, it can increase in numbers and make a person very, very sick.

Parasites and viruses can upset the bacterial balance in the gut. Remember that most of these microorganisms live in the body in tiny amounts in normal circumstances. They don’t cause any problems until their numbers increase and they shift the balance in the gut.

Imbalances can be triggered by medication, stress, traveling, or a poor diet. One of the reasons I recommend eating cultured or fermented foods is that it helps keep the gut flora balanced. One of the best things you can do to keep your gut balanced is to avoid taking antibiotics if at all possible.

If you go back in time, you’ll see that people have been eating cultured and fermented food as far back as we go. They knew that these foods settled the tummy.

You shouldn’t have to fear bacteria. Most people tend to keep a good balance in their gut. Do your best to keep it that way.

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Questions & Answers

Five Steps To Regaining Gut Health After Antibiotic Use

If you had a course of antibiotics, it’s essential to do what you can to restore your gut health.

1. Firstly, if at all possible, avoid doing another round. One course of antibiotics is bad enough, taking another round is like going back into the ring with the world heavyweight boxing champion. I’ve had clients who have been on antibiotics almost continuously for six months, and it destroys their gut. I look at it as the medical equivalent of napalming your garden time and time again.

2. Next, it’s crucial that you focus on eating the kinds of foods that will help build your but back up again. If you’ve just finished a week of ciprofloxacin, now is not the time to be feasting on take-out pizza while drinking a liter of pop. You’re better off cooking yourself some bok choy and brown rice at home. If you jump into eating high-sugar food right after finishing antibiotics, there is a very good chance that the yeast population in your gut is going to increase significantly. If you have a burning desire to eat sweets after using antibiotics, it’s a sure-fire sign that you’ve developed SIBO or a yeast problem.

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3. Make sure that you take a probiotic long enough to make a difference. Some people think that seven to ten days of probiotics is enough to reverse all the damage that has been done by antibiotic treatment. Not true. I recommend staying on the probiotic until your gut function is excellent again. Even then, if you stop the probiotics and your gut problems resurface, you need to go back on the probiotic.

4. Make sure you get adequate rest and avoid living a high-stress lifestyle. Some people who get sick, unfortunately, stay sick because they live an unhealthy lifestyle. It may be their relationship, it may be their job, or it could be the family dynamics. Something needs to change because if the person continues to expose themselves to significant stress, their gut isn’t going to bounce back and recover.

5. Please don’t take too many dietary supplements in the hopes that it will speed up your return to gut health. I’ve seen people take 30 or more pills a day. When your gut is recovering from antibiotics, I strongly recommend keeping things simple. Eat a basic, healthy diet and reduce your life stress. Now is not the time to pepper your digestive system with B vitamins, magnesium supplements, zinc supplements, and so on. Try and back off a lot of these supplements and give your gut some space to recover.

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