Take Good Care Of Your Gut!

With the cold season inching closer, the time of us getting sick is getting closer. Many people run to the doctor for an antibiotic, but is that always the right thing to do?

Think of your gut as one big snot ball absorbing, assessing, and addressing your environment constantly. Your stomach has good bacteria and harmful bacteria living inside your internal ecosystem. When I talk to my clients about their gut health, I want them to think of their gut as an ecosystem. We want it to be vibrant and plentiful, but we also have to understand we cannot micromanage something so vast but instead need to understand what our guts are telling us because it is communicating with you all the time.

Think of your gut as a second brain in that it communicates through the vagus nerve to your actual brain. Another cool thing is your gut even has its nervous system – the enteric nervous system. Pretty cool, right?

Eighty percent of your immune system lies in your gut. If you have a leaky gut, you will, over time, create low-grade inflammation, which means your immune system will begin working to address this issue, thus leaving you more prone to getting sick.

For example, it is not uncommon to begin working with women who follow a high-carb diet that their friend followed that worked for them but seems to be giving them stomach problems. This is happening because diets higher in carbs are richer in prebiotics and fiber that end up feeding the bacteria inside the small intestine, thus exacerbating her intestinal issues, attacking her immune system that might be responsible for her stomach issues. If you have digestive problems, in short, it will hinder your progress with your health and weight loss or weight gain goals.

If you are struggling to lose weight, have intestinal issues, acid reflux, GERD, and bloating, to name a few things again, you should consider the health of your gut. It is your first brain and talking to you. It is the first communicator to what we bring into our environment. IBS, gas, and bloating are just some leaky gut symptoms, which can be corrected.

The challenging part is that most Americans are eating high amounts of processed food, and leaky gut is becoming more and more prominent.

But, by addressing gut health, you will improve your mood, potential hormone imbalances, possible glucose impairment, and your immune system, to name a few.