This article will focus on how to fix your digestive problems. Gut health is probably one of the most misunderstood bodily functions. Ketogenicinfo focuses mostly on the ketogenic diet, but we get a lot of questions on how to improve digestion. A lot of people that are considering keto also have digestive problems and keto constipation.
Table of contents
- The digestive health solution is controlling what you put into your mouth.
- You impact your gut health whenever you open your mouth and put something inside.
- To improve your gut health add Lactobacillus to your diet.
- A diet good for gut health should include plenty of lactobacillus probiotics.
- Fixing digestive problems and improving gut health can improve your immune system.
- Improving your gut health will also help you improve your healthspan and lifespan.
- Limit your intake of artificial sweeteners to improve gut health, especially sucralose.
- Improving your intestinal bacteria is the key to improving digestive health.
- You don’t need drugs, pills or supplements to heal your gut health and improve digestion.
- Does our intestinal microbiota determine if we’re fat or lean?
- The lean people had better digestive health than the obese.
- A Good digestive health diet can prevent IBS.
- The link between our gut microbiota and Alzheimer’s.
- The gut-brain-axis is positively impacted by abundant, diverse probiotic bacteria in the digestive tract.
- There’s some big money being thrown at these little microbes
- Video on How to Improve Keto Digestion:
- So how can we improve our digestive health without drugs or pills?
- Make sure we have enough prebiotics and probiotics.
The digestive health solution is controlling what you put into your mouth.
You impact your gut health whenever you open your mouth and put something inside.
Until it passes out through your colon the food has a drastic impact on your overall gut health. This article goes in-depth on not just food, but how everything impacts your digestive health. Unless you have a medical condition, the best thing you can do to fix digestive problems is to conduct intermittent fasting and lose weight.
Eating natural foods especially green leafy vegetables and fermented foods can help rebuild gut microbiota. Ensure you consume prebiotic fiber, probiotics, N-butyrate, protein, healthy fats, vitamins, and minerals.
Avoid processed foods, certain drugs, alcohol, and artificial sweeteners which can harm digestive health.
It’s a type of beneficial bacteria (probiotics) found in your intestines. Probiotics are symbiotic live microorganisms (biotherapeutics) with an intended therapeutic effect on the health of the human host.
Lactobacillus breaks down the milk sugar (lactose), a sugar found in milk, and gives off lactic acid, antibiotics, and bactericides. Milk kefir produces the most diverse strains of lactobacillus.
To improve your gut health add Lactobacillus to your diet.
To date there are six strains of Lactobacillus that have demonstrated to have probiotic antimicrobial and antivirus properties:
- rhamnosus
- casei Shirota
- acidophilus
- Johnsonii
- reuteri
- casei DN-114
This promising study that lasted for 6 months with 326 children demonstrated acidophilus reduced fever by 53%. It also reduced coughing by 41%, antibiotic use by 68% and the children missed 32% less school.
Yes, your immune system lives in your stomach. The adult human intestine has been estimated to contain trillions of microbes, including hundreds of species and thousands of subspecies.
A diet good for gut health should include plenty of lactobacillus probiotics.
Fixing digestive problems and improving gut health can improve your immune system.
In this day and age of viruses running around the world, we definitely need a strong immune system. Here are 11 ways to strengthen your immune system.
The gut microbiota has a role beyond the local gut immune system and impacts many systemic immune components.”
The role of gut microbiota in immune homeostasis and autoimmunity
An emerging area of medical science is the understanding of our gut biome. It seems almost weekly, a new scientific study shows there is a link between our gut microbiome, digestion health and physical and mental well being.
Improving your gut health will also help you improve your healthspan and lifespan.
11 ways to increase your life expectancy
Limit your intake of artificial sweeteners to improve gut health, especially sucralose.
“Several evidences demonstrated that artificial sweeteners have a negative impact on both host and gut health.”
Artificial sweeteners induce glucose intolerance by altering the gut microbiota
Improving your intestinal bacteria is the key to improving digestive health.
“Boosting bifidobacteria has a number of benefits including helping to reduce the population of potentially damaging bacteria, enhancing bowel movements, and actually helping boost immune function.”
Dr. David Perlmutter, MD
Chronic constipation affects approximately 25% of all adults. People are suffering from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), bloating, diarrhea, and general abdominal pain.
Walk down the aisle of any health or grocery food store and you will see the products that are being sold to help people with poor digestive health diet:
- probiotics (lactobacillus)
- fiber
- enzymes
- acid reducers
- stool softeners
- Dulcolax
- Metamucil
- Senokot
- Miralax
- Milk of Magnesia
- Glycerine suppositories.
Most of those products can give you short term relief, but can actually make your digestion worse in the long term.
“The acetic acid in raw apple cider vinegar can aid in the digestion of food”
-Ketogenicinfo
You don’t need drugs, pills or supplements to heal your gut health and improve digestion.
The human body has a symbiotic relationship with billions of microorganisms. The definition of symbiotic is: “Denoting a mutually beneficial relationship between different people or groups.
It’s mutually beneficial. We give the microbes somewhere to live and give them food to eat and they help us digest the food we eat. These little fellas are called our gut microbiome.
Microbes live mostly in the large intestines and mouth, but they can also be found in the genital tract and even on the skin. Scientists are finding out that these microbes do far more than just help us digest our food.
Does our intestinal microbiota determine if we’re fat or lean?
