You may have been able to ignore digestive distress in the past, but I’m guessing that Thanksgiving made it a little more difficult. What are your digestive symptoms? Bloating, gas, indigestion, hiccups, pain, burping, or disrupted elimination? Many will simply take a medication for temporary relief, not realizing that their body is sending a cry for help. Let’s review ways to restore your gut health with the 5R approach.
While some fences are effective even when you can see through them, others are only effective when they form a full barrier. This is the case for the junction between your small intestines and your bloodstream. When this internal fence isn’t tight, you have what is called “leaky gut” and this can lead to downstream dis-ease. Do you have leaky gut?
Our gut barrier has the job of letting nutrients into the body while keeping toxins, viruses, parasites and unfriendlies out. When its integrity is impaired, harmful organisms or substances can leak into the bloodstream. Hence the term leaky gut. Read more
Do you ever feel like something is off with your body but can’t put your finger on it? You may have a food intolerance or sensitivity. If you are experiencing digestive discomfort, aches, pains, or headaches, you might be experiencing reactions to food you eat. The best way to confirm that is to try an elimination diet.
You’ll start by removing certain foods from your diet — the foods that are well-known for causing symptoms. Then, you’ll reintroduce the foods you eliminate one at a time and take note of any symptoms. The full process takes about six weeks, and if you have a food sensitivity or intolerance, you’ll be able to see which food is causing your body distress so that you can avoid it. Read more
Do you love food? For many of us certain foods bring back memories of special events, people with whom we connect those foods, or something as simple as the taste in our mouths.
Would you ever imagine that some of the foods you really like to eat may not be working well for your body? Hippocrates said centuries ago, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” But just as food can be medicine, for some of us, there are foods to which your body reacts. Read more
I’m a strong proponent of Hippocrates’ idea that our food should be our medicine and our medicine should be our food. Yet the adage that one man’s medicine is another man’s poison couldn’t apply more appropriately than in the topic of food.
Millions of people suffer from allergic or inflammatory reactions to the common foods they consume every day. For most of us, the thought of food allergies prompts a mental image of hives or a swollen tongue developing in response to eating a peanut. That is an example of an immediate allergy which results in an aggressive histamine reaction. These are serious, but not as frequent as you may think. Read more
