Restore Your Gut, Restore Your Health: Here’s How

A well-functioning and healthy colon is incredibly important for your overall health and well-being. Having a compromised gut microbiome may lead to inflammation, pain, and disease. This is why regular colon cleansing is essential to support your microbiome, detoxify your body, lower inflammation, and support your total body.

Good Bowels are Essential for Good Health

Having good bowel movements is one of the most important elements of your overall health. They remove waste from all your previous meals, ideally within 24 hours. When your body is healthy, good bowel movements happen 1 to 4 times a day ideally early in the morning or shortly after your meals.  Interesting side note, when we study cultures that eat no “man-made” food, only traditional foods, they have a bowel movement after every meal, and colon cancer is very rare.

Normal stool is the result of a healthy digestive system that breaks down and absorbs your food and then gets rid of all toxins and waste. Normal stool is brown, soft, smooth, and snake-like. To determine if your poop is healthy, you may look at the Bristol Stool Chart as shown below.

Healthy bowel movements help to:

•       Reduce microbial load on your body

•       Eliminate destructive endotoxins (toxins created inside you)

•       Reduce inflammation throughout your body

•       Help to calm your brain and nervous system

•       Enhance energy and mental clarity

•       Improves skin health and natural glow. 

•       Reduces chronic pain levels.

Danger Signs of a Toxic Colon

When you are eating a diet high in refined sugar and high starch foods, seed oils, processed food, junk food, food that you are sensitive to like gluten and dairy, or non-organic food, you are overwhelming your body and digestive system. Chronic stress and exposure to environmental toxins, such as air pollution, conventional cleaning and body products, and other chemicals also lead to toxicity in your body. This may lead to a toxic buildup and may make old stool stick to your colon walls.

Your stool should consist of fiber and dead bacteria.  By the time you have processed your food from your stomach to the colon, that is all that should be left!

How do we know if we have a build up in the colon wall and we may have a colon that is not working properly?

Here are some signs and symptoms.

•    Bad breath

•    Gas and bloating

•    Acid reflux

•    Constipation

•    Dry skin and hair

•    Inability to gain weight

•    Stinky gas

•    Irritable bowel issues

•    Intestinal pain

•    Fatigue

•    Food sensitivities

Your gut is connected to all areas of your body and health. If your gut health is compromised, your entire body becomes compromised too, and you may experience an increased risk of inflammation, pain, and disease. This is why it’s extremely important to take care of your gut flora.

Restore Your Gut Microbiome

You probably have been hearing more and more about our “microbiome” and the important role it plays in overall health.

 Many things can put this out of balance as mentioned above including antibiotics, pharmaceuticals, and drinking alcohol every day, which can cause an imbalance in our microbiome.

The gut is filled with a diverse community of different types of bacteria that some say outnumber the cells in your body by a 10-to-1 ratio! When it comes to taking control of your microbiome for better health, the key is diversity and proper balance.

Prebiotic Foods

One of the things you can do is include “prebiotic” foods in your daily diet so you feed your microbiome.  Below are some ideas:

•   Asparagus

•   Beets

•   Broccoli (cooked)

•   Cabbage (cooked)

•   Carrots

•   Hearts of palm

•   Leeks

•   Apples

•   Avocado

•   Berries

•   Pears

•   Chia seeds

•   Flax seed

•   Ginger root

Depending on the health of your gut, some of these may cause gas and distress. If that happens eliminate the hard-to-digest foods such as broccoli and cabbage and the seeds.

Fermented Foods

Introducing dietary or supplementary bacteria will accelerate healthy bacterial growth and promote a diverse microbiome.  Here are some fermented foods you may want to try.

•   Grass-fed milk kefir

•   Coconut water kefir

•   Sauerkraut

•   Pickles (fermented not pickled)

•   Kimchi

If you find you react negatively to fermented foods, you have a histamine intolerance.  This is where you would want to take a broad-spectrum probiotic instead.

Fasting

One of the best things you can do to heal your gut is do a bone broth fast. Bone broth contains both collagen-rich gelatin and the amino acid L-glutamine. Both of these have been shown to heal and support the gut lining. Start with a 24-hour bone broth fast followed by a very “light” diet of soups, steamed vegetables, and organic fruits.  Drink plenty of purified water along with your bone broth.  If you have IBS, chronic constipation, an auto-immune disease such as Rheumatoid Arthritis, or any of the symptoms mentioned above, I highly recommend doing a bone broth fast one day a week for four weeks.  Once you do it, you will find out how easy it is and how good you feel!