Gut Health Coach Tips For Getting Your Digestive Health On Track

As a gut health coach with 7 years of experience, I wanted to talk about one of the most misunderstood components of your health – gut health.

Gut health is central to the health of your hormones, immune system, weight and overall health.

Hormonal imbalances and autoimmune diseases, like Hashimoto’s Thyroditis, skin issues, fatigue, brain fog and many other health issues can all be linked to your gut health.

As a gut health coach, I’ve seen just how big and popular the gut health topic is in the world of alternative medicine.

Your gut’s basic role is to digest the foods you eat and then absorb what nutrients it needs from these foods, while excreting the rest.

When your gut is working properly, it forms a barrier that controls what gets absorbed into your bloodstream. However, sometimes this barrier breaks down and starts allowing partially digested food, bacteria and toxins into the body.

This can then cause inflammation in your whole body, leading to many modern disease, including autoimmune issues.

Gut Health Coach Tips: Best Foods To Eat

It’s probably not a surprise to you that in order to keep your gut healthy, you need to eat a variety of healthy foods.

Yet, what’s the best foods for gut health and what foods should you avoid?

Here’s my gut health coach take on things – eating a healthy, high fiber foods are the best foods for gut health.

Whole plant foods are high in fiber, very hydrating, full of great nutrition and can work to help you reverse your gut imbalances, including Candida, SIBO and IBS.

For example, I came to be a gut health coach because of my own gut issues. One of the gut issues I had was Candida. I was able to resolve my Candida symptoms in a matter of days with a high-carb lifestyle plan, after following a traditional anti-Candida diet with no results.

Many people turn to a low carb diet, like Paleo or Keto due to believing the false idea that all carbs are bad for you and are simply laden with sugar, which they will tell you is really unhealthy.

And this is typically the case when it comes to dealing with a Candida overgrowth. You must starve them – the fungus and you of any or almost all sugar.

So you go on the anti candida diet and eat little or no carbs, but there is a huge problem with this approach.

First, it’s very high in fat, which increases your risk of insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, hear disease and even hormonal imbalances.

Second, you starve yourself of carbs and this can lead to cravings, low energy levels and generally feeling down and miserable.

Third, the Candida overgrowth will typically still persist no matter how little carbs you eat, which really shows that sugar is not the problem here.

This is why people suffer from a Candida overgrowth even on an anti-Candida diet.

Plant foods and their fiber are vital for a healthy balanced gut.

Certain bacteria, for example, feed off the plant fiber and create nutrients that your body needs to be healthy.

If you greatly reduce these then this can have serious repercussions for someone’s health, now and in the future.

Gut Health Coach Tips: Leaky Gut

Leaky gut, which is also known as increased intestinal permeability, is a digestive disorder where bacteria and toxins are able to leak through the intestinal wall and into your bloodstream. 

About 70 million Americans suffer with some sort of digestive issue every single day (1) with leaky gut and Candida overgrowth being two common examples.

The vast majority of people that we come across and work with on a daily basis have some kind of health issue with their gut.

For example, they might suffer from excessive gas, bloating, sensitivity when digesting certain foods, IBS, unwanted bacterial overgrowth, fungal overgrowth – the list goes on and on.

A leaky gut, or increased intestinal permeability is when the lining of your gut does not work properly and instead starts allowing partially digested food, bacteria and toxins into your body.

This then causes your body to attack these unwanted intruders and causes inflammation.

This can then lead to many health issues, including autoimmune diseases, headaches, acne, inflammation, IBS and IBD.

In fact, leaky gut has actually been called a danger signal for autoimmune disease. 

Gut Health Coach Tips: Hormones

One of the main concerns I see from my clients as a gut health coach is not solely related to gut health. Very often, my clients come to me with hormonal imbalances, including thyroid, Hashimoto’s, PCOS and others.

So what’s gut health got to do with your hormones?

Your gut bacteria has a large role to play when it comes to your hormone levels.

These bacteria both produce hormones themselves and are affected by the hormones that our own bodies produce as well.

In fact, some of our gut bacteria have specific roles to play when it comes to regulating circulating estrogen levels in our bodies.

Estrogen plays a vital role in human health, including:

• Cell replication
• Reproduction
• Fat deposition
• Bone health
• Cardiovascular health

Estrogen is made primarily by your ovaries.

It then circulates through your body to your uterus and breasts and other organs, until it reaches your liver where it’s inactivated.

Inactivated estrogen is then supposed to be excreted from by your body through your poop.

Yet, if your gut is out of balance, only some of the estrogen may be excreted from your body with the rest remaining to negatively affect your estrogen levels.

Now when the gut microbiome is balanced, then the microbes that affect the metabolism of estrogens should be working optimally.

They should be helping your body to maintain a healthy balance of these hormones.

However if your gut is out of balance then an excess of estrogen or even a deficiency can result.

Having excess estrogen in your body for example can have serious implications for your health, including:

• Breast, cervical, endometrial and ovarian cancer
• Endometriosis
• Prostate cancer
• PCOS

So as you can see, addressing your gut health is a crucial step to helping your get your health back on track. Don’t delay things – start today!

Ready for your big health leap?

I’m excited to invite you to our FREE online training.

During this masterclass, I’ll walk you through the 5 steps our clients use to reverse gut health issues and balance their hormones … while never restricting themselves of carbohydrates and sugar.

Don’t miss out, claim your spot here!

Reference:

1. http://americannutritionassociation.org/newsletter/digestive-issues

2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5440529/