Are You Eating These Gut Irritating Foods?
Do you feel like no matter what you eat you just aren’t seeing improvements in your digestion? Maybe no one has been able to give you answers for why you’re feeling the way you are. If you’re struggling with constipation, diarrhea, IBS, pain or just annoying bloat or gas, there is a path to healing for you!
How Sugar Irritates the Gut
What you eat really does matter, and the little things add up. If we look at sugars as an example, even small amounts have the ability the alter your gut bacteria for up to 24 hours. We don’t just get the microbes in our gut by chance — although how we first come into the world has the biggest impact.
The choices we make everyday determine the health of our gut bugs, and reducing refined sugars and refined carbs and eating more whole foods are a crucial step in bringing your microbiome back into balance. Sugar fuels pathogenic bacteria, yeast, parasites and other infections and overtime, with on-going inflammation, our immune systems will struggle to keep things in check.
Alcohol and Your Gut Lining
A drink here or there might not seem like a big deal, but if your gut health isn’t optimal, it may be doing more damage than you realize. Alcohol converts to sugar rapidly in the body, spiking blood sugar, insulin and gut inflammation. It also feeds bad bacteria and pathogens, which create endotoxins and further damage the gut lining.
Inflammation isn’t always bad, but when it becomes chronic, it’s like a low-grade fire burning all the time, damaging the cells and tissues in its path. Our diet is the largest decider of inflammation that we can control, which is why I’m always encouraging my clients to choose what they eat wisely.
Just as alcohol can start and fuel a real fire, it can also fuel the inflammatory fire in your gut and body.
Inflammatory Fats & Gut Inflammation
In discussing gut inflammation, we can’t forget about fat! Fat is ESSENTIAL for cellular health, hormone balance, energy, mood and more, but we must make sure we’re consuming the RIGHT type of fats. The wrong fats are incredibly damaging to our bodies, including our gut, because they fuel the fire of inflammation and can lead to chronic health issues such as cardiovascular and metabolic disease. Too many omega-6 fatty acids from seed oils like canola, corn, soybean, and safflower cause gut inflammation and displace good fats from entering our cells to be used to create health.
Your Specific Food Intolerances
Your specific food sensitivities or intolerances are, are also a big piece to the gut-healing puzzle. (Yes, you will have some if you’re dealing with gut issues or fatigue!) I will often do short-term elimination diets to see how my clients react individually to foods frequently consumed as we reintroduce them.
I also offer Food Intolerance Panels that can be done at home in a simple finger-prick blood test. This tests over 90 different foods to see how your body is reacting to them so we can create a personalized plan for healing.
Finding your specific sensitivities will not only help your gut symptoms, but can help numerous symptoms outside the gut, such as fatigue, anxiety, depression, joint pain, brain fog and sleep issues. My clients are often shocked that foods they’re eating regularly (often without symptoms) are stopping them from progressing in their health.
There are many supplements that can aid the gut-healing process also, which I’m going to share about next time! In the meantime, feel free to reach out with any questions regarding Food Intolerance Testing at asher@flourishnaturalwellness.com.
