Gut Health

"Gut health" is a hot topic, but what does it really mean to have a healthy gut, and how do we get one?

Your gut is in the core of you body and the center of your overall health, because it is connected to everything.

Here are a few examples:

• Your mood - does the term "gut-brain connection" ring a bell? That's probably because it's an exploding area of research. The gut is where we make a lot of our neurotransmitters. In fact, 90-95% of our serotonin (our mood stabilizer) is made by healthy gut bacteria. Your diet directly affects your gut microbiome (environment) and the activity of neurotransmitters. When clients come to me with anxiety and or depression the gut is the very first thing we address, it's that impactful.

• Your hormones- there is something called the estrobolome which is a collection of bacteria in the gut that metabolize and modulate estrogen. When we have suboptimal gut health this can lead to recirculating toxic estrogen and even cause estrogen dominance (aka hormone imbalance).

• Your immune system- 80% of our immune system is housed within the gut. Autoimmune conditions are directly linked to the gut. When you have poor gut health it can cause the intestinal barrier to become "leaky" allowing particles to escape the gut and enter the blood stream. This causes our immune system to attack these foreign particles and puts our immune system in overdrive, the perfect storm for autoimmunity.

• Your brain- when we have gut dysbiosis (imbalance of bacteria- which is something I see in 95% of my clients) we create inflammation. We know that inflammation is the cause of almost all chronic disease and we also know that the gut and brain are so closely connected. This means there is a positive correlation with poor gut health and cognitive disorders like Alzheimer's and dementia, and also overall cognition, memory, thought patterns, and reasoning.

• Your life and longevity- most of us hope for a long life free of disease and pain and filled with energy, vitality, health, happiness and love. I promise you that optimizing your gut health will lead to healthier aging. Don't believe me? There are many research articles out there that looked at this exact link. One showed that older adults with increased healthy bacterial diversity were overall healthier, lived longer, walked faster, had better mobility, and had more optimal markers of things like cholesterol and Vitamin D.

How to Improve your Gut Health

Test Don't Guess: I Utilize the GI Map test in my clinical practice. It takes us on a deep dive of your unique gut microbiome and eliminates the guess work. We learn which exact bacteria, pathogens, viruses, parasites, etc you have and just how much. This allows for a very targeted approach to balancing your gut microbiome. It also tells us a bit about gut function as well like enzyme production, estrogen metabolism, gluten sensitivity, inflammation, and immune system health.

Supporting your Gut Microbiome:

If you're interested in doing a GI Map test I offer them as mini packages or a part of a 1:1 program. The mini package includes the test + 1 session with me to review the results and get my recommendations + a custom supplement protocol, it's currently running for $695. Feel free to respond to this email if you are interested.