5 Most Important Steps for Healing Your Gut

Knowing where to start when it comes to healing your gut can be the hardest and most overwhelming part! We like to keep it nice and simple at the Well Belly Health Clinic, by addressing health in a way that is not stressful or overwhelming. When it comes to healing the gut, we have broken it down to 5 basic steps that you can start working on right away to begin healing your gut. If you are having trouble implementing any of these, or you aren’t seeing the results you want, book in and have a free chat with one of our very experienced and knowledgable practitioners here.

1. Reduce stress- Yep, the first step has nothing to do with food! Stress impacts on every single aspect of health, so reducing stress as a first step will help to support every single system and organ in your body. Reducing stress can reduce inflammation, and support the proper functioning of you immune system. We see stress reduction as the most important part of building a sturdy foundation from which to improve your health. See more about stress here.

2. Eat whole foods- So simple yet so important. Figuring out what food is right for you can be very confusing, and the overload of information out there can have you avoiding just about anything. We like to simply look at food as whether it is a whole food, or a processed food. Ask yourself, could I make this at home out of whole ingredients, or do I need a factory and a science degree in order to make this? Eating more whole foods and less processed foods will drastically improve your gut health. Grab a free whole food recipe ebook here.

3. Start including meat stocks- Meat stocks (not bone broths) are the most important ingredient in a gut healing diet. Meat stocks contain the amino acids (eg. glycine, proline, gelatine, collagen) that heal connective tissue right throughout the body, and very importantly, ulcerations in an unhappy gut lining. Meat stocks are the pivotal food that brings about the most change for the clients of the Well Belly Health Clinic, and is the most important healing food on the GAPS protocol. See more about meat stocks here, and a recipe here.

4. Eat fermented foods- Fermented foods are another crucial food in the menu for a gut healing diet. Fermented foods have been used in traditional diets for thousands of years, and for good reason. Fermented foods provide us with acids and enzymes that support healthy digestion, they make the nutrients in food much more bioavailable, and they provide us with much needed beneficial and transient bacteria that improve the health of our microbiome. Natures true superfood. See a recipe for one of our favourite ferments here.

5. Support your detox pathways- A massive reason for a decline in health is that our detox pathways are not coping with what modern life it throwing at them. A woman is exposed to on average 20 toxic chemicals before she leaves the house each day. When we combine toxic exposure with an unhealthy gut, we have a system that is overexposed to toxins at the same time that it is overproducing toxins and constantly reabsorbing them through the colon rather then expelling them properly. If you add in some hormone imbalances and maybe even some constipation as well then we have a recipe for disaster. Supporting the liver and other detox pathways such as the kidneys, skin, and breath, is crucial for good health and a happy gut. See a recipe we love for supporting the liver here.