Can you feel it in your Gut?
Your gut is where the outside environment meets your inside environment. This is the first stop for most chemicals that will be either used to make your body or be tossed out as waste. Your gut is a busy place, and it has some important jobs. It has to process and absorb nutrients from food and it has to protect your body from toxins and infections. Luckily, your gut has about a trillion good-guy bacteria to help it out with all of its jobs; at least, we hope you have that friendly bacteria.
Recently, studies have shown that poor gut health can produce symptoms as mild as the inability to loose weight, sleeplessness, and bad skin to more serious conditions like allergies, depression, and autoimmune disorders. Long term gut imbalance is like the opposite of have an anti-inflammation diet; it is a major cause of chronic inflammation which leads to a hosts of disorders and diseases. When your gut is working well and your good-guy bacteria are undisturbed, your gut synthesizes and excretes vitamins, stimulates the immune system, efficiently absorbs and processes nutrients, and metabolizes drugs. When your good-guy bacteria is low and being over run by by the bad guys, it creates an “environment of putrefaction and fermentation” (yuck); this environment interferes with the absorption of nutrients, increases gut wall inflammation which is linked to food allergies, obesity, arthritis, irritable bowel disease, and even mood disorders.
Among the things that can cause some of our trillions of good-guy bacteria to be overrun by some of the bad guys is chronic stress, sugars and artificial sweeteners, processed carbohydrates, environmental chemicals and toxins and medication. To help the good-guy bacteria thwart the bad-guy bacteria, you should reduce sugar and processed foods, eat more whole, plant based foods, exercise regularly ( I know you are doing that!), reduce stress, and take a probiotic supplement.
I know that all of that sounds great- just get at least 8 hours of sleep, avoid stress and eat perfect, whole foods at all times. It would be great to live in this Utopian Society. So with your actual lives in mind, we have done some research and brought in some supplements to help get you started with gut health (Herbal Cleanse, Digest-Ease, Probiotic), stress reduction (Clear Mood), more sleep (Sleep Works) and even hormonal imbalance (Formula W). Of course, no supplement is going to keep you healthy in the long run unless you are willing to make kinder food choices for you and your gut after they help set you straight. Let us know what you are struggling with and we will see if any of these natural, herbal supplements might be able to help.
