Pre-Biotics Are Just As Important As Pro-Biotics

 

Microbes Have to Eat Too

 

This week let’s dive into the Mind/Body connection between the gut and brain. Your gut is your second brain, (or depending on how you look at it, your first one, taking into consideration how much it directly affects the brain) and the importance it plays in all functions of the body are drastically overlooked in everyday life.

 How many diets have you seen saying “Feeding Your Microbiome!”? Even within the medical world, the crucial role the micro flora plays in your health has become widely popular and studied only within the last decade.

So why all the hype? Mainly because your gut affects literally every system in your body, including your brain. Sixty to 70% of the immune system is directly located in the gut! These bacteria are even directly linked to your mood, your health, the way you think and feel! A good way to look at it is the image Jim Kwik offers, in his book Limitless, comparing the mind-gut connection to a tree. Kwik states:

The roots in the ground are drawing vital nutrients and water from the soil as well as communication with other plants. Those nutrients are then brought up into the body of the tree, fortifying and building the trunk, giving the tree what it needs to sprout new leaves… which in turn gathers light, another energy source. In the same way, the nutrients we take in are absorbed through our intestines. We rely on those nutrients to fuel our brain.

                Our gut is figuratively our roots, and the nutrients we absorb affect the rest of our body’s ability to function at its optimum health. If a tree is planted in the wrong soil and not watered, the tree will start to die. Although we may not be planted in soil, if we are eating the wrong foods, we are killing our internal microbiome as well; it dies, and all of our systems are affected. Even to the point where we can start to experience depression and anxiety.

Serotonin, a neurotransmitter is used to regulate moods, and is known as a “feel-good” hormone. Ninety percent of the body’s serotonin, which is, found in the gut; when that gets out of balance because our microbiome is all out of whack, it can affect our moods, create anxiety or depression, and this is caused when we haven’t been feeding those flora healthy foods and prebiotics.

            New studies have found that the health biome in your gut isn’t just affecting your digestion. Research from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia found that the same neurons that the brain and gut share also share autism-related gene mutations as 90% of people with Autism also suffer from gut issues. Harvard Health released a study in May of this year finding there is a gut-brain connection in ALS stating: “changing the gut microbiome using antibiotics or fecal transplants could prevent or improve disease symptoms”.

            Leaky gut, IBS, constipation, bloating, brain fog, headaches, weight problems and many more
issues can all be signs that your digestion is in a muck! But, don’t let this get you overwhelmed- there are ways to feed these good bacteria and help you get your health back on track!

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Sulfurous foods such as garlic, onions and radishes break down the fibers in food, making the fiber more available for internal use. The little burn you get when biting into these foods is actually the sulfur and are fantastic prebiotics. Expello-C is also a fantastic prebiotic to feed your good flora

            Now this isn’t saying that because you have eaten a lot of fried foods this week, you’re putting yourself at risk for ALS- the take-away from this is that what you eat IS affecting your body and in very dramatic ways.

            Through the last 6 weeks, I guarantee you have noticed changes with your body in the way you feel on a daily basis. Cleansing, introducing more fibrous greens and drinking more water have all started the healing process on your body and gut. Take just a moment and scan your body; how does it feel? Really take a moment and look to your belly and how it feels. Does it ache, feel heavy, or do you just feel at unease? Taking time to be conscientious about the foods you eat, and the foods the bacteria in your stomach are eating, will show up in amazing ways, with not only your health, but just how you feel in your everyday life! 

Intestinal Detox - Why You Should Start Here

Have you ever noticed after eating a large meal you feel sluggish and bloated, it that your lunch feels as if it is sits in your stomach for hours? What about after a fast food hamburger and even the next morning you wake up with your gut feeling heavy? But on the days you start the morning off with a green juice or a fruit smoothie and suddenly, you feel light all day. These sensations are the way your intestines are reacting to how long it takes them to break down everything you just consumed and then the process of trying to absorb any nutrients it can.  

            To think that everything you put in your mouth should in fact be digested, should be self-explanatory, yes? In reality however, although everything will eventually get digested, to what caliber will your body absorb the nutrients? How much is your body getting out of the food you consume and how well do your intestines absorb that nutrition? This fact alone will drastically change the course of your health.

            “Your health is not what you eat, but what you digest.” Our founder Michael Combs stated. When your gut is unhealthy, all forms of problems manifest elsewhere in your body, as the health of your colon is indicative of your overall heath. An unhealthy colon leads to blockages; and colon blockages can cause everything from bloating and indigestion to constipation- leaving you feeling full and with a heavy gut. Coliids, IBS, various forms of cancer are all responses your body has to an unhealthy colon.

Constipation alone can lead to hemorrhoids and diverticula and diverticulitis, which is when the pouches in your colon get infected and can swell. These can cause serious abdominal pain, and all started just from not having normal bowel movements.

