Gut Health Facts Everyone Should Know (Part I)

by Anna Young https://wholesomebalancedwellness.com

Would you believe me if I told you that cultivating a healthy gut microbiome is one of the most important things you can do for your health? If that sounds a little far-fetched, or even if you are a little on the fence, I hope this post will help change your mind.

Our microbiome consists over about 100 trillion living microbes (bacteria, fungi, and viruses) which mainly live in our gut (i.e. the large intestine). These microbes have a symbiotic relationship with us; we could not exist without them and they without us. They help us to digest our food, crowd out harmful bacteria, maintain the integrity of our gut lining, help the body absorb nutrients, modulate genes, and neutralize cancer-causing compounds. Also, about 80% of our immune system is in our gut. Our microbes help to train our immune system to distinguish between friend and foe.

Dysbiosis is a term used when there is a microbial imbalance in the gut. This happens when the population of essential good bacteria are diminished and pathogenic (bad) bacteria, which are normally present in low amounts, flourish. Dysbiosis and damage to the microbiome has been found to be the root cause of many illnesses and diseases we see today.

Since being diagnosed with gut dysbiosis and a few conditions resulting from this imbalance such as candida overgrowth, gluten intolerance, and small intestine bacterial overgrowth, I have become really passionate about gut health. The way I feel now compared to pre-diagnosis is like night and day. To further educate myself I read The Microbiome Solution by Dr. Robynne Chutkan, a gastroenterologist and founder of the Digestive Center for Women.

Dr. Chutkan’s main argument in this book is that the “...overuse of antibiotics, chlorination of the water supply, processed foods full of chemicals and hormones, microbe-depleting pesticides, increasing rates of Cesarean sections…have ravaged our microbiome, diminishing the total number of organisms as well as the diversity of species.” This damage is a key, if not the main, contributing factor to the modern diseases in our society.

She states that “re-creating a balanced microbial habitat in our bodies might be the single most important step in improving our individual and collective health.” The book explains her whole plan to do this, which she calls the Live Dirty, Eat Clean lifestyle.

I would recommend this book to everyone, even if you are a healthy individual with a robust microbiome. I thought I was one of those individuals until a year ago after all... I could write pages upon pages about all of the tidbits of knowledge I gleaned from its pages, but I will stick to a few main topics she discusses - the birthing process, diet, antibiotics, depression, and disease. The first two I will write about in this post, the final three in my next post. All of the quotes in this post come directly from the book unless noted otherwise.

BIRTH

I will start this section by saying that I am not yet a mom, so I don’t have any personal experience with the birthing process (apart from when I came into the world via C-section all those years ago), but some of the facts she shared will definitely impact my future decisions when I chose to become a mother.

One in three births these days are Cesarean sections. Studies have shown that “babies born via C-section have higher rates of asthma, allergies, type 1 diabetes, and other autoimmune conditions.” They do not receive the beneficial bacteria that are the beginnings of their microbiome from their mothers when they pass through the birth canal and are typically exposed to antibiotics in the hospital at a very young age (more on antibiotics later).

Formula-fed babies also typically have higher rates of asthma, allergies, and autoimmune diseases than babies fed with breast milk. Did you know that a day’s worth of soy formula contains the estrogen equivalent of a few birth control pills? That is downright scary.

I know there are times when C-sections are medically necessary and when a mother cannot breast feed. I will never argue with a mother’s decision to choose what is best for her and her baby, but I thought this information was important to share.

DIET

“One of the most powerful tools in preventing and treating our modern plagues might be the food we eat.”

The Standard American Diet (referred to as SAD, which is so appropriate) high in sugar, bad fats, and artificial ingredients promotes growth of the bad type of bacteria in your gut. Candida overgrowth, something that I was diagnosed with this year and is not fun to treat (trust me on this one), is an example of a condition that commonly results from a diet high in sugar.

There are so many things wrong with our diets today, but one thing that really sets me off is that packaged foods are specifically designed by scientists in labs to keep you coming back for more. Just think, have you ever had just one Pringle or one Thin Mint cookie? Highly doubtful.

Dr. Chutkan states that “food cravings, anxiety, memory, mood, and how easily we lose or gain weight are just some of the traits that are heavily influenced by our gut bacteria.”

All of those things deserve a section of their own but I’m going to focus on food cravings. Once you get on the hamster wheel of eating poorly, our gut bacteria make it really hard to stop. We’ve all been there and can attest to this. Those sugar-loving microbes will make us crave more sweets and when you eat more, the sugar-loving microbes multiply.

Unfortunately, sugar is in pretty much everything we consume these days. Even in things you wouldn’t expect. I went on a little scavenger hunt at my grocery store to prove this and wrote about it.

So how do we change this pattern? Michael Pollan put it quite simply: “Eat real food, not too much, mostly plants.”

I’m going to leave it at that today before this post reaches essay length. Stay tuned for Part II, which will focus on overuse of antibiotics, the link between depression and gut health, and how gut health is influential in the development of disease. Until next time folks!

Gut Health Facts Everyone Should Know (Part II)

Happy 2018!! A tad bit late but it's still early in the year right? I hope you had an enjoyable holiday season, a happy new year, and are enjoying 2018 thus far. A new year is a great opportunity to set new goals, pursue new interests, and learn new things. In this post I aim to help you to learn more about digestive health so that your year is just a bit better and healthier.

This is Part II of Gut Health Facts Everyone Should Know, which is based off of the book The Microbiome Solution by Dr. Robynne Chutkan, a gastroenterologist and founder of the Digestive Center for Women. If you haven’t read Part I of the series yet, I strongly suggest you start therebefore reading this post! It provides the background and basis for what we’ll be discussing today.

