Your gut is home to trillions of bacteria. These bacteria are in charge of helping you digest and absorb food, create energy, regulate hormones, maintain your weight and pretty much everything else important that happens in your body. So yes, having a healthy gut is pretty much everything!
Whenever I begin working with a new client, I almost always focus on healing their gut first, no matter what they are seeing me for. Leaky gut and lack of good bacteria in your intestines leads to pretty much every health problem possible, including weight gain. Unlike most other countries in the world, Americans do not include fermented foods in their everyday diet and turn to antibiotics any time they are feeling sick. Not to mention our lack of exercise, stress and processed foods we are putting in our bodies; we are basically killing our gut ecosystem.
Now, just because you don’t have stomach cramps or don’t regularly stock up on antibiotics doesn’t mean you don’t have a compromised digestive system. As I mentioned, symptoms show up in hundreds of ways including difficulty losing weight, fatigue, foggy brain, depression, arthritis, skin disorders and so much more.
Here are some pretty easy ways to begin to heal your gut and heal your body:
- Take a strong probiotic- I take two 15 billion probiotic pills every morning. They not only power up my digestive system, but they also help ward off colds, help me absorb my food and nutrients better, lower cholesterol, optimize detoxing and so so much more.
- Drink bone broth- Bone broth is rich in gelatin so it’s wonderful for helping repair your intestinal lining. Make sure that it’s made from grass-fed cattle or pasture raised chickens.
- Eat or drink fermented and gut healing foods- kombucha is one of my favorite things on the planet. I drink a Synergy kombucha almost every single day because it has nearly 1 billion probiotics which basically means, it’s providing my body with a ton of gut healing bacteria that it needs to function. Some other awesome fermented and gut healing foods include sauerkraut, keifir, lemon water and kimchi.
- Meditate- Even if it's only for 5 minutes a day and you feel like your mind is racing. Meditation does not have to be perfect, trust me. Try to sit still, breathe and relax so that your body has time to heal. Meditation can be a really profound practice with incredible results.
Even if you only begin doing two out of these four things, you will start to see signs of improvement. Maybe it's just that you start to sleep better or your hair begins to shine a little bit more, but these improvements will begin to grow on each other. Take care of your digestive system and it will heal and take care of your body.
References- Institute for Integrative Nutrition, Mind Body Green.