“All Disease Begins in The Gut” - Hippocrates

Like the rainforest, the gut has its own living ecosystem and it helps nourish the entire body.

The pitch for a healthy gut:

90% of Serotonin, the “happy chemical,” is produced and stored in the gut. Serotonin impacts mood, libido, metabolism / weight loss, and things like clear skin, and happy brain. The list goes on and on.

habits for gut health

Keep in mind there is no perfect one-size-fits-all gut regimen- it’s super personal - different foods and “fixes” work for different people. So listen to your own body as you shift and change things around.

Let’s start with one big, big reason we need a healthy gut. Digesting food.

food is useless unless ..

...we can break it down. If we were unable to break down the food we eat into very tiny components called nutrients, it would be useless.

The body, our cells, need nutrients to function right. They need them for energy, for the ongoing maintenance inside the body, for us to be able to walk, talk, think, do anything. Yes, for mood too.

In a sense, digestion translates food into a language of health our cells can understand.

Health issues that come with an unhealthy gut include:

obesity
sluggish metabolism
anxiety
depression
insomnia
chronic inflammation
compromised immune function
cardiovascular disease

Hippocrates was onto something we know more about today - that most disease starts with an unhealthy gut. If your gut isn’t working well, your body will not get the fuel it needs to function well.

how to heal your gut for weight loss, better skin, and healthier brain

The claim to fame of the GI tract is to take the food we eat, extract the nutrients, and make those nutrients available to the body along with water and electrolytes, so your body can live. It’s vital, primal, and you can either help it or hurt it.

Let’s look as some of the most basic things you can do to help it.

chew

Somewhere along the way, we forgot that our mouths have a more important function than just talking and tasting food. It’s literally the first part of the digestive system. It’s where we break down food using our teeth, tongue, and saliva. That saliva is an important part of the digestive process – it contains natural disinfectants and enzymes that start the process of breaking down food.

If you don’t chew your food to a very smooth consistency – the next parts of the gastrointestinal tract – your stomach, small intestine and large intestine are going have a struggle to digest and absorb something from that piece of carrot you didn’t chew.

Now, I’m not perfect with this and I don’t chew nearly enough. But once I read up on the topic and heard lectures at nutrition school, I started doing it. I said I will chew each bite at least 15 times, but aim high at 25 times. You know what happened?

I don’t eat as much – it gets boring, and takes more time so I often get full before my plate is empty.
The things that taste good when you actually chew them more than twice are fruit and vegetables. Not kidding, try to chew a cupcake 15 times. It’s disgusting.
I don’t stuff my mouth with as much food. In order to be able to chew, chew, chew I eat smaller bites – which again helps me eat less.

So if you want to improve your gut health for weight loss, better skin and healthy brain – I highly, highly recommend to start chewing more. Start with 15 times, then go up. My ultimate goal is 45.

relax

You’ve probably heard there’s a gut-brain axis and how your gut health affects your brain.

It’s super complicated and a new area of research. For starters, it’s not a one-way street. It’s not like you eat something bad, your gut bacteria changes then you start being depressed all of a sudden. After all other things happen in life besides just eating.

Stress itself can also affect your gut flora and it’s diversity and this, in turn, can affect your mental health. It’s very much like a cycle.

So try your best to eat healthier, but also to reduce stress. Go on daily walks, spend time with people who make you happy, don’t sweat the small stuff and know everything will pass.

practice intermittent fasting (IF)

It turns out – eating less and spacing out your meals can help your gut heal and recover. In fact IF changes the diversity of the bacteria inside your colon, which can then affect your brain health, your weight and your skin. I find the simple 16:8 hours split works best for me (16 hours fasting, 8 hours eating/feasting). Design your own schedule. The times can vary day by day but stick to the ratio. If you have a goal of weight loss, narrow the feasting window. There’s a ton to know about IF - I’ve read a few books about it and highly recommend doing that if you are interested. Just ask if you’d like recommended titles!

sleep

Don’t go a week sleeping 6 hours a day – that’s not enough sleep! Sleep is probably the most important thing you can do for your body to heal. It’s a restorative process. It’s important for your immune system repairing the damage that happens to our bodies throughout the day. And your gut and the microbiome are not an exception to that.

hydrate

I mean drink water, but also consume more water-containing foods, obviously – fruits and vegetables. Because you might be drinking water, but if you’re also consuming dehydrating things like coffee, chocolate, soy sauce, fried food – you’re not doing yourself, your gut and skin health any favors. So make it a point to eat more foods that hydrate like cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli – pretty much most vegetables you know. And, manage your water every day to get enough.

your own diet choices

When it comes to digestion you’re the only one who can figure out which foods work for you. Some people need more fiber, while others don’t do well on so much fiber. Some people feel great following a vegan way of eating, others like paleo. Both are known to positively affect the bacteria inside your gut. However, this doesn’t mean that you need to do either of these diets to be healthy. Not at all. In fact, the ideal for you is one that may be based on one of these, or other ways of eating, but that you customize for your body. You do you.

Something else you want to look into is consuming prebiotic and probiotic, fermented foods like sauerkraut, yogurt, kimchi, and more.

Practice these habits and be mindful of how different foods impact your body, and make adjustments.

A healthy gut is the foundation of a healthy happy you. Hippocrates was on to something.