I've experienced my fair share of gut issues over the years. From leaky gut, inflammation, diarrhea and even nausea. Did I share too much? The thing is, I didn't take action until I started to realise how the gut plays a vital role in overall health and well-being. Your gut health controls everything from your weight to your mood to brain health, inflammation, exercise tolerance, recovery, and immune function.
2000 years ago, Hippocrates made the statement, "all disease begins in the gut." Only now are we coming to understand just how right he was
Not only that, 90% of your serotonin, the happy, feel-good hormone, is produced in the gut. So if you’re feeling depressed, it could be an underlying gut issue. Serotonin is also a precursor to melatonin, the hormone that helps you sleep.
Why is gut health so important?
It no longer surprises me how many people are struggling with gut issues. I'm not just talking about endurance athletes suffering from some gut distress during training. I'm talking about our general day-to-day gut health.
The scary part, most recreational athletes, ignore gut issues and assume they are just a normal part of life. We prioritise exercise as the golden ticket to looking good, feeling good, and staying in shape, but an unhealthy gut can prevent us from achieving our health and fitness goals.
LET'S BE CLEAR, NONE OF THIS IS NORMAL!
Having a healthy gut should mean more to you than being annoyed by a little bloating, heartburn or having a “food baby.” Gut health is central to your entire health and connected to everything that happens in your body. That’s why I always ask my clients about their digestive health and get to work on priorities gut health above all else.
It's worth considering that there are 500 species (around 1.5kg) of bacteria in your gut. There are trillions of bacteria in your gut, and collectively the bacterial DNA outnumbers your human DNA by 100 times. You have about 20,000 genes, but there are 2,000,000 (or more) bacterial genes! You are more bacteria than you are human.
Altogether, your gut is a huge chemical factory that helps you digest food, produce vitamins, regulate hormones, excrete toxins, produce healing compounds and keep your entire body healthy. When the gut starts to break down, it won’t be long before the rest of your body start to break down.
Optimal gut health has become a prominent focus in 21st-century health. Having too many bad critters hanging out in your gut or having a leaky gut wall has been linked to numerous problems, including; autism, obesity, diabetes, allergies, autoimmunity, depression, cancer, heart disease, fibromyalgia, eczema, and asthma. The links between chronic illness and an imbalanced gut microbiome keep growing every day.
Many scientists have begun to refer to the gut as our second brain, an idea that is reflected in amazing books such as The Good Gut, Brainmaker, The Microbiome Solution, and The Gut Balance Revolution.
Why is conventional medicine not the answer to gut issues?
Unfortunately, conventional medicine is not the answer to gut issues because it fails to emphasise the importance of digestive health, and more needs to be done to build awareness and prevent disease.
Gut health research continues to advance well beyond what is being practised in the conventional health system. Most conventional medical doctors are not up-to-date with gut research, and the standard diagnosis for digestive complaints is Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).
IBS can be caused by a range of factors, including food allergies, overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine (SIBO), a lack of digestive enzymes, parasites living in the gut, zinc or magnesium deficiency, or even heavy metal toxicity. That’s why it's essential to personalise treatment based on each individual's unique circumstances and not simply label digestive complaints as IBS.
When was the last time a doctor asked you:
If you were a vaginal or c-section birth?
How long were you breastfed?
How many times you've taken a course of antibiotics?
How often you take NSAIDs (like ibuprofen and naproxen)?
What your diet is like?
Do you have any food sensitivities? What foods are setting you off?
How much fibre do you eat?
Do you eat gluten and dairy?
How much alcohol do you consume weekly?
How are your stress levels?
Do you get 7-8 hours of quality sleep regularly?
Are you regularly exposed to chemicals and toxins?
Do you use a lot of disinfectant and antibacterial cleaning products?
All of these things can impact your gut health, and it's important to understand your health history so that you don't end up with the generic IBS label.
What defines a healthy gut?
Gut health could be defined as the optimal digestion, absorption, and assimilation of our food. Your body survives on the nutrients that you’d gut can digest, absorb and assimilate. You could be eating the “best diet” and still not be getting enough nutrients into your body because your gut is failing to do its job.
