Is your gut making you gain weight and making you increasingly sick?
Research over the past few decades has revealed that there is a link between your microbiota, your digestion, body weight and metabolism.
The microbiota are the trillions of bacterial organisms that live inside your body. The whole community is called the microbiome
It is proven now that you can take the microbiota from an obese mouse and place it into a healthy lean mouse and that lean mouse that continues to eat the same diet it was always eating will START INCREASING WEIGHT MORE RAPIDLY AND WILL START TO DISPLAY OTHER METABOLIC SHIFTS of the donor mouse.
This is because your gut bugs influence the production of hormones like insulin which ultimately LEADS TO FAT STORAGE.
If your gut is fed dietary fibre, it then ferments the fibre and creates byproducts called short chain fatty acids, these SCFA’s then get absorbed into your circulation and in turn have POWERFUL ANTI-INFLAMMATORY EFFECTS.
If you aren’t eating fibre then your micobiota is not producing these SCFA’s which means you are missing out on dialing down the inflammation in your body.
Inflammation is associated to any chronic disease that manifests.
In fact, it is really DECADES OF THIS RELENTLESS SIZZLE in the body that lays the GROUNDWORK FOR CHRONIC DISEASE.
How your body manages inflammation can really be impacted by the food you eat and the know on effect to know how your microbiota in your gut resonds to what you put on your plate.
When you sit down to eat you are feeding information into your cells and this information can be to either switch your metabolism on into a fat storing, inflammatory metabolic state or a FAT BURNING ANTI INFLAMMATORY and therefore ANTIAGEING METABOLIC STATE.
Your gut ecosystem is one big modulator of this.
Evidence suggests now that people with low diversity have worse metabolic health and higher markers of inflammation in the body.
If you place these people on a food plan that increases their microbiota diversity then their markers improve.
WHAT CREATES LOW DIVERSITY TO BEGIN WITH?
Evidence is suggesting that the microbes that we have as infants lay the foundation and can be with us for a very long time.
Cesarean sections influence the microbial community that first inhabits the infants.
With infants breast milk is crucial for providing fuel for the microbiota to populate and take hold.
Antibiotics strip your gut and contribute to low diversity. A necessary evil at times, they have an indiscriminate effect on wiping out bacterial population in your gut.
Then in turn opportunistic (unwanted) yeasts and bacteria proliferate. These changes can be long lasting without intervention using food, probiotics, fermentable fibres and prebiotic foods.
Lack of fermentable fibre in the diet. Fibre found in foods like onions, leeks, bananas, apples, sweet potatoes, psyllium husk helps to feed the good bacteria in your gut and so will help with overall diversity.
Most unfortunately do not get enough fibre into their diets on a daily basis. The average intake is roughly around 15grams and optimum intake sits around 30 to 40 grams daily.
Lack of fermentable foods. Fermented foods like kombucha, kim chee, sauerkraut, natto miso, yoghurt, kefir will help “feed” your gut bugs.
Sanitisation of our external environment. Our obsession with cleanliness is impacting our microbiome. Yes you want to wash your hands after handling things like meat, rubbish, toilets and so on but don’t be afraid of getting your hands dirty.
Exposure to dust, dirt, grime, the outside world is crucial for your microbial population. Bacteria is unavoidable.
WHAT CAN YOU DO TO OPTIMISE YOUR MICROBES?
Eat Fermented Foods – Natural Real Yoghurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kim chee, have all been a part of traditional cultures and the human diet for thousands of years.
Fermented foods act like fertilizer and fuel for your bacteria to take hold in your gut. Its best to consider them as essential foods as part of maintaining good health.
In other words, use them daily in your food. Shoot for half a cup a day of fermented foods.
Eat More Fibre – eat 6 to 8 cups of vegetables daily especially leafy greens like kale and spinach as well as broccoli cauliflower, cabbage, brussel sprouts. These will give you loads of soluble prebiotic fibre.
Take A Good Quality Probiotic Capsule.
Eat An Anti Inflammatory Diet consisting of lean proteins, good fats from nuts, seeds, oily fish, avocadoes, coconut oil, loads of fresh vegetables with fruit and lots of healing herbs and spices like garlic, turmeric, coriander, parsley, and oregano.
We are basically one big pile of microbes encased by a sack of skin, with bones and skeleton and our obsession with hygiene and cleaning is linked to impacting our microbial population internally.
With this in mind perhaps the 10-second rule should apply to dropped food, and we should be ordering a side of soil with our greens!
In Health,
Victoria
PS If you are GAINING WEIGHT AND ARE TIRED AND EXHAUSTED all the time and you have had enough of feeling this way then contact me now and take my team up on their free initial consultation so we can help get you back on track once and for all.
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