Gut health is a newer trend out there, research for gut health really started between 2008 and 2012. At the time gluten-free was becoming a popular weight-loss trend, but it also began to open the eyes of researchers as they saw what was happening to those who were healing from diseases they didn’t know they had.

Today we will dig into gut health, why it’s trendy and how you can evaluate your own gut.

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Full Transcript

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Hello, welcome to be your best self health checks weekly casual conversations about taking health into your own hands. I’m your host Kristin Longacre. If you know me, you know that I kind of have a passion for understanding about how what we eat affects our body, specifically how our gut reacts. I know I’m a little bit weird.

In the world we’re living in right now though, gut health is becoming a very popular theme. Many people are starting to realize the correlation between their immune system and how their body is reacting or consuming certain foods. For me, personally, it might sound a little bit odd, but my son’s got health journey really directed me on this path.

At age two and a half he was diagnosed with fructose malabsorption. Hmm, yeah, okay, I was there. That’s exactly how I felt going into it. Over a period of 18 months, we work to come up with the ideal diet for his specific body. Through that I realized how many people out there, including myself, were going about their daily lives with completely abnormal health that they just assumed was regular.

So why should we be talking more about it? I’m glad you asked.

Yeah, gut health is a newer trend out there. But it’s something that many people probably need to start jumping on the train for, because they probably have messed up gut health and not even realize it. research for gut health really started between 2008 and 2012.

At the time, gluten-free was becoming a popular weight-loss trend. But it also began to open the eyes of researchers as they saw what was happening to those were healing who were healing from diseases they didn’t even know they had.

I once heard gut health described as the queen of the castle is the gut. If she’s unhappy, she will take down the kingdom.

And in my last two years of living it and learning it, I’ve honestly never seen a better way to describe gut health. your gut is referred to as your second brain. It doesn’t tell you how to move or what to do. But it controls important parts of your body such as mood, digestion, immunity, and the list continues from there.

The more we learn about our gut throughout all of this research that’s continued over the last 10 to almost 15 years, the more important it becomes to our overall health.

Without question, the reason that gut health has become trendy in the last two years is that 70% of your immune system stems from your gut 70% no wonder that kingdom can be taken down so quickly by your gut.

Remember, the kingdom is your body. That’s not all though. 95% of your serotonin which is what regulates your anxiety, happiness, your mood, etc, is produced in your gut, when they say food can control your mood. It’s actually true like food really can decide how you’re going to react the rest of the day.

Do you see why I start to love all these connections? Having a gut that is off-track can actually trigger anxiety or depression. your gut, it does a lot. Quite possibly the most important piece though is that the lining of your gut is the barrier to the rest of your body.

If that barrier breaks down, it can lead to food allergies and intolerances, immune abnormalities and autoimmune diseases.

This is where leaky gut comes in. leaky gut is a gray area in the medical field. I am not a doctor, nor am I in the medical field. However, leaky gut is a term that gets thrown around a lot when somebody isn’t feeling right. And there isn’t an exact reason to what their problem is.

When we look at it from a holistic perspective, a leaky gut means your gut is inflamed, and it’s not absorbing nutrients properly. If you’re eating something as it makes its way into your mouth, which is the start of your gut and all the way through your body.

It’s your guts job to break down that food, absorb the proper nutrients and discard what’s not good for it. However, if your guts not functioning properly, that waste starts leaking into the rest of your body.

Therefore, that waste is never digested properly.

It may also prevent good nutrients from getting into your bloodstream. So let’s look at something like brain fog or your inability to focus. While you would think the issue is with your mind, it actually could be the way your body is handling food you’re eating or something going on with the environment around you.

Instead of the good nutrient Getting up to your brain to help your brain function properly. They quite possibly are getting blocked from getting there by other things that have snuck through your gut lining.

