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Gut Health

What you eat has a bigger impact on your microbiome and its ability to protect you from viruses than anything else you do.

Some of your most common questions about leaky gut syndrome, answered.

What you eat can help relieve digestive symptoms and build a more resilient gut.

For a lot of my patients, especially those dealing with digestive and autoimmune problems, what stands between them and feeling great is an insidious but fixable problem we in the integrative health world call ‘leaky gut,’ or gut ‘permeability.’ If low-grade ills are dragging you down, leaky gut should probably be on your radar…

Hopefully you got the memo that gut health is a key component to overall health. The trillions of microorganisms living in your gut play a major role in everything from digestion to immunity to cognition — and can even impact your emotions. But did you know that certain strains of bacteria can actually influence your ability to shed unhealthy — unwanted — pounds?

Turns out garlic is great for ulcers, food poisoning, and gut dysbiosis. Here’s why — and how to get more garlic in your diet.

There are plenty of gut-repairing foods that you can incorporate into your diet in fun and delicious ways.

Aging is a natural process, and while we cannot control time, there is a remarkable ecosystem within us—the gut microbiome—that might hold the key to aging gracefully.

Everyone talks about fermented foods and by now you probably know you need them to help keep your gut healthy. But, let’s be honest here, are you actually eating your fair share? If not, you’re missing out on one of Mother Nature’s easiest gut health hacks!

Despite the fact that I am a functional and integrative cardiologist, I often look first at a patient’s gut health to shed light on the underlying cause of heart disease. What could the gut possibly have to do with the heart? It’s all about inflammation.

Probiotic foods help ‘seed’ the gut, adding beneficial bacteria, which helps keep ‘bad bacteria’ in check, aids digestion and keeps nutrient absorption humming. But, probiotics are only part of the story. There’s another ‘biotic’ in the gut-supportive mix, namely the less talked about prebiotics. These are plant fibers that feed the beneficial bacteria (like, for example, the lactobacilli and bifidobacteria) in the gut – and they are essential to your gut health.

Even with vaccines starting to roll out, everyone still needs to keep focused on what they can do for their own immunity. With more easily spread mutations unloosed and clusters and spikes still to be battled through, it will be months before the world can truly breathe a sigh of relief, if we’re lucky. Until then, your best immunity defense – whether you’ve had the shots or not – is to keep your gut in tip-top shape: to feed it, care for it and tend it like your life depends on it because it does.

A happy, trouble-free gut is the key to keeping your entire body healthy, and never more so than when we’re (still) in the midst of a pandemic. The stronger and more resilient your gut is – and the more harmoniously balanced the trillions of bacteria that live there -- the better your heart, brain, immune system and just about every other part of your body will function.

Heavy drinking may lead to gut dysbiosis, according to several studies, but the health effects are less clear when it comes to drinking in moderation.

You know the old saying, the eyes are the windows to the soul. Maybe that’s true. But what researchers know for sure is that the skin is the window to what’s going on inside the body. What’s going on inside the gut, especially with the trillions of the bacteria that live there, often directly affects the skin. When the gut microbiome is out of synch with the rest of the body – a case of too few microbial strains or an overabundance of unfriendly strains – it often makes itself known in the form of common skin rashes, irritations and/or eruptions.

You may have heard the term leaky gut thrown around lately. Although the term has been around for a while in the ‘alternative’ fields of medicine, it’s becoming accepted by more and more doctors. It’s clear that leaky gut can lead to more serious issues if left unattended.

Are you struggling with skin issues like acne, psoriasis, rosacea, or eczema? Are you a skincare enthusiast and want to get that summer glow from within? It’s time to look below the skin's surface and understand that when it comes to achieving and maintaining great skin, one of the most impactful areas to consider is the connection between your gut microbiome and skin health!

Your gut microbiome houses certain types of bacteria which, when properly fed, produce powerful, health-supportive compounds like short chain fatty acids (SCFAs). One of the most well-studied SCFAs is butyrate – and it’s one you won’t want to leave home without. If you want your body to run well from head to toe, here’s the 411 on this essential compound that everyone can use a little more of – and how to get yours.

The truth is, any kind of alcohol consumption brings with it the specter of organ damage, as well as issues of physiological and psychological dependency. Not surprisingly, alcohol’s also rotten for your gut microbiome too, that health-sustaining bacterial garden you should be protecting at all costs. So, what happens to your gut when you drink alcohol? Plenty – and here’s why you need to keep your alcohol intake to an absolute minimum.

Episode 20: An Unhappy Gut – Understanding Gut Inflammation

An out-of-rhythm lifestyle can throw off the gut and your sleep. And an out-of-rhythm gut can throw your entire life off-kilter – and screw up your sleep to boot. Conversely, good gut health can facilitate good sleep. So, the better you tend to your gut, the easier it will be to fall asleep and stay asleep.

