Go with your gut when it comes to food: Here’s how to keep your gut healthy and happy

Susan Marque

310-453-7525

susanmarque@gmail.com

Go with your gut when it comes to food: Here’s how to keep your gut healthy and happy

By Susan Marque

Gut health is one of the most important baselines for all health. As a celebrity food coach, I worked with A-list actors, school teachers, chefs, doctors, and more, for more than a decade. I learned a lot about how everything, from the hair on your head, to your emotional state, starts deep inside your wonderful belly.

The intestinal tract has been shown to affect both physical and mental well-being. Diet, stress and medications can all mess up the balance of good and not so good bacteria inside our complex digestive ecosystem — and cause havoc. Candida, Irritable Bowel Syndrome and many other gut problems seem to become more and more prevalent.

I didn’t know what was happening to me when I started getting an itchy scalp, my knees were hurting, I was constantly tired, had gas and inconsistent toilet habits. Then in a single week, I saw both a Chinese medicine doctor and a Western doctor. They said the same thing: “You have Candida.”

It took me over a year to clear. The medication helped but it kept coming back. Finally, I found a combination of taking probiotics and a natural yeast combatting supplement that I took for around six months. I eventually had a calm, flat, comfortable belly, good energy and no more itches or pain. It’s never too early or too late to support your gut health. Here are a few ways.

1.Add in Probiotics — They are friendly bacteria that boost the immune s and digestion systems, as well as the whole body. The term you’ve probably heard: “microbiome,” refers to a whole host of critters that live inside of us. If you get the right strains, probiotics are like the good guys in an action film. Especially if you have to take an antibiotic, a drug that kills all the bacteria, and probiotics help to repopulate your gut. Yogurt, unpasteurized pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi, miso and kefir are all foods rich in probiotics that keep your gut microbiome full of helpful bacteria. Add prebiotics which help with nutrient absorption and keep the probiotics thriving. Apples, bananas, beans, oats, and almonds are all examples of foods that contain prebiotic fiber.

2.Be a Diverse Eater — Several studies show that the easiest way to keep your gut full of the beneficial bacteria is to eat a lot of different plant foods. One trick that helps me, is to buy one new plant item a week that I haven’t had for a while, like turnips or raspberries. That keeps me from getting in a rut of eating the same few beloved veggies over and over. Beans are an easy item to incorporate into each meal. They go in salads, burritos, spreads, and a huge variety of main dishes.

3. Mix Up Your Water Too — Studies show that the type of water you drink will change your gut microbiome. Tap water versus well water will change the makeup of your gut. Which makes sense since a lot of tap water contains chlorine, fluoride, and other chemicals that are not added into well or spring water. We need water to help move things along and also to rehydrate particles from breads, dry cereals and other flour -based foods.

4.Get Plenty of Sleep — It’s fascinating to realize how much our microbiome affects everything, including the quality of sleep. Sleep heals, refreshes, and unfortunately, often gets interrupted more as we age. One study specifically targeted older adults and found gut health to be a contributing factor for better sleep which boosts immunity, which boosts better overall health. it’s basically a win-win cycle.

5.Get Moving— You do not need to be an athlete or even athletic to get some exercise. You can go for walks, or try something fun like ping pong, to have movement every day, Getting even moderate exercise helps the microbiome to be more diverse and that is what you need -- to be full of all types of lively bacteria and organisms so there is a balance of flourishing life inside of you. We are all made up of smaller organisms that live deep inside of us and when they are not happy, we are not happy. Here is a recipe to try that is happy-food for gut health.

Fiber Filled Lentil Loaf

2 Cups brown lentils

4-1/2 Cups good water

3 bay leaves

2-3 Tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, diced

2 large celery, diced