Better Health Through a Better Gut

I have been saying FOR YEARS that if patients would just clean out their digestive tract they wouldn’t get sick as often. I remember telling a group of RNs this when I was “just a student nurse,” as they told me. Saying my claim was met with skepticism is being nice.

Bad flora can overrun your intestines so much that you become constipated, get severe headaches, become mentally confused, agitated and basically feel as though you’re losing your mind. And those are just a few maladies from a polluted digestive tract.

Cleaning out the digestive tract can be a cheap, easy fix for a lot of health problems (see link below). What’s the easiest way to do a digestive cleanse? Eat a lot of garlic. You can’t start off popping Kyolic tablets right and left though, if you’ve never done a digestive cleanse. You MUST start slowly or you’ll feel like your intestines are being turned inside out. You can also just sprinkle your food liberally with garlic a few times a week and it will have the same effect. When you start to observe more mucus in your stool, the cleanse is working. If you have a day of diarrhea, it’s working a little too fast, and you may need to back off on the garlic a bit.

Depending on how long your gut has been polluted with old feces just stuck in pockets of the intestines (yeah, I wish I were kidding), the cleanse could take a couple of weeks. That’s okay. As you’re doing the cleanse with garlic, you also need to be taking in some “good flora.” Either get acidolphilus from the health food store (you want the kind they keep cold — it’s in tablet form, you don’t have to use the powder) or get yogurt, plain if possible. If you don’t like plain, and I sure as hell don’t unless I’m cooking with it, get the yogurt with the LOWEST NUMBER of SUGAR GRAMS as possible. DO NOT get a yogurt made with Splenda or Aspartame, you’re doing your body more harm than good.  There are yogurts out there with as low as 9g of sugar; 13g should be the max.

If you want to read more on healing your gut, Christine M. Okezie, CHHC, a natural foods chef, has written a decent article on the topic, “Heal Your Gut, Heal Your Body”. The only point I completely disagree with is using sauerkraut  and miso as fermented foods to heal the gut. Sauerkraut is made from cabbage, a starchy vegetable. Starch turns to sugar. Don’t use it to heal your gut, it’s got the opposite effect. Miso as well can be made from soybeans (ok) or rice (no) or barley malt (no-no). Starch, again. So just avoid miso until you’ve finished the intestinal cleanse.

After the cleanse, watch how much simple starch you put into your body and make certain you have a meal laced with a lot of garlic a couple times a week. Also eat yogurt a few times a week. I consume it daily and this household uses so much garlic that it’s always on the grocery list!

So what can you expect from the results? More energy, more mental clarity, fewer colds, some people report that their eyesight improves. You can easily take off a couple pounds. Your bathroom will see more activity with regular (should be daily) bowel movements. Your health just gets better. Allergies also dissipate with this cleanse. It’s an easy fix to a LOT of health issues, so what are you waiting for?

Related articles

• 4 Simple Steps to Detoxifying Your Gut After the Holidays (myscienceacademy.org)
• Gut bacteria liberate hidden toxins found In grains (sott.net)