Tooting Unicorns and Your Gut Health!
This blog post is from the Nurse Kim archives of myth busting. I want to share some "alternative" or maybe just lesser known health and wellness viewpoints for you to chew on.
*These posts are not intended as official medical advice.
They ARE meant to be fun, informative, and thought provoking, hopefully sparking an interest for you to do your own research (you can start with the links I provide!) and discover the marvels of the human body, and how it can function at its optimal performance level if we understand how it works and interacts with our environment and our diet.
I have a passion for health and wellness through lifestyle and nutrition and have done thousands of hours of research in addition to being a registered nurse for 23 years. I have done A LOT of self-experimentation in and around diet, lifestyle, body care, and supplementation and have spent a lot of time looking into the science behind it all (or lack thereof!). Check back weekly for the latest post!
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So, I wanted to talk about the gut microbiome and fix
everyone’s gut issues in one fell swoop because let’s be honest, a gigundous
amount of people in modern times have all kinds of gastrointestinal ailments –
And then I found this picture of a tooting unicorn and
decided to talk about flatulence instead.
Just kidding… kind of. I’m sure it doesn’t take much to
realize that the two are related, so let’s dive in!
Antibiotics
Without wasting any time, I will tell you what I think is causing
our upset stomachs (flatulence included), and from there, it will probably
become pretty obvious what we can do about it:
- Our ultra-processed, nutrient devoid, doused in pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides, (non) food diet is the first thing that comes to mind when I think about what has messed up our bodies, specifically our guts, over the last 50-100 years.
- The medical community’s overuse of antibiotics for every little cough and hiccup coming in at a close second.
- Antibiotics are also fed to our cattle and poultry to keep them “healthy” in an unhealthy factory farming environment.
- Oh, and let’s not forget the hand sanitizers, Lysol, and bleach wipes we all use every single day to throw some icing on the “obliterate our body’s microbiome” cake.
Wallah! Antibiotics are what’s for dinner! And breakfast.
And lunch. And snacks.
What’s the problem with all these antibiotic encounters you
ask? Aren't antibiotics wonderful? Oh
yeah, sure, except for a little thing called – our entire digestive
tract (and the whole outside of our body too) is covered in a network of bacteria, bacteriophages, fungi, protozoa and viruses that live happily in community to
digest our food (i.e., extract the nutrients), regulate our metabolism, generate
our immune system, and protect against pathogen invasion.
Well shucks.
You mean the fancy “molecules” of my body are not doing all
that? That’s right! It’s the critters that live INSIDE your body that do
all that. So probably best not to kill them off every single day.
Now wait a second, aren't bacteria and viruses the cause
of disease? Yes! But what we all need to understand is that the same things
that build and balance our body, when out of balance and weakened, also make us sick. Balance is the key, not
sterility. Now sterility is important in the medical environment, when we are
taking care of wounds or doing surgeries, but this is because we are exposing a
closed system to all the outside organisms and therefore easily introducing the
possibility for an imbalance, and therefore an infection, to occur.
It is so important however, that we really grasp the
difference between healthy hygiene, and too much of a good thing. Check out my
post on hygiene
for more information.
Glyphosate
Now that we know consuming lots of antibiotics,
partially in the form of pesticides is probably a bad idea, let’s quickly talk
about a specific pesticide, Glyphosate, or “Round-Up,” and what I
discovered when I started eliminating glyphosate factories like grains
from my diet.
Studies have shown that one of the biggest culprits
of digestive upset and discomfort is specifically the combination of
gluten and glyphosate, not just the glyphosate on its own. Grain crops undergo something called desiccation, where they are purposely
killed with glyphosate before they sprout to speed the drying and harvesting
process. When the wheat is killed before it sprouts, it retains all
its gluten, which is essentially the plant's poisonous defense mechanism
against being eaten.
So not only are we getting a big dose of gluten when
we consume grains in the US which causes a breakdown in the tight junction
mucous layer of the gut (leaky gut), but we are additionally consuming it after it has been soaked in glyphosate
which further damages our gut by killing off the bacteria that live there.
Yikes!
How do we fix this all this?
Well, there is some good news. There are things we
have largely stopped doing in society that also contribute to our gut
health, so usually, the combination of adding these things back in, and eliminating
some of the heavy hitter antibiotic food stuffs (you’re not going to be able to
avoid them all), can really make a difference for our gut.
By the way, the reason this all matters so much is not only
because you may digest better, have less flatulence, and not get sick as often.
Our gut is also tied to serotonin, dopamine, and epinephrine production, among
other things, making it an incredible influence on everything from our
mental health to our ability to respond to emergencies, manage stress, perform
on stage, or take tests, just to name a few examples.
First: What to stop
- Only take antibiotics when your medical provider is absolutely certain (and has explained to you to your satisfaction) that you actually have a bacterial infection that will NOT get better without them (yes there are times you can have an actual infection and get better without antibiotics, I know, SHOCKER!).
- Even the mainstream MayoClinic points out that most sinus infections clear up without antibiotics! I know this is a big one that people take course after course of antibiotics for. Stop doing it! You are making your sinus bacteria stronger and more imbalanced with each treatment, making you MORE prone to future infections aside from killing off your gut microbiome every single time.
- And if you MUST, consider a course of probiotics after you finish the antibiotic medication.
- Eliminate artificial sweeteners like aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin from your diet. These have been shown to disrupt the gut microbiome.
- Eliminate grains from your diet. This is different than going "gluten free" as a lot of gluten free products still contain grains. I recommend eliminating ALL grains for a healthier gut.
- Avoid “dirty dozen” produce - items that unless you buy organic, get the biggest dousing of glyphosate when grown.
- Try to consume antibiotic free, humanely raised animal products. This is at the bottom of the list for a reason. Until factory farming is replaced with sustainable farming practices, these foods tend to be out of reach financially.
- Caveat! If you can't buy expensive meat and eggs, that DOES NOT mean you should cut them from your diet. They are still by FAR the most nutrient dense items on the menu and should be the center of an ancestrally appropriate proper human diet.
Now: What to start
- Eat one ingredient whole foods and eliminate processed (non) food (i.e., things with ingredient labels full of words you can’t pronounce).
- Choose produce from the “clean 15” options.
- Eat fermented foods every chance you get!! The ABSOLUTE BEST option in my opinion is kefir. You can consume dairy based (milk) kefir, available at gourmet grocers like Sprout’s, or water kefir which is easy and inexpensive to make at home!
And last but not least…
POO.
How will you know if your gut is happy? So glad you asked 😊
The primary way: You will have what I like to call, beautiful
poos (It’s okay everyone! I’m a nurse! I can talk about poo!). And
it is NOT the frequency of poo’ing that is important. It is the ease and
characteristics of the poo. It should be:
- Easy
- Formed
- Clean (not a whole role of toilet paper required, or not much at all really)
- Relatively odor free
If these characteristics of poo seem extremely bizarre to you, you really need to follow the tips above. Along with beautiful poos, you should obviously have less gas, bloating, and general discomfort. I hope this helps some of us reclaim our tummies and microbiomes.
Until next week!
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