You can think of your gut like a rain forest where the bugs in your gut create a diverse and interdependent ecosystem. Just like a rain forest, everything must be in balance for the ecosystem to survive and thrive. Too many of the wrong bugs (like parasites, yeasts or bad bacteria) or not enough of the good bugs (like Lactobacillus or Bifidobacteria) can lead to serious damage to your health.
Optimal gut balance begins with your diet.
Over the coming months, I’m going to be researching and writing more about gut health. I want to help build more awareness around how to optimise your environment and lifestyle factors to improve your gut health. It should be no surprise that eating whole, unprocessed, and unrefined foods are one of the best ways to maintain a healthy gut ecosystem. Highly processed and refined foods, sugar, industrial seed oils, and flour are some of the worst foods for gut health.
Your gut bacteria love high-fibre plant foods, and fresh fruits and vegetables should make up a large proportion of what you eat. After my last blog post series, one eating more protein, you might be surprised to hear me say you need to up your carbohydrates (fruit and vegetables are carbohydrates and recreational athletes shoulder be including these healthy carbs in their diet).
If you have a healthy gut, you want to eat a diet with lots of fibre, healthy protein, and healthy fats. If you have underlying gut issues, certain "gut-healthy foods" might actually make you feel worse.
For example, people with histamine intolerance can experience unwanted reactions when consuming fermented foods and beverages such as sauerkraut, kimchi, apple cider vinegar, cultured milk and yoghurts, beer, wine, etc.. because these foods are high in histamine.
Another example is people who suffer from small intestine bacteria overgrowth (SIBO), who often experience digestive complaints after eating certain foods high in fibre. SIBO occurs when bacteria that is supposed to be lower in the gastrointestinal tract have crept up to the small intestine where it doesn’t belong.
Good fats, including omega 3 fats and monounsaturated fats, such as extra-virgin olive oil, avocados or almonds, improve healthy gut flora, while inflammatory fats like omega 6 vegetable oils promote the growth of bad bugs that cause weight gain and disease.
Some studies have linked changes in our gut ecosystem to obesity resulting from an intake of inflammatory omega 6s and not enough anti-inflammatory omega 3s. Bad bugs produce toxins called lipopolysaccharides (LPS) that trigger inflammation, insulin resistance or pre-diabetes and, therefore, promote weight gain.
Research has shown anti-inflammatory and weight loss benefits from adding Medium Chain Triglyceride (MCT).[1] I often add MCT to my morning coffee, or I will fry or bake food in coconut oil which natural contains MCT.
Often the accumulation of environmental and lifestyle factors can cause gut issues and lead to health problems later in life. You may have been eating gluten and dairy for years without any complications, but the accumulation over time can lead to gut issues later in life. Suddenly, you have multiple food sensitivities. You're constantly bloated, gassy, or experiencing constipation and/or diarrhea, and you don’t know why?
Lack of sleep and chronic stress also contribute to gut issues. In fact, your gut flora listens to and becomes influenced by your thoughts and feelings. Research also believe that your gut bacteria can influence your throughs and feelings.
Since 2018, I’ve worked with an integrative doctor to stay proactive in managing my health and wellbeing. I've done multiple stool tests, an organic acid test (OATs), hormone testing, and heavy metals testing that has helped me improve my gut health, sleep, recovery, mood, libido, and more.
The conventional medical system is not set up to prevent disease. Why should you wait until you are sick before you start taking care of your health?
Shouldn't we be preventing disease instead of treating disease?
As a health coach, I often recommend seeking an integrative doctor or a functional medicine practitioner in your area. These health care professionals approach health in a much more proactive manner. Yes, the testing can be expensive but not as expensive as a lifetime prescription of pharmaceutical drugs. Not to mention how much better you will feel.
Are you a recreational athlete who is experiencing digestive issues? Do you often have a food baby? Are you bloated, gassy, or do you experience constipation, diarrhoea, inflammation, or even nausea?
Are you struggling to look, feel and perform at your best because your digestive health is letting you down? Low energy, poor sleep quality, weight gain, brain fog, and even feeling depressed can be linked to your gut health.
Lifestyle and environmental changes can go a long way to improving your gut health and elevating many of the symptoms associated with it. It's time to stop ignoring the symptoms and start being more proactive about your health.
If you're looking for some support and guidance in taking steps to improve your health, you might consider working with a health coach. If you would like to know more, please book a discovery call or send me an email.