Hey y’all ! I’m Sam Stokes Functional Medicine Coach, Certified Holistic Nutritionist, Nurse , Mom and Wife. Some of you know that my daughters and I suffered from autoimmune disease but we have achieved remission through Functional Medicine and Paleo eating.
So today’s topic is our 11 tips for gut health maintenance and how to heal your gut. Sometimes your gut can have some dysfunction and it’s time to heal the gut again at let it rest and digest. Our bodies require maintenance and daily attention. We have to listen to our bodies and eat certain ways if we notice we don’t feel well, then we have to take a few days of
Tip #1
Eating Clean alkaline diet. Alkaline means it keeps your body from becoming too acid based- acidic. Acidity causes inflammation and many other diseases/ailments. Alkaline foods are veggies and some berries. Eating a diet that is 90/10 clean/clean junk. Eating clean for 90% of the time will help you maintain this new found wellness and continue feeling good more consistently. I said clean junk because I still try to eat a healthier version of junk food. If that means having a ton of gluten free pancakes with a ton of pure maple syrup and grass fed butter-yum lol or loaded nachos etc. I do not feel it serves me for the best to eat true junk food without any nutritional properties, I prefer to not eat empty calories.
Tip #2
Increase your fiber intake about 25 grams a day is the suggested amount. We eat a lot of chia seeds here. This is a really good snack for on the go or school. And they really like them there are dollar at Walmart and they’re organic. And you can either buy that or you can make your own chia seeds like by the chia seeds and then make your own chia seed pudding. I use coconut milk with this and one day soon. I will post the recipe on that but you mix coconut milk with Chia seeds and I’ll put vanilla extract and Stevia and a few blueberries and mix it up and let it refrigerate for about 15-20 minutes and it gets kind of firm like pudding and you can eat it like that tip
Tip #3
Increase your water intake about half of your body weight in ounces. So if she weighs 70 pounds She needs 35 ounces a day. You know give or take some but if you’re exercising or anything like that and sweating a lot you need to replenish with maybe coconut water or something
Tip #4
Limit caffeine and consume no alcohol alcohol either one glass or five glasses of wine is still hard on your liver and it’s hard on your gut. So things don’t work properly when you’re consuming alcohol. I suggest having an alkaline diet and alcohol is not part of that
Tip #5
Move daily ! Do things that decrease your stress and make sure you sleep well every night. I asked by daughter -What do you do to help you relax? She said, “I do some exercise breathing, which means I like take deep breaths. I pray and exercise. I swim and I just relax.”
Tip #6
It’s proven to help decrease the permeability of your gut and help heal your gut lining and that is collagen peptides or collagen gelatin. I use vital proteins brand grass-fed beef.
We make Jello homemade . What’s your favorite flavor Riley? I like the the apple juice will make will make or buy organic apple juice and we’ll mix it with steam water and it makes Jello and its really good snack for them. And it’s really easy to make So eventually hopefully we’ll get to a video making that too. Yeah. We love cooking and making things in the kitchen. Follow us on YouTube for new videos on wellness and new recipes; RnR Integrative Wellness.
Tip #7
Cod liver oil consumed cod liver oil daily. We use Carlson brand and I’ll try to post a link below on what brand that is. These are known to be you know, healthy fats are known to be anti-inflammatory. And we also use coconut oil a good bit for cooking or olive oil. So all three of those things are good for inflammation and good health and overall health as well.
Tip #8
Consumed prebiotics and probiotics ;prebiotics from food sources or green plantains, green bananas ,onions garlic and sweet potatoes. Those are to name a few and I actually made some plantain Fritter this morning with this plantain flour. It’s made from 100% green plantains, which has a lot of prebiotics in it. They were really good. I’ll have to post a recipe for that as well. They were easy to make too. And probiotics we use an organic brand I buy from Amazon. It’s called Sun biotics and my youngest daughter really likes them to their to a boil. She doesn’t really care for him. But she still she still eats them but they don’t give us any issues or any upset or anything. So I think there are high quality brand and we’ve been using those four years now tip number nine. If you’re having some gut issues it’s good to fast for a while. Maybe if you can 16 hours 18 hours would be good, but I’m not saying consistently do intermittent fasting every day. But when I do feel bad I can tell that
Tip #9
Intermittent fasting. Fasting gives your gut a break and helps your intestines just rest for a while and it’s good because you don’t want to keep snacking all the time when your guts not feeling good.
Tip #10
Have a bowel movement. Preferably every morning. That’s why when you wait, you should have warm lemon water and get moving around and then you’ll be able to go and be ready for the day. So yeah that is a topic that a lot of people are uncomfortable with talking about but it’s significant and it will improve your health. We take magnesium supplements 200-400mg every night as well.
Tip #11
If you eat something you should always drink something warm. You can drink some cold, but make sure you drink something warm after because it’s healthy but warm fluids help prevent your body from becoming too sluggish and it keeps things moving properly. I’m sure most of you know that the majority of our serotonin is made in our gut and its is our happy hormone. Okay a happy healthy gut is a healthy. Happy You .