Happy Gut, Happy You!

The health of your gut affects much more than digestion.  When most people think of gut health they often think of how they digest food – how frequent and the quality of stools, if they experience any pain or gas, or symptoms attributed to IBS.  These are the obvious markers of gut health, and important ones that can give us insight into what may be going on. 

There are many other symptoms we can trace back to gut health (or imbalance) that may not seem as intuitive.  For example, fatigue, brain fog, headaches, eczema, and acne are all symptoms of poor gut health.  Mood disorders can also stem from the gut – did you know that 90% of the serotonin in your body is made in your gut?  Imbalance here can have a big impact on how your entire system functions. 

Imbalance in the gut is not as simple as adding a probiotic.  While probiotics can be immensely helpful and many times necessary, used alone may not give much relief and could even make symptoms worse in the short term.  To truly heal and balance the gut, we must remove the inputs that cause damage and inflammation, replace those inputs with ones that soothe and heal the gut, add specific foods and supplements that repair the gut lining, then re-inoculate the gut with healthy bacteria, which will all lead to restoration of healthy gut function.  This protocol is called the Five “R” Program and is used by many functional practitioners to retore healthy gut function.

A key component in the first two “r”s – remove and replace – is eating whole foods.  Removing processed foods, and especially sugars and simple carbohydrates and replacing them with whole, complex carbohydrates and vegetables is essential to gut healing.  Now that we are truly emerging out of winter and into spring it is easy to add these complex fibers into your diet! So much is now in season and available and more will continue to become available as we transition into summer.  The micro- and phytonutrients in these are foods important to healing, and of course we cannot have a healthy gut without adequate fiber.

Fiber intake in chronically low in the US, many people get around 10 grams of fiber per day, when we really need 35 grams.  My three favorite foods to easily hit this fiber goal are lentils, avocado, and chia seeds.  With just 1 avocado, 1 cup of lentils, and 1 tbsp chia seeds you will already be at 25g of fiber.  Then with various other grains, nuts, seeds, fruits, and vegetables you can easily reach 35 grams.

If you are local to Table2Mat and are interested in sourcing local, organic vegetables I highly recommend House in the Woods Farm for their CSA – check them out here: https://houseinthewoods.com

If you’re not local, you can check out this website to find other farms and CSAs local to you: https://www.localharvest.org/csa/