Detox Your Gut - Glow From the Inside Out
Now that the summer is just around the corner you may have the urge to update your wardrobe, clean and tidy your entire apartment, and potentially detox your body from the inside out. In holistic health we believe in the body’s ability to heal itself. To detox means to eliminate the toxins and support the body’s natural waste removal processes by nourishing our bodies with whole foods.
Gut health is a relatively new topic, and we are constantly learning more about how the health of our gut is critical for our overall health, wellbeing, and beauty - including on-going detoxification. The better you can digest and absorb all the essential nutrients from the foods you eat, the better you will feel and look. Our food is the fuel for our bodies and so much more. It provides the building blocks for our skin, hair, nails, or any cell in our body. We all know how much better we feel when our digestion works optimally: there’s no pain, bloating, constipation, or diarrhoea.
The makeup of your gut microbiome is completely unique to you and that affects how your food gets digested, nutrients absorbed, and how toxins are handled. Keep this in mind and approach the topic based on what’s best suited to your individual needs.
The Big Family
Your digestive system is home to upward of 100 trillion beneficial microbes, which is 10 times more than your own human cells. Your gut microbiome consists of bacteria, fungi, viruses, and parasites, and they have a huge impact on various bodily processes related to your digestion, hormones, immune function, and mental and emotional health. Even our oral health and gut microbiome are strongly related because our oral and gut microbiome are two distinct yet related species. This is something I learned after reading a book, The Dental Diet by Dr. Steven Lin. And in this interesting conversation on the Model Health Show, Dr. Tim Spector explained how our microbes can dictate our food cravings and preferences. See, everything is connected!
You and your gut microbiome have a symbiotic relationship, meaning your body provides them with things they need to thrive - a place to live and food to eat - and in exchange these bugs perform vital functions for you - for instance, help you to digest your food or protect you from pathogenic bacteria or cancer. It’s like a whole little world inside your gut!
Many struggle from bacterial dysbiosis, an imbalance in gut bacteria. Factors like medication overuse (especially antibiotics and NSAIDs), poor quality foods, alcohol, smoking, stress and environmental toxins can disrupt the beautiful balance of bacteria. Consequently, bad “bugs” can take over and outnumber beneficial bacteria, causing an imbalance. Toxins can be things like herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, water pollutants, air pollutants, and antibiotics. Shockingly, toxins can be absorbed not only orally but also through the skin and the lungs. Your skin is your largest organ and a good reflection of what’s going on inside the microbiome. Our skin can help to eliminate toxins but also let them in. Gut issues often show on the skin (eczema, acne, rashes).
Our gut microbiome is called the second brain, and the health of our gut affects our mood. The brain and the gastrointestinal (GI) system are strongly connected. Studies show now that 95 percent of serotonin and close to 50 percent of the dopamine formed in the body are found in the gut. Both of these hormones affect our mental health and are often described as our bodies natural feel-good and pleasure chemicals. At normal levels serotonin, helps you to stay focused, emotionally stable, happier, and calmer. Similarly, dopamine is needed for concentration, sex drive, energy, and motivation. Low levels of both these hormones are associated with depression, and in more severe dysfunction can lead to things like schizophrenia or binge eating disorder.
Dr. Will Cole has written an entire book, Gut Feelings, about the bidirectional relationship between physical and emotional health. The conventional Western medicine likes to separate mental health from physical health as if the brain exists completely unconnected to the rest of the body even though the brain and the gut are connected physically through millions of nerves - the main connector being the vagus nerve. In his book Dr. Will Cole links his wisdom to the latest research to show that mental health is physical health. Without fixing the root cause we can never start to feel better. In a world with endless distractions and to-do lists, addressing our whole-body health is more critical than ever before. By building the right habits you can become the best, and most radiant version of yourself!
Back to Balance: Feed Your Friends
The focus should be on what we eat, and how much we can digest and assimilate from the foods we eat. It’s all about eating a diverse, well balanced diet rich with prebiotics (also known as fibre), and adding some probiotic foods to reset and repair your gut microbiome. Nutrients that are digested in the gut are essential for on-going detoxification which is why I don’t believe in water fasting or juice cleanses. Always try to get nutrients from whole food sources unless you are unable to get enough nutrients and need to add high-quality supplements.
I like to honour the idea of bio-individuality. Meaning that our individual differences (like our age, sex, health status, physical activity) affect our ideal food choices. There’s no one-size-fits-all definition of “healthy”, and it’s certainly not my job - or anybody else’s - to tell you which cult to follow (vegan, paleo, keto,... ). The wellness world is full of food fights and diet (or anti-diet) wars and it’s better to ignore them and focus on the things that matter. The key is to choose as much unprocessed foods as possible and avoid ultra-processed junk foods, and learn to make food choices that align with your body’s individual needs and cues. Here, I want to remind you that just because something is labelled as “organic”, “natural”, “vegan”, “keto”, “zero fat” or something similar does not necessarily mean that it’s healthy!
