“You need to take a good probiotic!” “ Research indicates, that gut health is key to overall health.” Everyday there is literally a new headline touting the importance of gut health and good probiotics. Let’s take a quick peek into why they are now suddenly all the rage and how you might weed through the noise to find what might work best for you.

At birth, the newborns’ gut is seeded with the microbes present in the mother’s birth canal. For children born cesarean section, their guts are seeded with what is on the skin. The type of microbes received at birth are key to the building of the immune system as well as the establishment of neurotransmitters, that are important to optimal neurological function. This can be problematic for C-section births. Their guts are not seeded properly, because the microbes on the skin, have a different purpose. All is not lost, however, breast feeding can make a huge difference in establishing what is necessary for optimal health and growth.

Keep in mind that overtime the microbes in the gut can change, due to stress, hormones, antibiotics and other external insults. When this happens the delicate balance that exists between the good microbes and the more opportunistic microbes can change, which leads to gut dysbiosis, also known as an imbalance in the gut. The ideal ratio by most accounts is 85% good to 15% opportunistic. Just the slightest shift could set off a cascade of issues that on the surface may seem unrelated to the gut.

If you’re wondering by now what can be done about it, let me share a few quick tips that may overtime restore the balance.

1. Clean up your diet. Limit your exposure to processed foods. Those foods have a tendency to favor the opportunistic microbes over the beneficial ones.

2. Exercise. Daily movement is also beneficial to your gut. There is something about blood flow and moving lymph that can get things stirred up in a good way.

3. Add live or cultured foods to your diet. Sauerkraut and fermented foods are a great side dish to show some love to your microbes.

4. Limit medications. We don’t often think that medications can disrupt our microbiome, but they can. In fact, antibiotics are non specific so they wipe out the good and the bad and can take several months, or up to a year in some cases to be restored.

5. Use a good system. This is my favorite, not only because it has a great probiotic in it, but because the three products together work to weed (remove the bad stuff from the digestive tract), seed (replace the beneficial microbes) and finally feed (prebiotics to feed those good microbes) the probiotics so they can flourish and restore balance. https://shop.plexusworldwide.com/believeandhope/product/plexus-triplex

Remember, those microbes are involved in so many processes that make you, you! They are involved in the production of neurotransmitters that impact mood and learning, they have involvement in our immune function and so much more.

Don’t you think it’s time, to show your gut some love? Message me if you would like to learn more.

All disease begins in the gut. – Hippocrates

With joyful intention!

Angela