Do you burp, expel gas, suffer from stomach aches or heartburn? Do you pass abnormal stools? These symptoms are not normal, but many people have grown used to them. The gastrointestinal microbiome is a delicate balance of beneficial and potentially harmful bacteria, viruses, and yeast. When the bad guys grow beyond normal limits, your microbiome is unbalanced (dysbiosis). Dysbiosis contributes to an array of conditions including autoimmune diseases.
In November 2020 media announced the following news release, Link Between Alzheimer’s Disease and Gut Microbiota Is Confirmed. A study established the correlation between an imbalance in the gut microbiota and the development of amyloid plaques in Alzheimer’s disease. Who would have thought our gastrointestinal (GI) tract affected our brain? But our body is interconnected, and one part affects the other.
We must care for our gut before amyloid plaques develop in the brain. Researchers found that Alzheimer’s patients had an altered (imbalanced) gut microbiome with fewer diverse probiotics and harmful gut bacteria that should not be there. The harmful intestinal bacteria in an Alzheimer’s patient triggers an inflammatory phenomenon in their bodies. This can be prevented by improving your gut’s microbiome.
Antibiotics, an overgrowth of Candida, undiagnosed gluten sensitivity, and a sugar-laden diet with loads of processed foods harm the GI tract’s intricate balance. However, there are several tactics a person can take to heal their gut.
The following five steps will help heal your gut and balance its microbiome. These are excellent preventive strategies for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. If you would like additional preventive tactics, check out my pamphlet How to Prevent, Improve, and Reverse Alzheimer’s and Dementia.
Steps to Heal Your Gut
First, eat a healthy low-sugar diet full of fresh vegetables and fruits, organic meats, nuts, seeds, and ancient grains that do not include wheat. You want all of your food to come from the farm or ranch and not be processed. If you don’t recognize the food as coming out of the garden, don’t eat it. Processed food has been stripped of its nutrients and has had sugar, dyes, and other harmful chemicals added to it. The sugar and chemically derived flavorings within these foods make us want to eat more of it. Outsmart the food manufacturers and get back to eating God’s foods.
When my daughter was diagnosed with leaky gut syndrome and food sensitivities to eggs, soy, gluten, and dairy, her practitioner recommended a Paleo diet, which excludes grains, dairy, and legumes. What helped us during this transition was the meal service Green Chef. This food service company delivers organic ingredients and recipes to your door. Their carb-conscious Paleo meals are dairy and gluten-free. My teenage daughter never missed a Green Chef meal because they were delicious. If you would like a free box delivered to your door, contact me and let me know.
Wheat (gluten), dairy, and soy are three of the most common food allergens. Therefore, I recommend eliminating them from your diet. If you currently experience gut issues, removing these three food culprits may relieve your symptoms. Grab a copy of my four eBook cookbooks for half-price at https://susanuneal.com/product/4-cookbooks. These books include Breakfast Cookbook, All About Salads, Soup & Bread Cookbook, and Main Dishes Cookbook.
Next, figure out what is going on inside your gut. Many of my health and wellness coaching clients who experience chronic diarrhea have gluten sensitivity. Once they remove gluten from their diet, this annoying symptom disappears. If you want to understand why gluten-related disorders have increased by 400 percent in the last 60 years, read my article What’s Wrong With Today’s Modern Wheat.
Also, determine if you have an overgrowth of Candida in your GI system. My blog What is a Candida Overgrowth addresses this common issue. I also created a Candida quiz at CandiQuiz.com to help you determine if you have Candidiasis (a fungal infection caused by yeast). If you have this overgrowth, take an anti-candida cleanse and kill that nasty bug in your gut. The best cleanse I have found is Biocidin liquid. I took one bottle of Biocidin and then had a stool analysis. They found no candida. This cleanse effectively killed the Candida in my gut. It also kills parasites.
