How Does Your Gut Affect Your Overall Health?
We are what we eat.
Research on gut bacteria is booming and the importance of looking after the good guys within us is becoming more and more well known. The good bacteria LOVE fibre (prebiotics) to thrive and many people aren’t eating enough fruit and vegetables to meet their fibre needs. Fibre is also like a broom to the intestines, sweeping away the toxins to remove them from the body.
A daily bowel motion is essential to health. This ensures toxins are removed from our systems and not recycled back around our bodies by sitting in the intestines too long. We want our bowel motions to be non-urgent, well formed, easy to pass, medium brown in colour. A Naturopath will always ask you these questions as we know how important this is!
The use of antibiotics unfortunately has a harmful effect on our good gut bacteria, and when these go into low amounts, the not-so-beneficial bacteria is able to thrive. This leads to gut dysbiosis and what we term Leaky Gut / Gut Permeability. Think of the top lining of your intestines as an Aloe Vera consistency, quite fragile and gel-like. We need to take care of this, it’s our barrier between waste being excreted and waste being reabsorbed. With gut dysbiosis that top lining of your intestines becomes leaky, the junctions looser than they should be. Large waste particles are then able to re-enter the bloodstream.
Leaky Gut presentations we see in clients include: Gas, Bloating, Nausea, Heartburn, Diarrhea, Abdominal Pain, Constipation, Ulcers, IBS, Eczema, Acne, Anxiety, Depression, Brain Fog. It leads to Nutrient Malabsorption, Auto-Immunity, Food Intolerances, Systemic Inflammation.
Healing the gut is where Naturopathy truly does shine. We love seeing clients symptoms and quality of life improve with some simple changes to their diet such as increasing fibre, and avoiding gluten/dairy/alcohol to name a few, as well as some beautiful supplements to rebuild the good bacteria, reduce the not so beneficial bacteria, and soothe the gut lining to restore back to a health.
Once the gut has been treated and improved we see clients symptoms reduce or disappear such as hayfever, eczema and thyroid issues to name a few.
Written by Amanda Roe-Hunter. Adv.Dip.Naturopathy.