Years ago I had heard that many health issues are rooted in the digestive system, and while I thought it was an interesting thought, I really didn’t pay much attention to it, after all, I was doing my best to eat healthily, but I still had some health problems so ignored advice to take probiotics and digestive enzymes.

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News update:

This is a newly released article from researchers at Washington University in St. Louis: “Gut bacteria boost immune response to fight tumors“

This article indicates that a new generation of probiotics may be able to be developed to help with different issues.

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My digestive issues started so slowly many years ago. I became chronically constipated, which I attributed to Menopause. I added more fiber to my diet in the form of dried fruits and veggies, but the issue became worse with time, and I was eating a lot of prunes and dried mangoes!

Then, around 3 years ago, my digestive system started giving me extreme severe pain and gas during and after eating. I was taking anti-gas pills, but they just weren’t enough.

When I spoke to my doctor about the issue, he didn’t seem too concerned, brushed it off as something that happens as we age.

Instead of pushing him to find out what kind of medication I needed, I decided to experiment first with probiotics and digestive enzymes. I was astonished at the immediacy of how my symptoms became manageable. I still experienced severe symptoms, and some evening I was in absolute agony, so I decided to find out more.

Initially it was trial and error, buying different products on the market and using the entire bottle, then trying a different one, in my efforts to find a good product at an affordable price.

I found a probiotic at Sams that isn’t prohibitively expensive but offered a good spectrum of probiotics. That is the one I still take, but the Swanson’s Vitamins brand is good too. Initially I was taking 2 capsules with every meal, but now I take 2 to 4 a day.

For the digestive enzymes I had more trial and error, but finally found a fuller spectrum one sold through my now favorite online store Swanson’s Vitamins. Initially I tried a few kinds that were great at helping digest carbs, but didn’t do much for fats or proteins. The one I use now has a disgusting taste if it sits on the tongue so it needs to be swallowed very quickly, but it works wonderfully. I found my ideal dosage to be 2 tablets with every meal, 3 if having deep-fried foods.

Depending on your own food intake and the state of your digestive system, you would need to experiment to see what you ideal dosage ranges are.

Note, with probiotics and digestive enzymes, there is a point where the dosages will give loose or very loose stools, so you will need to find your own sweet spot for what works best for you.

Then I found the wonders of pre-biotics in the form of pickled foods, and those are powerhouses for the gut.

After almost 3 years, I still need to take the digestive enzymes with my meals, but if I forget to take them I’m not in terrible pain within a mouthful or two. Some meals don’t give me any pain at all anymore, but if I don’t take the enzymes, then I get hit with painful gas later in the night.

Three years ago it felt like every inch of my intestines were on fire, and now my gut feels calm. I still take the probiotics and digestive enzymes, I’m over 60 so my body needs help, but I feel my digestive system has healed significantly over the 3 years, so I will continue to take them as they keep me feeling well. I knew I was doing much better, when the colonoscopy doctor said my colon looked good, no issues or inflammation!

When I heard that gut health affects our health and can even be the trigger for some illnesses to develop, I started researching different issues. You can do this yourself when you Google.

Type in “gut health and” there will be multiple prompts to click on.

The Brain-Gut Connection – Johns-Hopkins Medicine

Researchers are finding evidence that irritation in the gastrointestinal system may send signals to the central nervous system (CNS) that trigger mood changes.

These new findings may explain why a higher-than-normal percentage of people with IBS and functional bowel problems develop depression and anxiety. That’s important data, because up to 30% to 40% of the population has functional bowel problems at some point.

The gut-brain connection – Harvard Medical School

5 Surprising Ways Gut Health Affects Mental Health – Psychology Today

1. The Gut Produces Most of the Serotonin in the Body
2. Gut Bacteria and Metabolites Have Been Linked to Depression and Quality of Life
3. Probiotics Enhance Antidepressants
4. Those With Gut Disorders Are at Greater Risk for Alzheimer’s Disease
5. Gut Microbiota May Help Diagnose and Treat Anxiety, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and Parkinson’s Disease

Given that the gut-brain axis consists of bidirectional communication between the brain and the gut, it’s easy to then see that healing ourselves from old traumas will help in regulating our emotional reactions.

I found in my own healing that my reactions became less and less triggered when things came up, and I found my overall state of mind to be calmer and calmer. A large part of my healing toolkit was incorporating affirmations to teach my mind to be kind and patient with myself, and to learn to stop speaking harshly to myself whenever I felt I had “failed”. Here’s a page of links to many helpful affirmations that helped me: Positive thoughts and Affirmations.

Gut Microbiota and Immune System Interactions – National Library of Medicine

Dynamic interactions between gut microbiota and a host’s innate and adaptive immune systems play key roles in maintaining intestinal homeostasis and inhibiting inflammation. The gut microbiota metabolizes proteins and complex carbohydrates, synthesize vitamins, and produce an enormous number of metabolic products that can mediate cross-talk between gut epithelial and immune cells. As a defense mechanism, gut epithelial cells produce a mucosal barrier to segregate microbiota from host immune cells and reduce intestinal permeability. An impaired interaction between gut microbiota and the mucosal immune system can lead to an increased abundance of potentially pathogenic gram-negative bacteria and their associated metabolic changes, disrupting the epithelial barrier and increasing susceptibility to infections. Gut dysbiosis, or negative alterations in gut microbial composition, can also dysregulate immune responses, causing inflammation, oxidative stress, and insulin resistance. Over time, chronic dysbiosis and the translocation of bacteria and their metabolic products across the mucosal barrier may increase prevalence of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, inflammatory bowel disease, autoimmune disease, and a variety of cancers.