Third, take digestive enzymes right before eating. As we age and unintentionally harm our gut microbiome’s perfect balance, our stomach does not produce as much hydrochloric acid. Therefore, we need to supplement with digestive enzymes to help our stomach digest foods properly. When food is not digested properly, we are not able to absorb the nutrients from it. Taking digestive enzymes helps. If you are eating meat, it is best to take a digestive enzyme that contains betaine hydrochloride.
When our stomach cannot secrete hydrochloric acid in sufficient quantities, harmful gut bacteria can grow causing unknown damage and disease to other parts of our bodies. (Like amyloid plaques in the brain of Alzheimer’s patients.) Digestive enzymes help prevent this.
Fourth, to improve your GI tract’s balance, add probiotics to your diet through food and supplements. Take a probiotic that contains at least ten different strains of beneficial microorganisms. After you finish that bottle, take another bottle with ten different microbial strains than the first bottle. Continue to repeat this. Probiotics help minimize the overgrowth of Candida in your gut.
Ten years ago, I lost my health and suffered from Candidiasis. You can read about my story in Revealed How I Fought to Reclaim My Health. Ever since my illness, I have been more susceptible to a Candida overgrowth and an imbalance in my gut. That’s why I still take a daily probiotic. When I crave sugar, carbs, or alcohol, I know the Candida is growing again, and I have to take proactive steps to stop its growth.
There are many varieties of probiotics in the digestive system, and we do not know which ones we need. That’s why I change probiotic supplement brands every month. In addition, you cannot get all of your beneficial microorganisms from a supplement. You need to get it from food such as sauerkraut or kimchi. Yogurt does not provide enough probiotics. I know. When I was only ingesting Greek non-dairy yogurt as a form of a probiotic from food, my probiotic level was low. A year later, after adding sauerkraut to my diet, my stool test showed I had a normal probiotic level in my gut that came from food. Most people do not enjoy sauerkraut, but you only need one tablespoon three times a week to get a sufficient quantity of beneficial probiotic microorganisms.
I do not recommend Kombucha. I used to make homemade Kombucha by feeding a scoby (glob of yeast) loads of sugar. Each week that I made a new batch, the scoby grew larger, just like it does when it overgrows in the GI tract. And it loves to consume sugar, so it makes you crave it. Kombucha is high in sugar and yeast, so I would not drink it.
Fifth, to heal the inflammation in your gut there is an over-the-counter supplement called L-Glutamine. This odorless, tasteless powder (or you can get it in a capsule) taken twice a day can heal the lining of your digestive tract. I add a scoop of it to my green tea every morning. I can’t taste it. This supplement will help heal your stomach’s lining. Therefore, your stomach’s secretory glands will heal and be able to produce more gastric enzymes to help with the digestion of food and kill harmful bacteria.
Two different times in my life I have been diagnosed with harmful gut bugs. You can read about that in my blog Do You Have a Bug In Your Gut. If you want to determine your gastrointestinal system’s health, ask your practitioner to order a G.I. Map stool test. Unfortunately, modern medicine is just beginning to understand the G.I. tract’s importance to a person’s overall health. A simple, noninvasive stool analysis provides a portrayal of an individual’s gut health (microbiome). So why aren’t noninvasive stool analyses performed more frequently as part of a preventive check-up, just like a blood test? As healthcare consumers we need to be more proactive with our medical practitioners regarding strategies to prevent diseases. We do not want to be part of the Center for Disease Control statistic: 60 percent of Americans suffer from a chronic disease and 42 percent experience obesity. Therefore, follow these five tactics to heal your gut:
- Eat a healthy low-sugar diet fresh from the garden or ranch—no processed foods. Eliminate gluten, dairy, and soy.
- Take the CandiQuiz.com to determine if you have an overgrowth of Candida. If you do, take an anti-candida cleanse.
- Take digestive enzymes right before meals. If you’re eating meat, make sure your enzyme contains betaine hydrochloride.
- Add a probiotic supplement to your diet as well as sauerkraut or kimchi.
- Take L-Glutamine twice a day to heal the lining of your gastrointestinal tract.
Happy Healing!
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Gut health is so important, especially among those with certain conditions like Celiac disease. Thanks for sharing!