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Tag: gut health

The Connection Between Gut Health and Liver Health

Posted on by flourishweb

Just like the gut-brain axis, the liver and the gut have a unique connection where one has the power to influence the other. While research on the subject is still in its relative infancy, recent studies are beginning to show just how significant the gut-liver connection really is.

Keeping both vital organs healthy is about eating the right foods and providing them with the right nutrients, like chicory root and natural prebiotic supplements for the gut, as well as beetroot powder for the liver. A liver cleanse could also go a long way in maintaining optimum overall health for your body.

How gut bacteria influence the liver

We already know that gut bacteria have a hand in influencing your brain and your mood. Some 90% of all of your serotonin – the feel-good hormone – is created by your gut microbes. But what about these microbes’ influence on your liver?

The reality is that the bacteria living in your gut microbiome can be just as influential on your liver as it is on your brain. Every two and a half minutes, 1 gallon (4.5 litres) of blood passes through the liver, about 75% of which comes from the intestinal tract.

If the gut microbiome is unbalanced with unhealthy or pathogenic bacteria, these can flow back to the liver via the portal vein, causing the liver all manner of problems.

In order to defend the rest of the body from any toxins arriving from the intestinal tract, the liver has to breakdown, filter and excrete them. This process can prove difficult when the body is already overloaded with toxins created by pathogenic bacteria.

Alcohol-producing gut bacteria

Surprisingly, gut bacteria can turn pathogenic. They can go through the same fermentation process as alcohol, producing high blood alcohol levels in your body even when you haven’t had anything to drink. This is known as Auto-brewery syndrome.

Emerging research has found there to be a connection between alcohol-producing bacteria and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). This study shows that 60% of participants – all with NAFLD – had the alcohol-producing bacteria present in their gut.

Because the alcohol being produced by this specific strain of bacteria (Klebsiella pneumoniae) in the gut filters through to the liver in much the same way as when you actually consume alcohol, it can cause fatty liver disease even in those who don’t drink.

With a healthy lifestyle comes a healthy gut-liver connection

Not only can bacteria in the gut cause NAFLD, but it can also produce a compound called phenylacetic acid that can help to identify the early stages of NAFLD. Preventing and reversing NAFLD is about making healthy lifestyle choices.

A plant-based diet paired with chicory root-based prebiotic supplements for the gut and beetroot powder for the liver will pack your body with the natural nutrients it needs to ensure optimal health.

The connection between the gut and the liver is a strong one. Our Prebiotic Blend and Daily Detox can help to keep both organs working together in healthy harmony.

Try our Prebiotic Blend and Daily Detox for your gut-liver health.

The Importance of Gut Loving Foods

Posted on by Tim Ashton

There are so many nasty gut issues, ranging from things such as Colitis, IBS, Crohn’s, Ulcerative Colitis, Diverticulitis, and many others. Symptoms can range from bloating to constipation diarrhea, abdominal pain, flatulence, bleeding, and a myriad of other problems. While some gut issues are autoimmune in nature, others can be related to things like stress and food intolerances, which can set up a cascade of health complications. All in all, gut health issues are frustrating, debilitating and inconvenient.  The Flourish anti-inflammatory turmeric blend and the prebiotic blend work wonders for anyone with any sort of gut issue.

Treatment

Yes, problems with gut health can vary, but the way we at Flourish treats them is the same.  We use a system called “DEBBIE” :

Diet – the right foods feed the gut flora and create greater diversity

Enzymes – help to break down food for better absorption and digestion

Barrier – leaky gut – decrease autoimmune response

Bacteria – the greater the diversity, the healthier

Immune system – 95% of your immune system lives in the gut

Enteric Nervous System – decreases stress and pain pathways

Diet

As you can see, the first line of fixing your gut issue revolves around diet and making sure that you are consuming plenty of gut-loving foods.  The foods you eat have a direct impact on your gut lining and gut microbes.  Our way of healing the gut is by going back to basics. Just as your mother did after you stopped breastfeeding, the foods you were given then created your gut world. What we do is take out all the offending food and go back to eating basic fruits and vegetables in order to recreate your particular gut world. We eliminate the foods that may be wreaking havoc on your gut health.

