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Trust Your Gut, Part 3 From Digestive Distress to Optimal Health
- anita1032
- Feb 13, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 21
In Part 1, you discovered the profound impact your gut (gastrointestinal/digestive system) has on optimal health and wellbeing. In Part 2, you received valuable lists of the three types of foods that nourish the gut and empower it to flourish with trillions of health-enhancing bacteria.
Now’s the time to add the ‘Optimal Gut Health’ foods to your grocery list and meals. Tracking what you eat is a powerful regime – whether that’s every day religiously, or just a few days a month – either way, you’ll reap extensive insights into how and what you eat, and then how your micronutrient targets stack up in terms of achieving your unique ideal levels. It helps to also track your gut symptoms, as well as your sense of wellbeing (trust your gut!) and levels of performance. The TRACK feature on MyMenu Concierge guides you to enhance the quality of food you eat, ultimately leading to better gut health, which then leads to feeling, performing, and being at your best!
How to Use MyMenu Concierge for Optimal Gut Health:
I’m Kelly at Healthy Dining! Let me show you an example of a day of TRACK on MyMenu Concierge. I can count that I consumed 8 probiotic foods including:
yogurt
kombucha
apple
garlic
soy sauce
onion
banana
miso paste
And I consumed 5 of prebiotic foods including:
apple
onion
mushroom
garlic
banana
Now, I can look at some micronutrients that I know are important for gut health like fiber, Vit D, selenium levels. I’m a bit low in fiber and selenium for the day so I’ll make sure to make up for that tomorrow. I am planning to add the following foods to my grocery list to benefit my gut:
artichokes
sauerkraut
oats
leafy greens
Other than that, I’m trusting my gut and feeling very good!
It's important to continue your gut health journey while on the go, and EAT can help you with finding menu items at restaurants nearby that contain a good amount of fiber. You can see here, I set my fiber preference so that I can view menu items with at least 15g of fiber. This Stuffed Bell Pepper served at Panini Kabob Grill is a great choice!
I can click the 'Add to TRACK' button to log this for my day.
And Now … Those Foods That Destroy Gut Health
In his podcast (1), renowned functional medicine physician, Mark Hyman, MD, emphasizes, “The way we feed our gut today is with ultra-processed food, that is 60% of our calories come from commodity crops, corn, wheat and soy and tons of sugar, and that is destroying our microbiome. If you want to start anywhere, it’s getting rid of the junk and food additives and processed food because within those are so many components that drive our gut into damage.”
Further, Dr. Hyman explains, “Why has this happened? Well, one it’s the industrialization of our food. We’ve really over-processed our food so that we’ve removed all the fiber, all the key nutrients, and the polyphenols. It’s really unfortunate because that is not feeding the good bugs, and then we don’t end up with a good gut microbiome. So, diet is a huge change. Then, in the diet, there are also other things like glyphosate, which is a microbiome destroyer, found in pesticides that affect your microbiome. There are food additives like carrageenan and other compounds that really destroy the gut and emulsifiers that cause leaky gut. Then we’ve got high levels of gluten proteins in the modern wheat we have. So, we have this perfect storm of diet that’s driving so many problems.”
Research also shows these can contribute to gut distress (2,3):
foods high in saturated fat
excessive protein intake
simple sugars such as fructose, glucose, and lactose
food additives and emulsifiers such as sucralose, aspartame, artificial coloring, bisphenol-A (BPA), carrageenan, polysorbate-80 (P80), carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC)
It’s time-consuming and sometimes nearly impossible to read through ingredient labels and figure out what to avoid. A great step forward is to start making sure you are eating a wide variety of the ‘Optimal Gut Health foods’ every day. Then, begin narrowing in on the processed foods you consume and set goals to replace those with high fiber, high micronutrient ingredients. Trust your gut along the way as you continue your journey to optimal health and performance.
It’s important to note:
1) an unhealthy gut can signal or lead to disease: Be sure to talk with your physician about your symptoms. It’s also highly recommended to see a dietitian and/or a functional medicine physician who specializes in gut health,
2) we all have a unique DNA: So, especially with our digestive system, what nourishes and cleanses the gut for many, for example, garlic (prebiotics) or bell peppers (fiber), may signal a food intolerance for some. Thus, it is an exploratory and trial-and-error process to discover what foods may be contributing to your poor gut health and/or food intolerances leading to symptoms. So again, this is where dietitians and functional medicine practitioners can be of tremendous help.
References:
1. Why Gut Issues Are On The Rise And How To Fix It https://drhyman.com/blog/2022/06/17/podcast-ep556/
2. Influence of Foods and Nutrition on the Gut Microbiome and Implications for Intestinal Health
3. Food Components and Dietary Habits: Keys for a Healthy Gut Microbiota Composition