04/08/2024
🌿 Some key takeaways from my talk this weekend on how to cultivate a happy healthy gut microbiome:
1. **Nourishment:** To understand how to improve gut health we need to look at how foods are absorbed and assimilated in our digestive tract. We can be ‘over fed and under nourished’ and still very hungry if our gut microbiome is imbalanced. An imbalanced gut with too much ‘bad’ flora and not enough ‘good’ flora means that even the highest quality fruits and vegetables, pastured eggs, meat, dairy and fish may not make an appreciable difference for someone depleted and malnourished. After all, it’s not us that digests our food it’s our gut microbiome. 🍏🥦
2. **Manage Stress:** Stress has been shown to directly damage the composition of the gut microbiome, depleting the good bacteria you need to stay well. It also shrinks brain regions like the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, crucial for memory, mental ‘horsepower’ and emotion processing ability. 🧠
3- **The 80-20 Rule:** It’s better to eat the wrong food with the right attitude than the right food with the wrong attitude. This means that 80% of the time, focus on a low-inflammation diet rich in biocompatible proteins which provide all the building blocks for a healthy gut lining, alive and probiotic foods like sauerkraut and sour cream to boost the diversity of your gut bacteria, prebiotic foods like roast pumpkin and vegetables to feed your good gut bacteria. The remaining 10-20% of the time, enjoy whatever delights you 😊 whether it’s meals shared with loved ones or foods you associate with happy memories. Becoming stressed about food choice to the point of being rigid can cause more harm than good. We discussed how a mindset of deprivation is a stressed mindset and how harmful this can be. True health involves not just a considered and balanced wholefoods diet, it also involves connecting to others by sharing meals and enjoying the pleasure of trying new things ☕🍰
#80-20Rule
