How do you heal your gut?

Before I talk about ways to heal your gut, I want you to stop for a moment and really take this in. Gut healing is a long process. There are no quick fix solutions unfortunately.

The reason you are reading this now is probably because you/family member have a chronic illness like allergy, or eczema. And if you have gone as far as getting an illness, your gut has been inflamed and broken for years (and if it is your child, they have inherited the epigenetics and gut microbiome from you).

So repair is not going to happen overnight.

We are so used to convenience and the modern fast pace now that we expect quick fixes for everything – yet quick solutions often just treat surface symptoms and not the root.

In order to achieve lasting good health, we must tackle the root, but this always takes patience and perseverance. Lots of people want to know what pills they can pop to heal their gut, but as soon as I start talking to them about foods and lifestyle changes, their eyes glaze over and they lose interest.

I’m not a big fan of supplements – I do use them because it’s not always possible to eat all the nutrients, but where I can, I try to take in nutrients from whole foods.

Isn’t it great that you can heal your body naturally through food instead of lining the pockets of pharmaceutical companies with prescriptions or processed products?

In my last article ‘What’s eating your gut?” I talked about removing harm to the gut.

This is crucial for gut healing.

In fact, it is more important than what I’m about to say in this article because there is no point adopting gut healing strategies if there is persistent attack on the gut.

On that note, please ensure that if you have a gastrointestinal disease (e.g. crohn’s, ulcerative colitis, IBS), that you consult a doctor to see if there are any contraindications to what I say below, and that you remove allergens and foods you are intolerant to from your diet.

This article is mainly geared towards those where an imbalanced gut has led to other chronic diseases e.g. eczema and allergies rather than those with actual gastrointestinal disease (you must seek medical advice if so).

YOUR GUT WILL HEAL ITSELF if you just removed all the harm it faces in everyday life. But if you have already taken steps to remove assailants on your gut and want to give it some healing boosts.

Here are some tips which I use for my family and I.

1. Increase your fruit and vegetable intake. This is the best strategy you can adopt for a healthy gut. Popping probiotic supplements do nothing if you don’t change your diet, because these bacteria cannot survive without ‘their’ food (which is prebiotics and these are basically fiber).

When you eat fruits and vegetables, you are eating both probiotics and prebiotics (read my tip of the week) – and this is the cheapest and best way to provide probiotics to your gut. Raw is better than cooked, and fermented is even better. Whole grains and legumes are also great ways to increase prebiotics/fiber in your diet, e.g. half a cup of cooked kidney beans provides 8g of fiber! Lots of people say they cannot eat legumes due to digestive symptoms – this is because your gut bacteria has shifted so much that you don’t have the healthy ones that help you digest legumes.

The way around that is to start with very small quantities and slowly build up. Having enough fiber in your gut will feed the good bacteria, make them flourish, and alter the gut microbiome without the need for any probiotic supplements. The caveat here is that if you are sensitive/allergic to certain fruit/veg/legumes/grains you need to remove them from your diet or the gut will never heal.

So speak to your doctor if you have gut conditions such as IBS, Crohn’s, etc.The more diverse the good gut bacteria in your gut, the better your health.Smoothies are by far the best way To deliver the daily fibre requirements (25g-30g for adults, see my tip of the week post this week for more info). It is also a great way to ‘hide’ things your kids don’t like to eat that are healthy (in my case, it’s apple cider vinegar, spirulina, fermented asparagus and raw kale).

It’s also a good vehicle for seeds which are better absorbed after blending e.g. flax, chia. We have a smoothie daily which delivers about 8g of fiber for each of us (1/3 of the daily recommendation)… without smoothies, I find it very difficult to meet that 25g daily requirement.by taking in plenty of nutrient-dense plant-based foods, you are increasing your antioxidantintake and gut-healing nutrients such as glutamine and querceptin which will all work to reduce inflammation in the gut, and help it to heal.

I love broccoli, cabbage, kale, asparagus, apples, onions, leeks, artichokes, flaxseeds (I LOVE flax seeds – it requires a post on its own) but really ALL fruit and vegetables are beneficial.

Be sure to sign up for my newsletters and follow my tips of the week (every Tuesday) as I introduce my favorite healing fruits and vegetables week by week (e.g. home made apple sauce, fermented asparagus) and my favorite smoothie recipes that contain things kids don’t like but willingly drink because of my secret weapons!

2. High-quality probiotic supplement - Now here is where the difficulty lies. There are so many probiotic products, even as a doctor, I find it difficult to choose. Probiotics are not created equal – there are lots of different strains with different functions so don’t assume it's one size fits all. Just because you are taking probiotics doesn’t mean you will have great gut health. It might do nothing at all. A lot of the bacteria used in research studies are not available to buy commercially truth is, we still don’t know what bacteria to supplement with ‘yet’ because gut bacteria change with age and are so ‘individualized’, so the strains will vary according to the condition you are trying to treat. Have a read of Rosan Meyer’s (a great pediatric dietician who specializes in allergies) take on it.

3. Eat fermented food – Think sauerkraut, kimchi, fermented beets/asparagus, kefir, yoghurt, miso, tempehnot only do fermented foods deliver probiotics they also provide digestive enzymes and acids that help with gut health (because these reduce the work of digestion on the gut, the less work the gut has to do the more time there is to heal).One fermented food that features regularly for us is apple cider vinegar. Another favorite is coconut kefir.Apples are great for gut health as they are high in pectins and querceptinsapple cider vinegar provide probiotics, feed the good bacteria in your gut and kill candida. I add 2 tablespoons into our family smoothies everyday, and it goes into every dressing I make for saladsOnly caveat is that if you have bad bugs in your gut (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) then fermented foods may worsen your symptoms – so seek health advice if you are experiencing symptoms.

4. Glutamine – Glutamine is the fuel for cells lining the digestive tract and helps to maintain a healthy gut.The body is able to synthesize glutamine without intake from the diet, but in conditions where the immune system is under strain (e.g. allergies/autoimmune diseases), the body might fall short on glutamineI like eating glutamine rich foods to help keep the levels high (I don’t supplement and don’t recommend supplements unless directed by a doctor)my favorite source of glutamine is cabbage, broccoli, spirulina and asparagus! Another reason to eat up that sauerkraut!!

5. Coconut – Depending on what you read, coconut may either be the new superfood or it is to be avoided due to its saturated fat content.I like coconut for its anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties in the gut. It helps to combat bad bugs, candida, and rebalance a healthy gut microbiome so I am a fan.yes it does contain saturated fat but it also contains Medium Chain fatty Acids which are healthy fats easily metabolized by the body as fuel rather than stored as fat.

It is my belief that it is better if you can eat it in the whole foods form (e.g. coconut meat) rather than the extracted, processed form like coconut oil.I like adding shredded coconut to their morning porridge, substituting wheat flour with coconut flour, adding coconut milk to curries, and combining it with cacao and dates to make healthy snacks. Recipes to follow… sign up to email alerts so you don’t miss them!