“May increase prevalence of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, inflammatory bowel disease, autoimmune disease, and a variety of cancers.” Wow! That’s a lot of issues right there that can be triggered by a gut that isn’t in great shape!

Our foods are so highly processed now, plus we have to contend with the pesticides, the antibiotics and other additives, that our bodies just aren’t receiving the same levels of nutrients that they used to prior to food industrialization, so even eating a “healthy” diet now is still comparatively poorer than before.

How your gut is controlling your immune system – MIT

Microbes in the digestive system can affect the activity of our T-cells.

 The findings, published in Cell Host and Microbe, yield a better understanding of gut-immune “communication,” which experts hope might eventually mean help for patients with immune disorders for which few effective treatments currently exist.

“We are just at the tip of the iceberg in terms of understanding how gut bacteria and our immune cells talk to each other,” says Jun Huh, a CMIT Investigator and Associate Professor of Immunology at Harvard Medical School, who was one of the senior authors of the study. “But it’s like the first steps in deciphering a communication code between two kingdoms — we know it’s important and these early steps are very exciting.”

Is there a link between gut health and weight loss? – LiveScience

A study published in the Gastroenterology journal suggests that the composition of our gut microbiome could predict how successful we are at achieving our goals. However, scientists are only just beginning to explore this novel gut-weight concept. And it’s not an easy task. 

Our metabolism is a highly complex mechanism. If you’ve ever embarked on a weight loss journey, you may know that it’s not as straightforward as ‘energy in versus energy out’. How efficient our bodies are at using calories and regulating appetite will depend on a wide range of factors. Some of them cannot be changed, like our genetic make-up or age. But others, like our gut microbiota, can be modified.

Gut hormones

The constant communication between our nervous and digestive systems is central to regulating our metabolism and appetite. Gut hormones play a critical role in this exchange of information, passing on signals of nutritional status from our gut to the brain, so the brain can interpret the body’s energy needs and respond to them accordingly.

Our gastrointestinal system releases over 20 different hormones involved in maintaining energy balance. The levels of these gut hormones depend on a number of factors, including the food we eat, the state of our health, and the compounds produced by the gut bacteria. 

Gut microbes and obesity

Is there a link between gut health and obesity? There’s growing evidence that people who carry excess weight tend to have a different composition of gut microbes compared with lean individuals. According to a review published in the Nutrients journal, gut microbiota of obese people may be less diverse and contain less of the beneficial bacterial strains. 

The Surprising Connection Between Gut Health and Acne – Well.org

The Link Between Gut Health and Acne

How does gut health affect acne? 

Your gut microbiome is home to the vast majority of the bacteria that live inside your body. It houses colonies of “good” (beneficial) bacteria and “bad” (pathogenic) bacteria. 

With limited space available in your gut, these two types of bacteria coexist in a delicate balance. When one flourishes, the other declines. 

Ideally, the colonies of beneficial bacteria are healthy and robust, crowding out the colonies of pathogenic bacteria. Unfortunately, the opposite is much more common. This condition, known as dysbiosis, affects not just your gut but the health of your entire body. 

Signs of dysbiosis include: 

• Anxiety or depression
• Digestive issues
• Fatigue
• Inflammation
• Poor immune response
• Skin conditions, including eczema and acne

This last one may be surprising. After all, how can what’s happening in your gut affect what’s happening on your face, back, or shoulders? 

However, research consistently backs up this surprising link, with one study showing that over 54% of acne patients also have an imbalanced gut microbiome.

I think I have inundated you with a lot of research pointing to how necessary it is to maintain good gut health by adding probiotics and prebiotics (fermented foods) to your diet!

A word to the wise: taking 1 bottle may not yield the drastic results you may need, rather it is a gradual process of giving your body what it needs in order to heal.

I now see it is a journey that needs daily maintenance in order to see results. It has been close to 3 years for me since I started taking probiotics and digestive enzymes, and while my digestive system has come a long way, it still is in need of the supplements.

I also started taking CBD for pain management around the same time. I used to require 6-10 200 mg Ibuprophen tablets daily, and my kidneys were starting to hurt. My pain management has been handled almost entirely with CBD, and my list of pains include Osteo-arthritis in my joints, miggraines, as well as post-surgery pain. I found out that CBD works well for healing the body too.

If you are going to embark on taking probitics and digestive enzymes, try a smaller dose first, to see if your body tolerates it. You will need to find the optimum dosage that works best for you, as too much will give diarrhea. I found taking a couple with each meal works well for me, but you will need to try it out for yourself.

Check with your pharmacist or doctor to make sure there are no issues with the medications you’re already taking.

Blessings to your healing!

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Tamara

I hope you’ll poke around my Archived Posts Main page divided up into 3 sub-pages: Mental Health and Rewiring the Brain || Healing and Developing Ourselves || Positive thoughts and Affirmations to find a wonderful trove of supportive and encouraging posts!
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