Category: Gut health

Healthy Gut, Healthier Aging

Support beneficial microbes in the gastrointestinal tract with these healthy lifestyle habits. Trillions of microbes — bacteria, viruses, fungi — call your gut home. They do more than just help you digest food. They fight harmful pathogens; make vitamin K and other important chemicals; affect the way medications work; and may influence your immune system,…


Fence Rows and Gut Health

Top of the morning to you! Some things never change. I wrote the following story one April quite a few years ago. I re-read it recently and was impressed with how true it still is. In fact, gut health science, knowledge and research has exploded in the last decade. Every place you turn today, some…


Can You Get a Blue Zone Gut?

Blue zone guts are pretty impressive. I’m not talking about the bellies in the Labatt section of the stadium. I mean the global blue zones: places around the world where inhabitants regularly live in good health to more than 100 years old. Gut health is dominating conversations about health and longevity. And why shouldn’t it?…


How to Heal Your Gut Naturally

The gastrointestinal (GI) tract of a healthy mammal is home to a complex community of bacteria. This microbial community is often called “microbiota,” “gut flora,” or “beneficial bacteria.” These microbes have evolved with us to coexist in a mutually beneficial relationship. An Introduction to Gut Microbes We need beneficial gut microbes for proper B vitamin production, digestion, and assimilation. Some…


Gut Symptoms—One-Size-Fits-All Protocols Fail Many Patients

Gastrointestinal problems are some of the most common complaints functional medicine practitioners face from new patients. However, many practitioners treat the gut with a one-size-fits-all protocol — probiotics, digestive enzymes, gut supplements, and a gut-healing diet that cuts out all the “bad” foods. Unfortunately, many patients continue to suffer because a cookie-cutter approach doesn’t work…


New Study Confirms Problem With Common Food Additive

As we begin to understand the relationship between the foods we eat and our overall health, the term “gut health” and “microbiome” have become increasingly more important in recent years. A study recently published in the journal Gastroenterology found that one additive widely used in processed foods “may be contributing to increased prevalence of an…


​​​​​​​How Your Gut Health Impacts Your Disease Risk

More attention than ever is being put on your gut health, and understandably so, considering a significant proportion of your immune system resides in your gastrointestinal tract. As such, optimizing your gut microbiome is a worthwhile pursuit that will have far-reaching effects on your physical health and emotional well-being. Mounting scientific evidence also continues to…


How Your Gut Health Impacts Your Disease Risk

More attention than ever is being put on your gut health, and understandably so, considering a significant proportion of your immune system resides in your gastrointestinal tract. As such, optimizing your gut microbiome is a worthwhile pursuit that will have far-reaching effects on your physical health and emotional well-being. Mounting scientific evidence also continues to…


A Healthy Microbiome Builds a Strong Immune System

You may not know it, but you have an army of microbes living inside of you that you depend on to fight off threats, including the virus that causes COVID-19. In the past two decades, scientists have learned our bodies are home to more bacterial cells than human ones. This community of bacteria that lives…