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Therefore, your brain isn’t functioning right, and you suddenly develop this brain fog or lack of focus. Now, it’s not a problem. That’s the end of the world, believe it or not. leaky gut can actually be fixed most of the time. It is usually something as simple as diet, a medication you recently took or something in the environment around you.

Here’s the kicker 90% of Americans actually have leaky yet. Yeah, 90%. You heard that right.

The environment, the food we’re eating and stress levels that we live in our breeding grounds for gut problems. As a society, we’ve just started to figure this out over the last 10 to 15 years. But many of us aren’t quite willing to admit that the problems we’re having require us to change our diets. So let’s talk about the symptoms of leaky gut.

You ready to sound like a drug commercial symptoms of leaky gut could possibly include but are not limited to bloating, acid reflux, acne, eczema, poop issues, fatigue, brain fog, and the list continues. I mean, it it really does sound like a drug commercial when you consider what all could be caused by leaky gut. We’ll live in a world where we are on the hunt for quick fix to all of our medical and life problems.

So instead of getting to the actual root issue, we’re running towards medications to get fixes. Over time, these quick fixes are breaking down our bodies.

I am not anti medicine by any means. I absolutely believe there is a time and a place for medication. However, sometimes that quick fix for something like acid reflux could actually be doing more harm than good in the long run. So that brings us to the next question, how do you solve your gut problems without taking a medication?

For starters, research. Quite possibly This is the most important step to solving your gut problems. But it might also need to involve more than just yourself. As a health coach. I do help with this piece of it, but you might also need to bring in someone like your family doctor. Research is paying attention to your body and taking steps to learn more about your health. For example, bloodwork, food, journaling, sleep, blogs, etc. Well, awesome to start these on your own. definitely consider involving someone else, either your doctor or professional who can help you understand what you’re finding and what areas can use improvement and how to improve that then becomes the adjustment phase.

When it comes to gut health, more than likely will start with the food you’re eating or the environment that’s around you. Chances are something’s going to come up in your research. For example, you might notice that while your food journaling cheese is always resulting in your stomach being cramped up and bloated. Or you might notice that when you eat a lot of gluten, your mood drops really quickly.

Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t eat cheese or gluten for the rest of your life.

However, it means something about these foods is not agreeing with your gut at its current state. A lot of times the next step would be going through a longer elimination diet to see how your body reacts to a few weeks without those specific foods. Again, this is where it’s important to have a doctor or a professional involved when you’re eliminating or understanding how food works for you. Discuss the findings of your food journal with them and be honest, they can help you plan to eliminate and for how long to see what happens. elimination diets are quickly becoming my favorite thing to watch people go through.

Not only do they notice that one symptom might clear up but they actually begin to notice other things that are going on their body start to disappear as well.

For example, one person was dealing with severe stomach cramps but also had ongoing arthritis in the morning. After eliminating some inflammatory foods for three weeks to help with her cramping. Almost all of her arthritis symptoms disappeared in the morning.

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They had assumed that arthritis was just part of their life for the rest of her life. But by eating the inflammatory foods, parts of her body were just swelling up which were triggering the arthritis.

Was the Arthritis gone No.

But by reducing the amount of inflammatory foods she was able to control the pain that came with it. I have experienced gut health firsthand with my four year old baby, his battle will forever and ever be ongoing.

However, we have spent two full years learning about his food triggers noticing how it affects him and working with him on healing from it. It’s by far one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever dealt with. However, The difference between a healthy and a sick B is night and day.

As I mentioned, it’s not an overnight process nor is gut health, something you should tackle alone. Definitely, definitely reach out to either your health provider, a health coach or someone to help start this process with you, and start figuring out how to get your gut back on track.

I’m always here if you have questions and feel free to drop us comments or notes in the podcast notes at podcast at best self health coaching calm.

As always, we’ll be back next Tuesday with more discussions and we’re gonna dig into more with inflammatory foods and some fast foods. Hope you all have a great week. Thanks for tuning in. Feel free to leave a review at iTunes or your favorite podcast app. Have a wonderful day.