            It’s always scary to look at our own bodies and think “hey, maybe I have a problem here”. It’s almost easier to live with the little discomforts and pretend everything in functioning normally; that is until we are faced with an irrefutable sign, such as cancer, that we have a problem. Having an unhealthy colon is surprisingly easy to ignore. We actually start getting used to feeling just a little bloated much of the time, often finding ourselves having headaches, and not making regular bowel movements. But all of these are signs that our colon isn’t functioning properly.

            The good news is, if we take preemptive care of our colon, we can easily deter these problems from happening later. The best, and exciting part, about taking control of your health now is that not only will you feel better today, you are completely altering the health of your future self and in turn leading to less taxing and possibly deadly health problems. 

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            For an optimally healthy colon, you should do one good cleanse a year. Skip the junk food and the heavy carbs and instead go a little crazy on the vegetables and fruits. And be sure to include anything with high amounts of either fiber to really help to flush out any blockages in your colon. Keeping in mind, about 70-80% of your immune system is in your intestines alone. The healthier your able to keep your colon, the stronger fighting chance your immune system will have at protecting your body from pathogens and viruses.

             It’s a sad but true statement, but the value and importance of soluble and insoluble fibers is drastically under taught when it comes to the American diet. As Healthline experts explains the difference between fibers: “Insoluble fiber bulks up your stool and acts like a brush, sweeping through your bowels to get everything out and keep things moving. The soluble variety absorbs water and forms a gel-like substance. This helps your stool pass smoothly through your bowels and improves its form and consistency.” Being sure to include this in your cleanse can literally clean your colon out!

            Alongside fruits and veggies, there are also many herbs and spices that can help support your digestion as well. According to House of Wellness spices such as ginger, turmeric and cinnamon can be fantastic digestive aids. Spicy foods such as jalapenos or red pepper flakes contain capsaicin which reacts with the chemical anandamide in the digestive track leading to less inflammation in the gut.

            And never to be forgotten, drinking LOTS of water. Because much of the water from the foods we eat is absorbed during digestion, we need to drink water to help flush out the rest of the now dry waste, so it doesn’t sit and cause blockages. Not to mention, we are about 55-60% water, so keep yourself hydrated! 

            The average person can have from 5 to 25 pounds of waste just sitting in their gut causing them undue harm and grief. Don’t be just another statistic! Start today taking better steps today to cleanse your health. Eat your fruits and veggies, drink your water, maybe even go from a run and cleanse that gut! Change your intestines, change your health and change your life! Fiber today can save you from hemorrhoids tomorrow.

 

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The Lymphatic System - Why It's Important

 

The lymphatic system is comprised of LOTS of different working component and is a large part of the immune system. This system includes (but not limited to) the following: lymph nodes, lymph vessels, lymphoid tissue, spleen, thymus, thyroid and tonsils. Your lymphatic system helps rid the body of toxins and maintain balance of the immune system.

            This structure, which acts as the body’s drainage system, works by collecting the waste from your cells throughout the body and then travels back to the largest lymph nodes in your neck before depositing those toxins into the blood stream. As the heart beats, it essentially acts as a pump for the lymphatic system (which does not have one of its own) by creating a vacuum and draining everything from the lymph, in the neck, into the blood stream via the vena cava. All the toxins from the lymphatic system are then transported and filtered through the blood into the kidneys and eventually leaves the body through the urine.

            When this system does not work properly different lymphatic issues can appear in so many ways varying from: lymphoedema (swelling of the legs and arms with tightness of skin and lack of movement), Hodgkin’s Disease/Lymphoma, sinus infections, and stiffness. It can also affect pre-existing allergies and make them worse, and also lead to other allergic reactions with food. Because the thyroid is a key player in the lymphatic system, when this gets out of whack the body can then start having a hard time regulating it temperature, either too hot or too cold, as well as excess weigh being held in the body.

            Since the lymphatic system has no pump of its own, it can sometimes need a little extra help getting going. Now, all movement that we make in our day to day activities helps the circulation of the lymphatic system, but some good ways to help encourage that flow is: deep breathing exercises (think the Wim Hof method), dry brushing, drinking water, exercise including yoga, tai chi, walking and jumping.

           So many of us spend the days sitting at our desks, sitting in our cars to commute to work, and then getting home and sitting down to watch a movie. Lots of sitting, lots and lots of sitting. And all of this can lead to a stagnation of, well all of our systems, but since the lymphatic system depends on our movement to flow, we need to be making sure to help it along. Any of the modalities mentioned above are a great way to help it out.

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            As the lymphatic system is essentially our garbage disposal system, the more junk that comes in the more junk that it has to filter out. What our environment is composed of, what we eat and drink, and what we put on our bodies and in the air the lymph system has to collect and then dispose of. And because the cardiovascular system and the urinary tract are directly in communication with the lymphatic, the harder each one up the chain has to work, the more work they all consequentially have.

