I’m going to break down 7 different ways that you can improve your ‘second brain’–your gut!
Your gut controls 80% of your immune system. It’s very important and is involved with a lot of symptoms and conditions that most people don’t relate to.
Having a lot of stomach aches, nausea, bloating, or flatulence are signs of poor gut health.
Frequent fatigue is also a big warning sign that your gut isn’t absorbing food properly, or that you’re spending way too much energy on digestion.
If your sleep is interrupted, that could be a gut problem due to the time at which you eat.
Skin irritations have a direct correlation with the gut. If this filter isn’t working, the body goes to the backup filter, which is your skin, and toxins start coming out there.
Autoimmune conditions always involve the gut. If you have an autoimmune diagnosis or any food sensitivities, they can be overcome, but you have to learn how to reset your gut.
If you’re experiencing any of those things, you might need to try out these 7 tips.
1. Get Stress Under Control
Stress directly correlates to how well your gut functions. You can literally feel that when you get anxious and get nauseous or feel like you’re going to throw up.
The best way to go about fixing this is to put less stress on your digestive system.
You can do that by timing your eating. Eating after six or seven o’clock at night is really hard your digestive system.
Your body is starting to go into sleep mode.
Your nervous system starts switching over from the sympathetic nervous system that responds to stress, to its rest, recovery, and nutrient-absorption system, which is your parasympathetic nervous system.
So if you’re eating late at night, you’re stressing that system, which is going to disrupt your sleep.
Sleep itself can actually disrupt your digestive and gut health. Going to bed early and tracking your sleep to see how restful it is is a good idea. You can get wearables to find out if and why you might not be getting restful sleep.
I highly suggest some adaptogenic herbs like rhodiola and ashwagandha right before bed. This will help you get into a deeper, lower-cortisol healing state.
2. Gut-Boosting Diet
Here are some really good additions that you can add to your diet or nutrition to help restore gut health:
Apple Cider Vinegar
A capful of this before a meal helps with bloating, indigestion, and any kind of gas or stomachache. Try that for a couple of weeks and see how it does.
Ginger
Ginger soothes the stomach, so ginger tea or ginger lozenge can help with nausea or an upset stomach.
Aloe
Aloe coats the stomach and soothes the digestive system, which can especially help with heartburn symptoms.
3. Portion Size
Portion size is very important, especially if you already have a strained digestive system. Eating less makes your gut work less.
This doesn’t mean you should eat smaller meals more frequently–you need to start cutting down on overall consumption.
I have found one of the best ways to do this is by using a smaller plate, or by filling your plate with less food.
Psychologically, I’m a plate-clearer. I clear the plate no matter what’s on it.
If you’re at a restaurant, ask them to box up half the meal before it even gets to you.
Guess how much you’re probably going to eat during that meal? Half as much, and your digestive system will thank you.
Another tip you can try is slowing down when you eat. We do everything so quickly, but we need to give our bodies a chance to digest.
Digestion starts, especially for carbohydrates and starches, in your mouth.
Slowing down your chewing will help your digestive tract not have to work so hard to break food down, especially meat.
You can have smaller meals, spread them out, and even try fasting for periods of time. Skipping a meal altogether is the ultimate way to give your digestive system a break.
4. Drink Water
A study in 2022 showed that drinking plenty of water is linked to an increase in the diversity of the bacteria inside of your gut.
This means fewer bad bacteria that could be causing indigestion, heartburn, or other digestive problems.
I like to add lemon or cucumber to the water, which will also aid the digestive system. You can even put a little bit of apple cider vinegar in there for the insulin benefit.
Also, a little bit of sea salt can help balance the gut and get more water absorbed into your body.
5. Using Pre- Pro- Post-Biotics
Your gut has good bacteria in it that get destroyed by drugs, infections, and the sugar found in toxic foods. It needs to be built back up.
You need to take prebiotics, which is going to feed the probiotics (good bacteria), and use postbiotics to support the probiotics, and help them eliminate bad bacteria.
This is going to lead to benefits like gut restoration, better digestion, and a stronger immune system.
Healthy foods that are going to get you pro and prebiotics are sauerkraut, kefir, kombucha, or anything fermented.
If you have SIBO (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth) or any other digestive condition, you may not want to start with this.
6. Anti-Inflammatory Diet
I break this down in my Make Food Simple book and have videos that can help you with eating anti-inflammatory foods.
I don’t eat foods that tend to inflame the gut like dairy, sometimes nuts and seeds, and sometimes even cayenne pepper.
You may also want to cut out alcohol, grains, and gluten.
Cut out different foods, and if you find that you experience fewer symptoms, you know what sort of food your gut is sensitive to.
7. Full Gut Reset
If you’re curious about a gut reset, it’s a five-step process to remove all the toxins from the gut.
It will help you start to repair the gut, build it back up, seal it, and eat foods that won’t damage it again.
Then you can repopulate the bacteria and the enzymes that are needed to break that food down properly.
Once you go through that process, that’s the perfect time to reintroduce your body to foods that you could be sensitive to.
If you want to know more about how to do a gut reset, I made an entire training that you can check out here.
I also made a video that can show you how to restore gut health that you can check it out here.