I dissected a study from the Scientific American that showed how gut biome might play a role in obesity. The study involved twins, both lean and obese, and it was found that the gut microbiome in the lean people was much more diverse than those in obese people.
The lean people had better digestive health than the obese.
The lean individuals had a massive colony of bacteroidetes, which is a microbe that targets plant starches and fibers. Their digestive system utilized the starches as energy more efficiently than the obese. The lean individuals passed more of the starches without absorbing the nutrients.
A Good digestive health diet can prevent IBS.
Our Microbes help fight against Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). This Research shows a good digestive health diet can prevent and heal IBS.
Anaerobic microbiota of the colon contains a diverse colony of metabolically active bacteria and fungi that closely interact with our immune system. IBS, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and pouchitis seems to be a negative digestive pathogenic immune response or immunoregulation.
Poor microbial diversity and function contribute to IBS occurrence. Improving the health of our gut microbiome (microbial biotherapy) has been shown to limit the chances and severity of getting IBS and suffering from poor digestion.
The link between our gut microbiota and Alzheimer’s.
Emerging science is showing the link between healthy gut microbes and neurodegenerative diseases. There appears to be cross-talk between the gut and the brain (gut-brain axis).
Emerging science is showing the link between healthy gut microbes and neurodegenerative diseases. There appears to be cross-talk between the gut and the brain (gut-brain axis).
Microbial biotherapy is showing promise as a possible future treatment to improve brain gene expression and restoring neuronal pathways in people suffering from neurodegenerative diseases.
This study published on PubMed, was kind of hard to read because it involved rats, but the rats were given probiotic biotherapy (Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium). The data indicated that this probiotic formulation improved the gut-brain axis and suggest that improving the gut microbiome could play a therapeutic role in improving some neurodegenerative conditions.
The gut-brain-axis is positively impacted by abundant, diverse probiotic bacteria in the digestive tract.
Pregnant women transfer this beneficial bacteria to the fetus while it’s still in the womb. This is important for the baby to quickly develop its immune system.
“Maternal microbes are transmitted to offspring during childbirth, representing a key step in the colonization of the infant gut. Studies of infant meconium suggest that bacteria are present in the fetal gut prior to birth.”
The prenatal gut microbiome
A good digestive health diet is also a way to prevent gestational diabetes. There’s evidence that pregnant women need an efficient gut-brain-axis to prevent gestational diabetes (high blood sugar). What’s the best gestational diabetes diet?
There’s some big money being thrown at these little microbes
The billionaire Bill Gates, (founder of Microsoft) has been investing in microbial biotherapy for about 10 years. Gates feels that he’s onto something. He predicted that “we will get a breakthrough” in nutrition in the coming decade. He recently said he thinks we can revamp the inner workings of our guts by seeding the microbial colonies that live inside us.
Video on How to Improve Keto Digestion:
Improving your gut microbiome will also greatly reduce Keto Constipation.
So how can we improve our digestive health without drugs or pills?
Give the microbes a good place to live and thrive. Cut out the things that kill them like:
- Over-the-counter nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), like Advil, Aleve, Motrin, etc.
- Antibiotics (only take them when absolutely necessary).
- Artificial sweeteners like Splenda.
- Antacids for heartburn, like Maalox, Mylanta, Rolaids, etc.
- Prescription medicine for acid reflux like Nexium, Prilosec, etc.
- Processed foods and excess refined sugar.
- Lower your intake of inflammatory omega 6 fats.
Make sure we have enough prebiotics and probiotics.
Digestive Health Diet:
- Add the probiotic Lactobacillus to your diet.
- Seed your stomach periodically with diverse probiotics to nurture the gut microbiome.
- Consume fermented foods like Kimchi, Pickles, Sauerkraut, Natto, Beet Kvass, Greek yogurt, and most importantly, whole milk, grass-fed Kefir.
- Eat prebiotics foods with Inulin and oligofructoses like asparagus, chicory root, garlic, onions, leeks, Jerusalem artichoke, and dandelion greens.
- Ingest N-butyrate. It is a short-chain fatty acid that heals the cells that line the gut. Butyrate can be found in grass-fed butter, vegetables like green beans, and leafy greens.
- Butyrate is also present in milk fat like cheese, heavy whipping cream, and whole milk Kefir. Look for grass-fed dairy, it’s much more healthy than grain-fed dairy.
- Take glutamine and collagen peptides to heal your gut lining. This study showed that individuals with IBS had lower levels of serum collagen.
- Also, this additional study showed that Glutamine also improved symptoms of IBS.
Another amazing probiotic is Beet Kvass. It is a supplement over 1000 years old and is credited for helping some people in Russia and Ukraine in living past 100 years old. It contains probiotics, betaine, trimethylglycine, antioxidants, phytochemicals, nitric oxide, and a whole host of vitamins and minerals.
I don’t think I have talked enough about the amazing health benefits of Natto. It uses a different bacteria than lactobacillus. It has it all:
- fiber
- prebiotic fiber
- probiotics
- protein
- nattokinase
- vitamin K2
Natto is fermented with Bacillus subtilis. Adding different strains of probiotic bacteria diversifies and strengthens your gut microbiome.
Before you start a keto diet you have to fix your digestion. I hope these tips are helpful for improving your digestive problems and gut health.
If you want to learn more about the keto diet I recommend: The Keto Diet Explained
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