Microbiome and how to improve it

Microbiome and how to improve it (and thus general health)…

I think everyone by now knows that having a healthy microbiome is a key part of health.  But did you know it’s not just fermented foods & drinks that help with this?  And, that some fermented foods & drinks don’t help at all?

Firstly, what helps the health of your gut?

• Local & seasonal foods, drinks, herbs, and supplements.
• Regulating your circadian rhythm (this is more important than you think, probably even more important than any food or drink you put inside you).
• Getting your feet on the earth every day (this improves your electron levels and thus everything to do with your health, but particularly your digestive system).
• Getting the sun &/or daylight on your belly as much as possible (yes this naturally increases good bacteria in your gut).
• Regulating your nervous system (means more uptake of nutrients and less leaky gut type issues   – among loads of other benefits).
• Less carbs and more animal proteins and fats in general.  When we move back to being fat burners instead of the carb burners (that we have adapted to be) our body heals at a cellular level (including the digestive system) and our microbiome drastically improves all by itself.
• Addressing yeast & parasite overgrowths.

Secondly, what’s NOT helping the health of your gut?

• Foods, drinks, herbs, and supplements shipped in from all over the World &/or eaten out of season.
• Going to bed late, not getting outside enough, wearing sunglasses & sun creams, and staring at screens a lot.
• Not working on your anxiety/stress/overthinking etc.
• Fiber!! – Yes, I know we have all been told differently… surprise surprise they have been telling us something else unhelpful for our health), but fibre is not helping heal the digestive system, we don’t need it for any health-related issues, what we need more of is fat in our diet instead.
• Carbs! – Bad bacteria love any kind of carb, this matters not if it’s processed sugars, pineapples, or white potatoes.  When our diet is high in carbs (ie: every day) then we are feeding bad bacteria with it.
• Eating any kind of soya (sauce, beans, tofu etc) or gluten products and for many any wheat based products at all.
• Legumes are often hindering many people’s digestive systems also as they are very irritating or the gut.  If you really want to eat them then need to be pressure cooked for prolonged periods of time first or fermented first.
• Eating a lot of high oxalate foods.
• Toxic cosmetics, creams, potions, lotions, makeup, perfumes & cleaners etc.
• Most probiotic tablets are useless and some contain junk!  Aim for fermented foods & drinks rather than a probiotic tablet that probably had nothing left living inside of it.  Fermented foods actually mimic the good bacteria we should be getting naturally from living connected to nature and because many of us are not connected like that anymore fermented foods can be a good substitute.

Some things labelled ‘fermented’ foods (especially if from a supermarket &/or on a shelf and not in a fridge in a store) are pasteurised after fermentation.  This means that although they were fermented to start with and likely had loads of probiotics in, now they no longer do due to them heating the product to keep it shelf stable.  These sorts of fermented foods often have had sugars etc added to them before packaging them to make them taste ‘better’ too.  Just pick raw/unpasteurised versions (it’ll say it on the label).

People often say that probiotics are useless as most can’t survive in our gut.  This can be true for many of them, yet some do survive.  But the most important thing is that the good bacteria can and does survive higher up in our digestive system and here is signals things like the lining of the gut to tell it what to let through (vitamins and minerals for instance) and what not to let through (toxins).  So, making sure you have good bugs in your digestive system is more important than many might think.

I know there is a lot of information here that goes against what we have been told, but I think most of us can see that the way we have been told to eat/live is not really working out for most people.  It’s not our natural way of eating and living and as such many people are still struggling.  However, when we move towards our natural state as human beings everything starts to work as it should.  Chronic long-term concerns heal, people’s mood & energy improves, the mind is once more focused and all those feelings of aging star to disappear too.

The more naturally we eat, live and think the easier it becomes to be healthy.