A Breakdown of Digestive Health and Strategies for Healing the Gut

This week I am addressing digestive health for the first time. I feel this is an important area to treat, especially for those of us empaths who feel everything in our guts. Listening to your gut can be one of the best things you do. This could entail feeling how your gut responds to certain foods you eat or certain people or situations you are around that don't serve your higher purpose.

Our digestive system is connected to the brain via the vagus nerve. Therefore, when we are feeling overwhelmed or stressed this can affect our digestive system and how food is broken down. Our digestive system can also affect the brain as most of our serotonin for happy moods are made in the gut. Therefore, having an inflamed digestive system may make us depressed, anxious or irritable.

Signs of an unhealthy gut include:

• signs of upset stomach such as bloating, constipation, diarrhoea and heartburn

• losing or gaining weight without making changes to your diet or exercise routine

• insomnia, brain fog or fatigue

• skin rashes such as eczema, dermatitis or psoriasis

• autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), Sjogren's syndrome (SS), etc

The microbiome is an incredible population of good and bad microbes living in the gut. Approximately 100 trillion microbes live in our digestive system and assist in multiple functions including:

• improving mental health via serotonin and dopamine production

• improving skin health via the skin-gut-brain axis

• helping to break down and digest food and nutrients such as B vitamins, Vitamin K and short chain fatty acids which are anti-inflammatory in the body

• protecting against toxins in the body via bifidobacteria which keeps toxins from passing through the intestinal wall and into your bloodstream.

• improving immune function via production of antibodies

Improving gut health can be achieved by:

• lowering stress levels with meditation, exercise, yoga, pet therapy, or spending time with friends

• getting 8-7 hours sleep a night

• eating slowly and being sure you are chewing your food thoroughly

• drinking plenty of good quality filtered water (2-3L a day depending on activity levels)

• taking a prebiotic or probiotic supplement to improve the microbiome population

• getting tested for common food intolerances or eliminating common trigger foods

• changing the diet: reducing take away, junk food, red meat, and soft drinks and increasing fruits and vegetables, salmon, tofu, organic and grass fed foods

For gut health include in the diet:

• High fibre foods such as asparagus, legumes, beans, peas, raw vegetables (some of these foods can cause bloating so listen to your body)

• Garlic and onion

• Fermented foods such as tempeh, kefir, kombucha, miso sauerkraut, and kimchi (can also cause bloating for some people)

• Collagen boosting foods such as bone broth.

• Chamomile tea up the 3 times a day

• Slippery elm for those needing some extra healing of the gut lining

• Turmeric and ginger are anti-inflammatory to the gut and great to add to soups and stews

I hope this post helps you all who want to get started on your gut health journey in the new year. It is never too late to start working on the gut and it can improve so many other areas of your life including your sleep, moods and physical health.

Love and light,

Branwen