Start by adding more prebiotic foods into your diet, aka plant fibre, to create an environment where your gut microbes can thrive and to speed waste removal processes. Inulin is a prebiotic fibre found in asparagus, bananas, Jerusalem artichokes, dandelion greens, and onions. Secondly, add probiotic foods. Before the invention of refrigerators fermentation was one of the few ways that people could make food last longer. Fermented foods are full of probiotic bacteria and prebiotic fibre. Today many of us don’t eat them regularly or at all. Fermented foods include kefir, kombucha, kimchi, sauerkraut, miso, probiotic yoghurt, tempeh, and natto. If you buy them from a grocery store, make sure they are not pasteurised since pasteurisation kills the good bacteria!
I would also try to add some herbs to support natural detoxification. Try cardamom, cayenne pepper, dandelion, ginger, and turmeric. Certain micronutrients like folate, selenium, vitamin D, and zinc have shown to improve gut health. I want to emphasise though it's not one single food or nutrient that is going to fix your issues. Diet is only one factor. It's the bigger picture of life that matters: your overall diet, your sleep rhythms, daily physical activities, relationships, work-life balance, joy in life (or lack of it), chemicals you put in and on to your body, etc.
To Limit or Not To Limit
There are foods that do not have functional health benefits and if your goal is to improve the health of your microbiome you want to limit them. These include alcohol, caffeine, added sugar, and highly processed oils.
While detox starts in the gut when our microbes first encounter toxins, most detoxification happens in the liver. Therefore, you want to make your liver work optimally, and always start your day with a glass of pure water! Your liver is responsible for breaking down toxins like alcohol, medications, and natural by-products of metabolism. This is the very reason why I am not a fan of alcohol. It’s a toxin - and not a health food: prolonged alcohol consumption is detrimental to our brains, our heart, our liver, and many other organs. Moreover, when we slowly drink a toxic acidic substance as alcohol, it can absolutely damage our teeth and skin. It makes the skin look dull and puffy. I am not a teetotaler: I drink rarely and use it very moderately like enjoying a glass of wine at dinner.
Avoid refined flour because it often comes with additives and preservatives and it doesn’t contain gut healthy nutrients. It only gives you a spike of energy that soon comes crashing down. The same goes with added sugar because bad bacteria feed on sugar, and regular overconsumption can lead to an overgrowth of yeast and persistent food cravings.
Then there are bio-individual aspects which is why you want to figure out which foods work for your gut health and if there are foods that inflame your gut. If you are planning to eliminate entire food groups, you should always work with a professional to create a personalised plan to avoid any nutrient deficiencies because running low in certain nutrients can hinder the body’s natural detoxification process. For example beans, gluten, dairy, and pork can be issues for some. And our needs may change over time. For instance, during the plandemic I was very stressed out and couldn’t tolerate wheat at all: after a meal my skin flushed to red immediately and became painfully itchy. It was horrific and so painful I couldn’t even bend my fingers. It was something I had never experienced before. After going through a couple of strange reactions I decided not to eat any gluten containing foods. This gluten elimination lasted for a year or so, after which I started to slowly reintroduce gluten containing foods back. Now I have no issues with wheat or gluten but I still don’t eat it everyday. I prefer gluten-free (pseudo) grains like oats, rice, quinoa, buckwheat, and millet.
How to Eat
Paying attention to meal timing and food combinations can also help to beat digestive issues and gassiness. There are certain things that I have found very helpful, such as always eating fruit first and ideally alone or with fresh, raw greens. Fruit is high in vitamins, minerals, and water. It is often considered the most pure and divine food on the planet. Of all foods, fruit breaks down the quickest: it gets out of the stomach in thirty minutes. If you eat fruit with or right after heavy protein or starches, it has to sit on top of these foods that take much longer to digest. Now fruit will ferment and acidify the whole meal which can lead to constipation, gas, and stomach pain.
Honouring meal times is a way to give your digestive system a break. We should have a clear gap between our dinner and breakfast, and no snacking between meals! To avoid the trap, make sure you eat enough whole foods during the meal times, get good sleep, and hydrate properly.
You want to make a habit of chewing well, eating slowly without distractions, and hydrating between meals - at least half an hour before or an hour following meals. Only drink small amounts of water during meals because too much water dilutes digestive juices and slows down digestion. Proper hydration is essential for good digestion and regular bowel movements, but then there’s the thing of too much of a good thing…
Avoid tech devices during your meals. Learn to live in the present moment. In my opinion, mealtimes should be the sacred time to pause and destress so that we can get out of fight-or-flight mode (sympathetic nervous system) and activate the rest-and-digest mode (parasympathetic nervous system). Yes, we live in an imperfect world but at least once a day we should have a meal without our tech devices. You will notice the difference - in a good way! This should be about nourishing every cell in our body, detoxing our minds and becoming more in tune with our bodies’ signals.
Finally, remember that our thoughts and emotions are powerful: they are like nutrients for your mind and soul. You cannot heal the body you hate. You deserve to be happy, healthy, and free.
Hope these ideas will help you to nourish your body, mind and spirit!
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