HEALING YOURSELF – ARE YOU CONFUSED WHERE TO START?

The bacteria in our gut are a hot topic at present and this post will hopefully help you to understand why!

It’s quite ironic for me to be writing about this topic as I can remember being fresh out of my pharmacy degree (and thinking I knew everything) and on a mission to improve by skin (namely eczema and pimples). At a loss with pharmaceuticals I travelled three hours to see a naturopath who endeavoured to tell me in order to fix my skin I should work on healing my gut.

I remember thinking “Oh my god, I’ve wasted another few hundred dollars on this quack.” But burnt out and desperate I took her advice and ended up with a very expensive cocktail of potions. After six months with no improvements I threw them all out.

I now know that her intention with healing my gut was 100% accurate but her suggested execution was all wrong. No pill, potion or combination of both will magically fix you. It might mask your symptom or marginally improve your current situation or in my case it might do jack all but eventually you will end up right back at square one or worse off!

So before I tell you how I healed my gut and fixed my skin without pills, creams or any magic bullets let’s see what this gut business is all about.

Hippocrates over 2000 years ago said, “All disease begins in the gut – “

So this got me thinking, was he a quack too or is there more to this gut thing?

Did you know?

• The gut contains over 100,000,000,000,000 (one hundred trillion) microorganisms? And together those microbes have 100 times more genes than the human genome. Therefore, we are actually more microbe than human. Pretty crazy huh? So common sense would say that these microorganisms are somewhat important and have a pretty big job.

• The gut acts as a gatekeeper. What does this mean? Well like a “good” gatekeeper it is designed to keep certain things from getting through the gate.

• We need healthy and diverse microbiota so they can; break down harmful components that we ingest, synthesise vitamins and aid absorption of minerals like iron, calcium and magnesium. Gut microbes determine how we process and what we get from the food we eat. So ultimately it pays to keep them healthy.

• The gut is home to 70% of our immune tissue, so simply if our gut is sick we get sick!

• The microbes in our gut are responsible for hormone conversion and production. So you want your little guys to be functioning well!

So what can go wrong with this enormously important ecosystem within us?

• Well when the gatekeeper gets sloppy, he starts letting the riffraff in. The riffraff is in the form of large protein molecules and the process of this sloppiness is otherwise referred to as increased intestinal barrier permeability or “Leaky Gut”. Since the large proteins were never meant to get in the body sees them as foreign invaders and mounts an immune response to attack them. Studies show that these immune responses to foreign protein molecules is at the heart of all autoimmune diseases, like Hashimoto thyroiditis and Celiac disease.

• When your immune system is so busy attacking these foreign invaders it has nothing left to fend off actual harmful viruses, bacteria and parasites and therefore you get sick more often. You also become prone to food allergies and end up in a state of chronic inflammation.

• But that’s not all, if we can remember Hippocrates wise words, that all disease begins in the gut, intestinal permeability may also present as skin conditions like eczema, acne, anxiety and depression, fatigue, joint pain, allergies, abdominal pain, gas and bloating, poor immune function and difficulty concentrating.

And guess what makes the Gatekeeper sloppy? Societies most commonly exposed to commodities and stress, yep it’s that word again!

• A diet high in refined flours, sugars and vegetable oils
• Alcohol
• Medications like antibiotics, NSAIDS, proton pump inhibitors
• Environmental toxins like BPA
• Chronic stress

Although I did not knowingly set out to improve my skin this way, the progressive steps I were making were in fact healing my gut and overall systemic inflammation and in turn my skin. So here it is – I am the quack telling you, you need to fix your gut if you want clear, glowing skin. No pills, no creams, no extra costs!

Here is where to start

1/ MANAGE STRESS. The most important thing that everyone talks about and no one does. Chronic stress can lead to bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine (these little guys should be predominantly in the large intestine), inflammation and intestinal permeability.

I could write a whole blog, god a whole book, on the ways stress wreaks absolutely havoc on health. Dealing with it, is the hardest thing to get people to do. And there are multiple steps. One of the biggest bang for your buck is meditation. Stay with me, I can feel you raising your eyebrows.

Like most things that are uncomfortable it takes practice before it feels normal. But once you start feeling the benefits it makes you want to keep going, kind of like exercise and yoga . I listen to Melissa Ambrosini’s guided meditations on my iPhone. I usually do this at the beach. It is 12 minutes of listening to calming noises and her voice. It heavily focusses on breathing, shutting out all the external thoughts, and just listing to her positiveness. The benefits of meditation are plentiful from improving productivity and focus, improving sleep, reducing blood pressure, reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression and more.

2/ REMOVE FOODS THAT WREAK HAVOC IN YOUR GUT. The big three – refined sugar, grains and vegetables oils. As I have mentioned before, trust me that you are eating them you just don’t know about it. They are in every packaged food, in every restaurant or eatery and in particular in your “healthy” breakfast muesli. You will need to be willing to make a lifestyle shift to a more whole foods primal way of living if you want to get serious about removing these.

3/ EAT MORE FERMENTED FOODS. These are the superior and cheapest probiotics. Fermented foods are hard to find in our area so you will probably have to make them yourself. Which is actually really fun and rewarding. This includes and is not limited to – kefir, sauerkraut, kombucha and beet kvass to name a few. Kefir is by far the easiest and simplest (watch video here).

4/ EAT MICROBIOTA ACCESSIBLE CARBOHYDRATES: This feeds your gut bacteria. Its one thing to introduce them but we also need to make sure they stay. Eg. potato, boiled and cooled white rice.

5/ CONSUME BONE BROTH. It is rich in glycine and gelatin both of which are helpful at restoring the integrity of the gut barrier. I consume at least half to one cup a day. To start brewing your own, here is a recipe I created.

6/ REMOVE THE TOXINS ON YOUR SKIN. If you are anything like me I was cleansing, toning, moisturising, priming, one coat of foundation second coat of powder and wait where is the bronzer, ok, finally ready to leave the house. Jesus how exhausting. Not to mention the amount of rubbish I was putting onto and into my body. And that was just my face. I have to admit that the removal of these things was harder than I expected – I had many ugly days and days where I felt very naked. Luckily I have an extraordinary partner to tell me how beautiful I am everyday so this definitely helped. The removal of all these products feels now more like freedom. I have more time to get on with my day, I actually feel more like myself and see my beauty from a different eye and ultimately my skin has dramatically improved. Probably because it can finally breath. And my bank account is better off.

A beautiful brand of skin care I have discovered is Annmarie Gianni Skin Care from the states that ship to Australia. Check their product range out if you are looking to convert to more natural ingredients.

7/ TAKE A HIGH QUALITY FERMENTED COD LIVER OIL. Fermented cod liver oil contains vitamins A, D and K2 in addition to EPA and DHA, and is important for cell growth and reducing overall inflammation. I like the Rosita brand.

So there you have it – no contraceptive pill, no antibiotics, no expensive creams, no laser surgery. Just all nat-ur-al! Things aren’t perfect but I’m confident I am fixing things from the inside out and for good.

Love Chantel