100 Key Steps You can Take Today to Start Healing Your Gut

100 Key Steps You can Take Today to Start Healing Your Gut

It’s where 80% of your immune system is housed, all the food you eat, and your poop.

It’s practically the clearinghouse for your body’s health – the gut.

It seems that for almost any health issue you’re experiencing, from skin rashes to stomach pain, from weak joints to mental fog, “heal your gut” is the first line of defense.

And for good reason!

If your gut health is in order, the good things you eat impact you more, that bad things impact you less, and your body is able to stop fighting gut inflammation and start dealing with the rest of what might be going on.

I’m guessing just about every adult in America (and most kids too!) would benefit from some gut-healing protocols. Some recommended strategies, like the GAPS diet, may take over a year to complete.

Many that I’ve been looking at this month are only 3-4 weeks, very doable.

I’ve taken the basic points from the following resources and made a super fast checklist for you about gut health and what things you can do, foods you can eat and avoid, while working to heal your gut:

So You Wanna Heal Your Gut?

Here’s what you cut out to heal your gut:

• gluten/wheat
• dairy
• sugar (especially ANY sweeteners with fructose)
• refined grains
• processed meats
• processed foods
• starchy vegetables
• nuts and seeds
• meat raised on grains
• industrial fats
• alcohol
• some say most fruits too
• any potential food allergen
• all inflammatory foods
• no antibiotics
• environmental toxins (personal products and cleaning supplies, for example)
• reduce caffeine
• reduce or eliminate chocolate

You should also do a quick saliva candida test to see if you should ALSO cut fungus-promoting foods like cheeses, mushrooms, vinegar and more and add more raw garlic to your diet. Heal Your Gut, one of my sources, demonstrates:

Here’s what you add to heal your gut:

• gelatin
• LOTS of water and fiber daily
• green vegetables
• sulphur-rich vegetables
• fruits should only include lemons, limes and occasional berries
• seaweed
• possible chiropractic adjustments for constipation
• herbs in your cooking or supplement form:
• other gut-health herbs the Herbarium recommended:
  • burdock
    • “As a mild bitter, burdock also tonifies the digestive system by stimulating the secretion of bile. This helps improve appetite and digestion, thereby benefiting the health of the whole body.”

Gut Thrive in 5 is a program that was developed by a clinical and holistic nutritionist who used her years of experience and thousands of clients to figure out how to package up expensive one-on-one custom protocols into a program that can be successfully accomplished by people at a distance through this online course.

Gut Thrive in 5 is the program my husband and I are using to improve our decent health to much more (we hope) optimal health. It was developed by a clinical and holistic nutritionist who used her years of experience and thousands of clients to figure out how to package up expensive one-on-one custom protocols into a program that can be successfully accomplished by people at a distance through this online course.

Here are some habits to begin:

• Regular exercise – gentle, low intensity like walking or yoga. Interval style workout for no more than 20 minutes.
  • Some excellent examples, including the importance of calming and breathing, in Live Pain Free, like this one:

• Relaxation/prayer/meditation/centering – whatever you need to reduce your stress
• Get adequate sleep – at the very least, this will make it easier for you to stay on an elimination diet because your cravings will be down and motivation and willpower up.
• You might want to do a cleansing detox by eliminating inflammatory foods and many of the things on the lists above and also doing certain detox activities:
  • green vegetable drinks
  • increase your water intake
  • a food cleanse
  • sauna
  • rest and relaxation
• Detoxing your life – resolve outstanding emotional issues too!

Here’s how to get the best start with babies’ gut health:

• no antibiotics at birth
• if C-section, consider infant probiotics – even a “perfect” birth doesn’t guarantee healthy gut flora for baby
• Be patient and wait to introduce solids until at least 6 months and when baby has signs that s/he is ready for food.
  • Watch carefully for sensitivities (rash around mouth, diaper rash, etc.) and remove those foods again. Often the child will be able to eat them when they’re older.
  • Avoid high allergenic foods (the “top 8”).

Gut dysfunction can be linked to virtually every disease and can cause conditions like autoimmunity, fatigue, depression, food sensitivities, chronic pain, allergies, and many more. These conditions are by and large preventable--learn more online for free at the Heal Your Gut Summit.

Gut dysfunction can be linked to virtually every disease and can cause conditions like autoimmunity, fatigue, depression, food sensitivities, chronic pain, allergies, and many more. These conditions are by and large preventable–learn more online for free at the Heal Your Gut Summit. I LOVE this seminar and the speakers in it.

I wrote more about WHY our guts may be damaged and the science behind it all last year in this post: “What the Heck Does it Mean to Heal my Gut?”

This list is great in breadth but shallow in depth, I realize. You can only make small changes without knowing how to knit all of this together into something truly doable – but that’s what the full resources are for.

Now about that gut health…

Have you ever been told you should heal your gut to fix a problem in your body? Have you ever tried a month-long protocol to clean your digestion up?

Original article and pictures take www.kitchenstewardship.com site