No matter where your pain originates, pain equals information. So if you are feeling bloated or have stomach pains of any kind, then it is a sign of inflammati0n. This inflammation needs to be switched off if you are to heal your gut.  Gut diversity – which refers to the number of species you have in your gut – is extremely important, and comes from eating a range of different foods. If your gut is inflamed, however, then diversity does not matter; the gut microbes have gone to sleep and are no longer doing their job. You need to consume a wide range of foods, and you need them all awake and working hard for you if you are to be happy and healthy. Because of this, diet is our number one challenge and treatment plan.

Often, if we get the ‘D’ for diet right, the rest of the ‘DEBBIE’ system falls into place and happens pretty much without intervention.

If you have any private issues or questions that you would like to discuss, please pop online and send us an email. We will be happy to chat, or click the appointment button and come and see us. Again, the Flourish anti-inflammatory turmeric blend and the prebiotic blend work wonders for anyone with any sort of gut issue. The only thing that changes from person to person is the dosage. The worse your problem, the gentler you must be with the dose. Always start small and build up gently.

Holiday Splurging

Posted on by Tim Ashton

80/20 Rule

Maintaining your health during the Christmas/New Year period is no small feat. While there’s nothing wrong with letting your hair down this silly season, keep your Flourish supplements close (especially the organic turmeric powder, beetroot powder, and chicory root prebiotic blend), and take part in a liver cleanse (using our 21 Day Cleanse) afterwards if you plan on splurging.

I am often asked by my patients if they need to be plant-based 100% of the time.  My answer is usually long and drawn out, but the crux of it is, only if you want to stay well.

However, at Christmas/holiday time,  if you wish to consume all the festive fare, then adopt an 80/20 rule.  Make 80% of your plate plant-based and 20% whatever you fancy.

Many then do this, only to feel terrible the next day, or they become bloated within hours of eating all those ‘yummy’ naughty foods that they haven’t had for many months.   Many people find that the symptoms of their health condition will reappear; this will depend upon how long you are ‘naughty’.

Our gut microbiome can change within a twenty-four hour time period, hence why feeling bad again, can happen so quickly.

After years of eating a plant-based regime, I now can’t face the usual Christmas traditional food, I know how I am going to react and feel, so it is an easy choice.  This year I am spending time experimenting with a fabulous main meal for Christmas day, and I will share the recipe once it is perfect.

Most of my patients’ need to find out for themselves, so I usually say knock yourself out on Christmas day, let your hair down, only to be emailed with a ‘HELP’ request the day or week later.

 

Natural Detox

So what if you do let yourself go, how do you recover?

The best way –

(1)  Keep taking the flourish products throughout the festive season, especially the daily detox beetroot powder.   If you do have a bloated moment, a teaspoon of the prebiotic blend with a little turmeric blend and that horrible feeling will go away, usually within 30 – 40 minutes.

(2)  Recover using the 21 day cleanse which is up on our website.  Or at least the first 7 days.   You will need at least the 7 days, to get things back to normal and feel like your healthy self once more, but again this will depend upon how long you have been celebrating.  The full 21 days will give you a much better and more complete outcome, and this is what I always recommend.

Wishing you all a very happy festive/holiday season.

Prebiotics vs Probiotics

Posted on by Tim Ashton

Simply put, probiotics are live micro-organisms (bacteria, yeast or fungi) and they live naturally on and in our bodies. Prebiotics are a form of fibre that acts as a food, for the bacteria found within your gut.

In order to have a healthy gut, most health practitioners will tell you that you need to have a good balance between your good and bad gut bacteria, and whilst we at Flourish agree with this, the ways of achieving it differs dramatically.

Let’s talk about probiotics.  I want to keep this really simple, not highly technical as I think it is easier to understand and therefore allow you to be able to make a more informed decision as to what is right for you.

The gut microbiome or gut flora – I am going to refer to these as if they have a personality.

Their role in life is to keep us healthy.  Their job is to keep the immune system strong, make certain vitamins and minerals, aid digestion, metabolism, psychology and reduce chronic inflammation one of the key drivers of chronic illness.

