Improving Gut Health

Taking care of your gut health is imperative to living a healthy and balanced life. Your gut is directly linked to your whole body and is the first place to look for many common symptoms. Most people have about 200 different species of bacteria living in their digestive tract. But diet and lifestyle factors can disrupt the balance of good and bad bacteria, causing the bad bacterial to grow out of control.

If something is off in your gut, it can present with a range of symptoms and over time, can actually cause other illnesses and diseases such as thyroid disease, diabetes, mental health issues, autoimmune diseases, gastrointestinal disorders, cardiovascular diseases and even cancer.  

Common Symptoms of Gut Imbalance:

• Constipation

• Diarrhea

• Heartburn

• Abdominal Pain

• Body aches & Pain

• Headaches or Migraines

• Anxiety or Depression

• IBS

• Obesity

• ADHD

• Frequent Illnesses

• Poor sleep/Insomnia

If you are struggling with any of these symptoms, it’s time to take a look at your diet and lifestyle. Making even small changes can dramatically improve your gut health and your symptoms.

Easy Ways to Improve Gut Health

• Eating Habits

  • Chew your food thoroughly to help start the digestive process.

  • Don’t overeat at meals. Overfilling your stomach causes digestion to slow.

  • Eat in a quiet/dedicated environment. Getting away from your desk or the TV allows you to focus on eating and the food on your plate.

• Eliminate Sugar

  • Sugar is inflammatory. Your body does not like it and has a hard time digesting it.

  • Sugar feeds bad bacteria and creates cravings for more sugar.

• Hydration

  • Shoot for no more than 8oz with a meal

  • Having too much to drink during meals will overfill the stomach and dilute stomach acids and enzymes

  • Plan to hydrate in between meals

  • You should drink half your body weight in oz each day.

• Movement and Exercise

  • Move your body. Activities like walking and yoga are great, gentle ways to add more movement into your daily life.

  • Moving your body helps to keep your gut moving as well

• Stress Management

  • Your body doesn’t digest food properly when stressed

  • Your body needs to come out of the fight or flight mode to be able to digest food

  • Yoga, meditation, breath work, or doing anything that brings you joy can help decrease stress

• Keep a Food journal

  • Keep track of all the food you eat in a week and see if you can find correlations with the food you’re eating and your symptoms.

  • What are you eating in a day? Are you getting all your nutrients in a day?

  • Look back 1-3 days to find symptom triggers

• Supplements

  • Vitamin D

  • Magnesium

  • Pre and Probiotics. Look for a supplement with multiple strains (lacro & bifido) and 10 or more strains. Start with 1-5 billion and work your way up.

If your symptoms are severe, don’t improve with the above lifestyle changes or you just want to get to the root cause of your gut health, we can also run a variety of lab tests to determine specific ways we can address your symptoms.

Gut Health Labs:

• Complete Blood Count

  • White blood cells, red blood cells and Mean Corpuscle Volume

• Comprehensive Metabolic Panel

  • Total Protein, Albumin, Alkaline Phosphatase

• Vitamin D & Omega 3

• Vitamin B12

• Iron and Ferritin

• IgG Food Sensitivity Testing covering 96 different foods

• Gi MAP Stool Test

• Macronutrients and Micronutrients

Getting your gut health in check is key to addressing most other diseases and symptoms and living a healthy life. If you are experiencing any of the symptoms above, make an appointment with Tru Wellness to get to the root cause of your issues and create a customized plan to start your journey to wellness.