Did you know that the average American adult is walking around with approximately 39 trillion bacteria or as much as 5-6 lbs. that makeup what is called our microbiome? These bacteria help digest our food, regulate our immune system, balance our blood glucose levels, protect us against harmful bacteria that cause disease, and produce vitamins including B vitamins B12, thiamine, riboflavin, and Vitamin K which is needed for blood coagulation.
So now you are probably asking, how do know if my microbiome is healthy? Daily bowel movements should be free of symptoms like diarrhea, constipation, and loose stools. Other signs of a healthy gut include being free of rectal symptoms like hemorrhoids and abdominal symptoms such as gas, bloating, and abdominal pain. Other symptoms may not be quite as obvious and range from trouble losing or gaining weight, acne to anxiety.
The gut-brain connection is no joke; it can link anxiety to stomach problems and vice versa. Have you ever had a "gut-wrenching" experience? Do certain situations make you "feel nauseous"? Have you ever felt "butterflies" in your stomach? We use these expressions for a reason. The gastrointestinal tract is sensitive to emotion. Anger, anxiety, sadness, elation — all these feelings (and others) can trigger symptoms in the gut.
The brain has a direct effect on the stomach and intestines. For example, the very thought of eating can release the stomach's juices before food gets there. This connection goes both ways. A troubled intestine can send signals to the brain, just as a troubled brain can send signals to the gut. Therefore, a person's stomach or intestinal distress can be the cause or the product of anxiety, stress, or depression. That is because the brain and the gastrointestinal (GI) system are intimately connected.
This is especially true in cases where a person experiences gastrointestinal upset with no obvious physical cause. For such functional GI disorders, it is difficult to try to heal a distressed gut without considering the role of stress and emotion.
Gut health and anxiety
Given how closely the gut and brain interact, it becomes easier to understand why you might feel nauseated before giving a presentation or feel intestinal pain during times of stress. That does not mean, however, that functional gastrointestinal conditions are imagined or "all in your head." Psychology combines with physical factors to cause pain and other bowel symptoms. Psychosocial factors influence the actual physiology of the gut, as well as symptoms. In other words, stress (or depression or other psychological factors) can affect movement and contractions of the GI tract.
Also, many people with functional GI disorders perceive pain more acutely than other people do because their brains are more responsive to pain signals from the GI tract. Stress can make the existing pain seem even worse.
So now you are wondering how you take a hands-on approach to maintain your gut health or correcting it, and that is where we recommend taking our Whole Life Questionnaire so that we can find out the best approach for helping create your optimal health.
Now, after you have taken our WholeLife Q typically we may recommend a detox, or our popular Metabolic cleanse program followed by our Metabolic Biome program. The combination of both programs is a great way to jump-start a weight loss program or to just help you recalibrate your body to a natural and healthy weight specific to your unique biochemistry.
The key role of the Metabolic cleanse is to support your body’s natural two-phase detoxification process, allowing toxins to clear safely so that you can start feeling great again. While the key role of the Metabolic Biome program is to optimize your metabolism and balance a patient’s gut health.
Here are 15 foods along with supplementing with probiotics and prebiotics that can support your gut health once you have found a nice balance for your biome.
