Last week I held my first fermented foods workshop. Around 12 people attended and we had so much fun talking about gut health, tasting sauerkraut and learning to brew Kombucha. The workshop centred around the health of your gut and why it’s important to feed and nourish the bacteria that lives within your gut. You can be eating the healthiest diet, but if your gut isn't healthy you won't be able to readily absorb nutrients so you won’t be in great health. Key to a healthy gut is having the right balance of gut flora.
The bacteria that live within our gut perform a number of functions:
· Breaking down the food that hasn’t been broken down in the stomach
· Producing happy hormones such as serotonin (95% of serotonin is produced in your digestive system)
· Programming our immune system (70% of immune cells are contained within our digestive system), and
· Building and maintaining our gut wall.
A health gut requires an 80/20 split between ‘good bacteria’ and ‘bad bacteria’ bot lots of factors can blow out this balance:
· Antibiotics
· Birth control pills
· Stress
· High Sugar diet
If you experience any of the following it may pay to look at how you are supporting your gut bacteria:
· difficulty putting on/losing weight
· IBS
· Nausea
· Heartburn
· Bloating
· Constipation
· Diarrhea
· Intolerances
· Fatigue
· Headaches
· Anxiety
· Allergies
· Eczema
· Brain fog
Just how do we support a healthy balance of gut flora?
1/ Chew your food. It sounds basic, but very few of us do it properly and we aren’t maximizing the value we could get from our food. Food should be liquid in our mouths before we swallow. That’s ‘liquid' people, not 3 chews and swallow!
2/ Reduce stress. Make sure you drop those devices and tune out regularly
3/ Eat prebiotics. prebiotics feed your gut flora, think fibrous vegetables and lentils
4/Get cultured. include a variety of cultured foods in your diet. Foods like, kimchi, sauerkraut, full fat probiotic yoghurt, kefir, miso and Kombucha. Many of these may be made cheaply and easily at home. Each of these contains a different strain of probiotics so consume a variety to have a broad spectrum of good bacteria.
5/ Stay hydrated.
6/ Reduce sugar.
7/ Take probiotics after a round of antibiotics. If you find you need to take a course of antibiotics, please follow this up with a course of probiotics to replace the good bacteria that has been killed off by the antibiotics.