The community of bacteria living in your body have a bigger impact than you may realize — from your mood to your heart health.

Mealtime can be a force for good, provided you feed your gut – the bacteria inside your gut or the gut microbiome – with pre, pro and postbiotics.

The community of bacteria living in your body have a bigger impact than you may realize — from your mood to your heart health.

As people have become conscious of the dangers of sugar, many are making an effort to purge it from their lives – and that’s a big step in the right direction. If you’re in the process of kicking sugar, keep up the good work, and give yourself a pat on the back. But I’ve got some news for you that you may not want to hear, even though you need to. If you’re relying on non-sugar, ‘non-nutritive’ artificial sweeteners (NNS) to ease the transition, you’ve got to kick them too. The problem is, sweeteners of any stripe are as crappy for your body as sugar, but in different ways.

Episode 20: Gut Check: How Your Gut Influences Whole-Body Health

There are any number of belly-based ills that can make life very uncomfortable. Ailments like gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, IBS or all of the above can, in addition to making you feel lousy, interfere with your body’s ability to get nutrients to where they’re needed, negatively impact your mental and emotional well-being and set you up for serious health problems down the road. One possible underlying cause of all this unhappiness? SIBO, or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Trouble is, medical professionals often overlook it or misdiagnose it.

When feeling well is the goal, it pays to focus on your gut microbiome, the trillions-strong community of bacteria whose job it is to keep you healthy. By now, you may be aware of your microbiome and the need to protect it. But, you may not know that microbial diversity – having lots of different, health-supportive strains of bacteria inside you – is another key element of a healthy gut, and a healthy body. What does microbial diversity do for you? How to protect it and how to enhance yours every day? Here are a few ways to do it.

Kara Landau - Prebiotic gut health expert

Episode 22: What Causes a Leaky Gut?

Episode 21: Understanding Gut Health and Diet

Have you ever wondered why you seem to get sick more often than your friends or why it takes you longer to recover from a cold than others? The key lies in the concept of resilience, gut resilience in particular! Learn all about it here.

Easy Life Changes For Optimal Gut Health with Dr. Frank Lipman

As you probably know, I am a proponent of healthy, clean, wholesome foods that promote wellness throughout the body and particularly in the gut. One of my favorite gut soothers that I frequently prescribe to help soothe and heal the problem guts of my patients is bone broth.

When it comes to gut troubles that make you feel especially lousy, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) ranks pretty high on the list. IBS is basically a vague catchall phrase that offers no insight into what’s actually causing the symptoms. The struggle, however, is very real – think abdominal pain, cramps, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, etc. So, what lies beneath all this gut misery, that afflicts roughly 25 - 45 million people in the US alone? In my three-plus decades of experience, I’ve found that one of the most common culprits is an imbalanced microbiome.

Building a solid nutritional foundation for mental health starts with recognizing how food may be contributing to low mood. These are some of the factors.

In a post-pandemic world, depression and anxiety are all too common afflictions, but before you reach for the pills, consider the plate, that is, the food you eat every day. It can have a major, and all too often, underappreciated, effect on your mood. Why? A lot of it has to do with the role of the bacteria in your gut, the microbiome, which play crucial role in maintaining your emotional well-being. Feed the good bugs in your belly what they want, they, in turn, will take care of you.

So, if your goal is to slow down the aging process, there’s lots you can do to put the brakes on. One of the most important anti-aging moves you can make? Stopping inflammation. I’m talking about the fire that burns in cells throughout your body, wreaking enormous havoc and making you old and tired, and quite possibly sick, way before your time.

Here’s a new one for you: leaky brain and it’s a syndrome that everyone who has a brain needs to be aware of. Integrative doctors call it “leaky brain” and it’s remarkably similar to leaky gut but, just like the name says, at the level of the brain. The two conditions often feed off each other. Taken together, leaky brain and gut give us a much fuller picture of how a bad diet and too much stress conspire to make us feel and look less than our best, pushing us away from optimal health and towards chronic disease.

Many of my patients are shocked to learn that their microbome, this microscopic community that lives on and in them, plays such a vital role in their health and well-being, including their weight, their mental state, and their moods.

Your gut bugs have more to do with your metabolism than you may realize –research shines a lot more light on how intertwined they may be.

Recently, self-care has taken center stage as people look for ways to steady themselves and soothe their psyches. While movement, meditation and relaxation are essential for maintaining an even keel, if you’re eating poorly – think sugar, starchy foods, processed and junk foods – you’ll likely still wind up with slipping and dipping moods, in part because the trillions of multi-species bacteria that make up your gut microbiome aren’t getting enough of the nourishment they need to do their best work – and your brain suffers too. Simply put, food can make or break a big chunk of your mental health and have a powerful impact on mood.