Part I touches on the impact of birth and diet on the microbiome. Today’s post will focus on the use of antibiotics and how depression and disease can be linked to gut dysbiosis. As in my last post, all of the quotes in this post come directly from the book unless noted otherwise.

ANTIBIOTICS

Did you know we are one of two countries that allows for marketing of pharmaceutical drugs directly to consumers? Yep, us and New Zealand.

Instead of being taught nutrition and how to find the underlying cause for disease, we are sold on what medications will make us feel better. This creates a bias that has been perpetuated by the medical community. As a population, we are over-prescribed medications. Granted, I understand that sometimes they are necessary, but a lot of times they are not.

I heard a great analogy for this phenomenon once that has stuck with me. Imagine you have a rock in your shoe that is really bothering you. Would you take a pain pill to help ease the discomfort or would you take your shoe off and just remove the rock that’s causing the problem? Would you take a pill to deal with your symptoms or would you work to find the underlying cause for the issue that you are experiencing?

Many people depend on their doctors to tell them what’s best and when the doctor tells them to take a prescription they do it, no questions asked, because they trust that their doctor is doing what is best for them. But many times it is not what is best for them. Maybe the doctor wasn’t taught nutrition in med school, has a pharmaceutical sales rep who is really good at his job, or just has too many patients and not enough time to really invest in what’s needed to help all of them. It is up to us consumers to become educated so we can have knowledgeable conversations with our doctors.

One type of medication that really gets me fired up are acne medications, which are devastating to the microbiome. Dr. Chutkan states that “taking antibiotics for acne tends to be the most damaging factor because those drugs are so effective against gut bacteria and the treatment usually lasts months or even years.” I took acne medication for almost 15 years of my life. If I hadn’t, would I still be experiencing the gut dysbiosis I’m going through today? Hindsight is 20/20 but I’d like to think I wouldn’t.

There is also a “direct relationship between widespread use of antibiotics, especially in children, and skyrocketing rates of food allergies.” Antibiotics wipe out both the good and bad bacteria in our guts. Bad bacteria are actually a bit hardier than the good ones and are more likely to survive the antibiotic assault. They multiply to fill the gap created by the loss of good bacteria which, in time, leads to a decrease in diversity of gut bacteria, high levels of bad bacteria, and lower levels of good bacteria, which are three of the main causes of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

One last thing on antibiotics. It’s not just the ones you take directly that impact you. About 80% of all antibiotics sold in the United States are used in the livestock and poultry industry, either to enhance growth in healthy animals or to prevent infection because the animals are being raised in crowded, unsanitary conditions that increase the risk of illness. When you eat meat from animals raised in factory farms, you absorb all of the medications they were given in their lifetime. If you can, eat organic meat from humanely-raised animals. We use Butcher Box at our house, which will ship you a monthly supply of various cuts of pork, beef, and chicken from humanely-raised animals. I love it and the meat are some of the best cuts I’ve ever tasted.

You can also absorb trace amounts of medications through drinking tap water. If you can, use filtered water and please don’t flush your unused pills down the toilet.

DEPRESSION

Our mental health is profoundly impacted by our gut. Do you feel sick to your stomach before a big performance or speech? Do you stress eat or lose your appetite when you’re stressed? When you’re tired, do you crave sugar?

The enteric nervous system (ENS) is a branch of the nervous system located in the GI tract. It is commonly called the second brain. Your gut and brain are also directly connected by what is called the vagus nerve. They interact constantly and what happens in one directly impacts what happens in the other.

“Gut bacteria determine the availability of the precursor materials that your brain needs to make neurotransmitters” and are the main producers of serotonin, the body’s feel-good hormone. Up to 90% of our serotonin is made in our gut, so if you’ve got some gut dysbiosis going on, chances are you are struggling with mood issues as well. I personally notice a significant difference in my mood when I’m eating a clean diet and avoiding foods that I am sensitive to.

Depression is a symptom for many forms of dysbiosis, including yeast overgrowth (candida), small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), and Celiac Disease.

DISEASE

Hippocrates is famous for quoting that “all disease begins in the gut.” More and more information is coming out these days from the naturopathic and functional medicine communities that is finding this indeed to be true.

Did you know that obesity can be predicted up to 90% just by examining someone’s gut bacteria?

“Many diseases that run in families that we thought were primarily genetic, such as heart disease and some forms of cancer, turn out to be hugely influenced by gut bacteria.” In fact, our microbiome “has one of the biggest impacts on our genes, turning them on and off and determining which ones are ultimately expressed as disease.”

The field of epigenetics studies the impact of our diet and lifestyle on our genes. What you eat, where you live, who you interact with, when you sleep, how you exercise, even aging – all of these can eventually cause chemical modifications around the genes that will turn those genes on or off over time. Healthier lifestyles can actually turn off genes that can lead to cancer and other deadly diseases.

It is not just us adults that need to be eating healthier. Researchers have found a connection between what you eat as a child and diseases and conditions you may develop as an adult. It is up to us to be good role models for our children.

“One of the most powerful tools in preventing and treating our modern plagues might be the food we eat, since that’s what determines which bacteria grow in our gut garden.” It comes down to this question - do you want your gut garden to be full of weeds and invasive species that grow unchecked and take over, or do you want your garden to be full of flowers and many different types of healthy plants?

It’s time to re-wild ourselves and work on growing a good gut garden. Who’s with me?

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Hi there!  My name is Anna and I am an accountant by day, holistic health coach, and doTERRA wellness advocate. I have a passion for natural wellness and helping people become their happiest, healthiest selves. There is no one-size-fits-all path to wellness, and I'm here to help you discover yours!