Some facts:

  • There are 10 x as many of them as they are of you, totalling approximately 100 trillion microbes
  • Thought of as a new organ with distinct metabolic and immune activity
  • There are between 1500 – 5000 different species, but this number is changing rapidly as new research comes to light.
  • Weighs approximately 2 kilograms
  • The majority reside within the large bowel
  • Make up approximately 60% of each and every bowel movement
  • Populated during birth and breastfeeding and continues to develop until the age of 2 -3 years when the gut microbiota stabilises and resembles that of adults
  • Antibiotics in early life can shift the bacterial profile and promote obesity and metabolic abnormalities and/or autoimmune disease.
  • It is believed that our gut microbiota diversity is influenced by some three generations travelling down our mothers side.
  • Lack of diversity is linked with chronic diseases, especially allergies
  • A bad gut can lead to a fatty liver
  • Gut bacteria profiles are unique like fingerprints. No two humans have the same profile.  In fact we only share 68% of the same profile the rest of the profile is unique to each and everyone of us.

 

 

 

5 Ways To Improve Your Gut Health

Posted on by Tim Ashton

It’s the season of Gut Health here at Flourish, and for good reason too!

Our gut microbiome (the trillions of microorganisms living in your intestinal tract) is the corner stone of our health and our happiness. These microorganisms, mainly comprising of bacteria, are involved in functions critical to your health and wellbeing. It’s essential that we keep them as happy as possible!

Small changes can go a long way in improving our gut microbiome, here’s our top tips:

1. Eat the rainbow

The more colours of fruit and veggies on your plate, the greater the diversity of species and the more species present, the healthier your immune system!  A good way to begin to do this is to make a chart with each colour of the rainbow marked on it, then each day tick off what you have eaten from each colour range.

2. Don’t be too clean!

We don’t mean to be a grub! But using antibacterial wipes and hand sanitising gels constantly just isn’t healthy.  They are designed to wipe out bacteria and since our bodies are made up of more of trillions of essential bacterias, it’s important not to wipe them out using sanitising gels.  Research shows that the more sterile the environment for our gut microbiomes the smaller the diversity of species, and thereby the less healthy the host, which is us!

3. Eat gut loving foods, they are natural detox

Eat at least one or all of these foods daily: cold white potatoes with no fat or oil on them, cold rice like sushi with no mayonnaise, and cold oats. The reason we advise to eat these foods cold is because when they’re cold they’re much higher in resistant starch (which is what our gut microbes love!) The gut bugs eat and convert it to short chain fatty acids and butyrate which is the primary food source that keeps the cells of our colon healthy.

4. Avoid C.R.A.P

Otherwise known as ‘Calorie Rich And Processed’ foods.  Stay away from food out of a packet and foods high in processed sugars.  Keep fat to less than 20 grams per day.

5. Take our Prebiotic Blend

Our obvious choice! Our Prebiotic Blend is food for the gut microbes!  It is full of resistant starch and inulin (from chicory root), a form of fibre that they love. Our Prebiotic Blend to gut bugs is like what a Krispy Kreme is to a 10 year old, delicious!

SHOP THE BLEND

You might also be interested in “The Difference Between Turmeric & Curcumin“.

The Flourish Philosophy: Go With Your Gut

Posted on by Tim Ashton

At Flourish our mission is simple. It is to help people from all walks of life achieve a full, healthy and pain-free existence. We consider it a privilege to pay witness to another human’s journey, particularly one that sees an individual restore health and vitality to their day-to-day lives.

Our guiding philosophy stems from none other than the father of modern medicine himself, Hippocrates.

Hippocrates said, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”, and although it’s been some time since he walked this beautiful Earth of ours – he died around 370 BC – his teachings are as true today as they have ever been. Hippocrates’ therapeutic approach was one of wholeness, he believed that the body has the capacity to re-balance and heal itself, if it is given the appropriate time and the correct nourishment.

It is an approach to healing that we at Flourish identify closely with.  It’s an approach that says, to paraphrase and modernise Hippocrates, “Go with your gut”.

Formally known as the gastrointestinal tract, the ‘gut’ is a sensory organ and our primary environmental interface. It is responsible for all the functions in our digestive system, and is instrumental in the absorption of nutrients from food, as well as the expulsion of the resulting waste. Folk wisdom tells us that ‘gut instincts are always right’. It’s an age-old and admittedly figurative adage, but we like to think it reveals just how critical a determinant of your overall health this one organ is.

In fact, gut microbes speak directly to the brain via the Vagus Nerve. Speaking of microbes, did you know that we are made up of more bacteria than we are human cells? 10 times more!

It is imperative then, that we prioritise the maintenance of a healthy gut terrain at all times. This starts with a healthful diet. If there’s one thing we believe at Flourish, it is that power of a healthful diet is truly transformative. 

You might also be interested in “8 Make-or-Break Health Habits“.