It turns out we have many more one-celled bacteria living inside the human body than we have human cells that make up our bodies – and most of them live in the gut. There, trillions of these “bugs,” collectively known as the microbiome, handle some pretty crucial functions that we couldn’t live without.

There’s been a stark rise in autoimmune disorders over the past 50 years, from type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis to celiac disease and asthma. What is autoimmune disorder? The first step toward a cure is understanding and controlling the causes.

No one enjoys bloating, but it happens to all too many of us. While managing gut issues requires a deep dive into your health - teas can be additive to any gut health routine. Here are some teas to keep in mind.

Your belly is misbehaving. A lot. So what’s causing the trouble? There are any number of possible culprits, but one of the biggies that’s often overlooked is SIFO, or small intestinal fungal overgrowth, which, left unattended can make you unwell for quite a long time. So, instead of letting SIFO get the better of you, now’s the time get it on your radar – and learn what to do about it.

Colostrum, often referred to as "liquid gold," is the first form of milk produced by mammals after giving birth. Rich in antibodies, growth factors, and essential nutrients, colostrum plays a crucial role in supporting immune function, gut health, and overall well-being. While it is most commonly associated with newborns, bovine colostrum supplements have gained popularity for their wide range of health benefits.

Though we’re still a few weeks away from winter’s official start, seasonal ills are on the march, so the smart money is on prepping your body for the onslaught. The mission? To make yourself an inhospitable location for viral and bacterial opportunists attempting to take up residence – and to strengthen all your defenses so you can repel colds, flu, RSV and whatever Covid-19 variants may pop up over the next few months. How hard seasonal ills will hit this year is anyone’s guess, but now – not November or December – is the best time to focus on building up your resistance. Here’s where to start…

What researchers and the wellness community are increasingly coming to appreciate is that the human body is not just made up of human cells and a bunch of bacteria in the gut. We are a collection of microbiomes. Humans and the bacteria that live inside us co-evolved over the millennia, one giant quid pro quo – our bodies provided the bugs with a moist, warm home, complete with a steady food source, and they sustain us in a variety of ways, most numerously and elaborately in the gut. But there are 5 more less talked about but fundamental microbiomes in your body to also pay attention to if you wish to stay well.

How can quercetin help keep your immunity tank topped up? Quercetin’s positive effects are felt across numerous body systems.

Digestion is one of those routine bodily processes you probably don’t pay much attention to. That is, until ills like bloating, diarrhea and/or constipation rear their ugly head. While some people just try to ride it out, frequent gastrointestinal distress isn’t ‘normal.’ Rather, it’s your body’s way of telling you that your digestion needs some TLC.

Regular readers of this blog are likely familiar with the idea of eating ‘probiotic’ foods and, when needed, also adding a probiotic supplement to the mix to support the health of your microbiome, aka, the community of billions of friendly bacteria that live in your gut.

One of the best ways to handle your histamines is to consider the potential allergens you may unknowingly be putting into your body multiple times a day, and that’s food. Certain foods may be causing you a lot of physical grief (in the form of allergy symptoms) while also compromising the health of your gut and immune system to boot. And just to make the story more interesting, some foods produce their own histamines which make them more likely to trigger your body’s allergic over-reaction. So, how about putting a stop to all that?

Inflammation – it’s the starting point for so many life-altering conditions and diseases. It’s also avoidable, yet every day millions of Americans prime themselves for health disasters – like cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and many autoimmune diseases – by making choices that unwittingly promote chronic inflammation.

Of the hallmarks of aging discovered in the last decade or so, three of them have been added only recently. Previously they had been folded into the original 9 pre-existing hallmarks, not surprising since all the hallmarks affect each other, one way or another. But now they’ve got their own spot on the marquee, in part because they’re especially sensitive to the daily choices we make about diet, physical activity and stress. Here’s how to take charge of the additional three hallmarks believed to be responsible for making us grow old – ideally not before our time, that is, if we follow some sensible lifestyle advice.

Now is a wonderful time to reflect and make plans for the New Year. And if 2021 did nothing else good, it did point out the importance of prioritizing our health for the greater good. With new variants revealing themselves, finding ways to incorporate new (or old) healthful habits into the day-to-day is essential.

If you are constantly eating meals and snacking throughout the day, your digestive system is working hard with no time to recoup. Why does your gut need a break? Many reasons!

Constipation is one of those all-too-common health annoyances that virtually everyone suffers through from time to time. Granted the occasional bout is disruptive and can make you feel, dare we say it, crappy, frequent bouts can be a warning – or at least a nudge from your gut telling you to start paying it more attention.