            When you eat fast foods, drink lots of sugary drinks, spray on way too much hair spray in the morning- all of those will in turn have to be broken down and filtered out for your body to work at its optimum ability. Throw in some inflammation (that so many of the foods that we eat end up causing in our body) and boom, we have a lot for our lymphatic system to trudge through to get all that junk out.

            Due to your lymphatic system being so intricately woven through your entire body and since we have more lymph fluid than blood, if it goes out of whack, your entire human can feel the repercussions. (*The average 145 person has 12 liters of lymph fluid compared to 5 liters of blood.) So, take some time each day to get some movement and drink plenty of water to make sure that lymph fluid gets to moving and gets the chance to clean up your body! 

 

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What's Good Health Without Good Microbes

 

Hippocrates stated both “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” and “All disease begins in the gut”. He lived in the late 300 B.C. era- long before we had crash diets, fad eating habits and a shocking misunderstanding of the relationship our body has with the food we consume, people knew that whatever it was in your gut was controlling the outside world.

            With that being said, lets talk about your microbiome, which is all of the bacteria that lives in your gut. As defined by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences:

The microbiome is the collection of all microbes, such as bacteria, fungi, viruses, and their genes, that naturally live on our bodies and inside us… they contribute to human health and wellness in many ways. They protect us against pathogens, help our immune system develop, and enable us to digest food to produce energy.

                       The microbiomes were first discovered in the mid-1880s by Austrian pediatrician Theodor Escherich. Then in 2007 The Human Biome Project was launched by NIH which was to understand and better categorize the human microbial flora. Since then multiple studies have been done and companies launched to try and figure out what exactly our microbiome is compose of and why precisely, it’s so important.

                        Arguably, there is no other system, that is more important than the gut and maintaining its health. After all, there are over 100 trillion bacteria living in your gut at this current moment, according to Dr. Steven Gundry. According to Dr. Gundry, we are less “human” than we are bacteria, and this is because of all those tiny organisms living in our gut.

                        This bacteria control just about every system in our body- they effect our mood, energy level, our immune system, weight loss. Really you name it and a disruption in the gut health can affect it.

First let’s look at Naveen Jain, founder of Viome, which was created to heal the microbial problem in the gut. In an interview with Jay Shetty, Jain stated that practically every disease and cancer in the body is caused originally by chronic low-grade inflammation.

Inflammation is an immune response, which is trigger by cell irritation (toxin, viral, or environmental related) aka something disturbing the cell which in turn illicits an immune response. So, what’s causing the cell to trigger the inflammation is what we need to get rid of to stop having that response. And why is this important: because pain is caused by inflammation. What we eat causes reactions in the body and if that reaction is inflammation, we walk around every day with constant pain.

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The amazing thing is however, we can change this, just by being diligent about what we consume. Dr. Terry Wahls, author of The Wahls Protocol, wrote her book after being diagnosed with MS and then healing from it! In an interview with Tom Bilyeu, she discusses how she was diagnosed with this disease that had no cure in the early 2000’s, and for the sake of her kids, she wanted to slow process as much as possible. Through years of trial and error with her own body, she went from being wheelchair bound and having chronic pain, to biking to work every day 20 years later. And she found her cure through food!

            In this same interview she discusses how to help people heal past their diseases, she initially takes them off sugar, dairy and gluten. When these foods are consumed, they all have an inflammatory response in the body. Now if we look back to the food pyramid we discussed last week, Dr. Wahls is suggesting we do the EXACT opposite of what the pyramid and plate are suggesting… It’s odd and it’s sad how little truly good information we are given as to how to eat healthy.

            From studies conducted at Harvard Medical School, they found that 90% of serotonin receptors are located in the gut. When we have a diet full of whole and real foods that react positively with those bacteria, we end up with a great mood and good digestion. The bacteria are happy, so we are happy. However, when we are eating lots of processed foods that are chock full of sugar and other garbage, those have a negative reaction with the bacteria. This is turn causes internal chaos which leads to not only that dreaded inflammation but can also make us feel depressed or anxious. 

 Taking probiotics can also help create internal gut balance. Probiotics are live microorganisms that are intended to have health benefits when consumed or applied to the body and the two most common types are Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium. Yogurt, kombucha, and Kiefer can be a way to introduce probiotics into your system, just be careful to check the label to make sure they are low in sugar. (Please note brands like Yoplait are practically nothing but sugar. Instead of helping your system you will be doing more harm, so be very conscientious of the sugar content.) Lactobacillus Acidophilus and fermented cabbages and other vegetables are fantastic ways to introduce bacteria into our microbial flora. Garlic, radishes and onions are also great ways to get probiotics naturally into your diet.

            If I can overstress nothing else through this 26-week marathon: take care of your gut! No matter what else you do, if your gut is in a state of disrepair the rest of your human will not be able to heal. When you start eating to please these bacteria you will notice positive results very quickly!

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