6 Foundations to Start with NOW to Support your Gut Health & Hormones
If you've been struggling with digestive issues for some time now, you might perhaps be feeling a little... stuck and/or overwhelmed. I'm not here to make assumptions, but I'll share that that's exactly how I felt whilst navigating this whole "gut healing" thing.
It's OVERWHELMING. We are inundated with information, recommendations, advice, reasonings. Be it through social media influencers, or deep-dives into the depths of google at 2 am, it's totally reasonable that you might be thinking "uhhhh, so where do I start?!"
My hope with this post is that you'll gain some clarity around this.
Before we get into any of the "fancy" gut healing or hormone rebalancing efforts, we need to make sure that the basics have been covered, and that a solid foundation has been put in place.
You wouldn't invest a ton of energy and money into your beautiful dream home on a janky foundation, right?
The same goes for your health.
In this post, we'll strip away all the noise, and focus in on SIX things that will actually move the needle forward when it comes to healing your gut and rebalancing your hormones.
(This is actually something that I bring all of my clients through in Phase One of The Gut Restore Method)
Here are 6 foundations to put in place TODAY to start supporting your gut health and hormones:
1. Consider your psycho-emotional health and state of mind
Our psychological, and EMOTIONAL state plays a MAJOR role in our health, and in our healing. Unresolved or unattended to trauma, nervous system dysfunction, and stress can majorly impact our physical health and wellbeing.
Going through all the "physical" or "chemical" aspects of healing, ie. through nutrition, movement, supplementation, physical therapies, etc. without addressing your past experiences, and what's going on in your head and heart can make it challenging for the body to feel safe enough to heal.
Getting support here through a professional like a psychologist, psychiatrist, social worker, etc. can be really helpful with navigating past traumas and experiences, and supporting the nervous system.
Something else that I often see in practice are certain beliefs that are held due to past experience and validation — thoughts and beliefs like:
"this is just my normal"
"this is just the way I am"
"I've tried everything — I'll never feel better"
"I don't have the willpower to do this"
Working with a practitioner who can help you work through this, and make recommendations specific to YOU and YOUR unique situation can help you to navigate these feelings, and help to prove to you and your brain that it's possible for you to feel good in your body.
2. Support basic digestive functions
When it comes to gut healing specifically, it's important to start at the top, and with our basic digestive functions, to ensure those are working for us properly, before we dig into the nitty-gritty of things like dysbiosis in the gut microbiome.
Some basic digestive functions are:
chewing ("masticating") our food thoroughly
stomach acid production & secretion
bile production & secretion (liver and gallbladder health are super important here!)
digestive enzyme production & secretion (from the pancreas, but as well as in the stomach and as part of our saliva)
Starting at the top, ie. with things like supporting stomach acid levels, chewing your food thoroughly, and eating mindfully is SO so so important for optimal digestion later down the tract.
Chewing and eating mindfully — your teeth are the ONLY mechanical aspect of the digestive process. Everything else is chemical. You have teeth for a reason! Mastication of our food is SO important, and making sure that we're chewing thoroughly is really important for lifting the burden off the rest of the digestive tract, so it can do it's job optimally.
Your stomach acid is really important. It's one of the body's first lines of defense. Its super-acidity helps to neutralize any pathogens or otherwise problematic substances that you might ingest via food or drink. It also majorly starts the breakdown process of proteins in the stomach. Likewise, it’s required to make things like intrinsic factor that help with B12 absorption later down the tract.
The thing is, if you're not making enough stomach acid & not able to properly neutralize pathogens, but you're taking probiotics or leaky-gut-healing supplements, you're going to find yourself stuck in a cycle.
It's important to start at the top & make sure that you've got your stomach acid up to snuff, so it can have a positive domino effect further down.
Ensuring that you are producing enough stomach acid will allow for something called the "acid trigger" to happen, where the gallbladder and pancreas will secrete their bile and digestive enzymes respectively (as well as something called bicarbonate to help neutralize this acidic "chyme" coming into the small intestine from the stomach).
Addressing this BEFORE getting into more targeted digestive supports is really important for sustainable gut healing and health long-term.
3. Stress management
Our stress response occurs when there's any sort of threat to our safety, our our body's homeostasis.
What basically happens is that the sympathetic nervous system (our "fight, flight or freeze" system), registers a threat, and sets off a cascade of reactions in the body that result in the stress response.
This is a means of survival — this response is what would be responsible for saving your life in a threatening situation.
In cases of acute stress, after the activation of the stress response, the parasympathetic nervous system (our "rest and digest" state) would kick in soon after to restore the body back to a calm state.
While this is great in acute situations, in our modern world, we are inundated with stressors on a daily basis. Often MULTIPLE times throughout the day. Our brain, and our nervous system, can't tell the difference between a bear attack, and a salty email from our boss.
The same reaction occurs.
The thing is — healing truly only happens when we're residing in our PARASYMPATHETIC nervous system the majority of the time. Which is probably the opposite of how most of us are living these days.
It's really important to both reduce stressors in our life, and then put tools and systems in place to help manage stress, and downregulate our nervous system when we do inevitably experience stressors.
Some great tools for down-regulating our nervous system, and hanging out in our "rest and digest" state are:
breath work practices like the 4-7-8 breath
toning the vagus nerve
getting outside in nature
journaling
cuddling a loved one
doing something that brings you joy and pleasure, like painting or reading (whatever floats your boat!)
4. Nutrient Density & Hydration
We need adequate nutrients to provide us with the building blocks of truly every aspect of our bodies. Same same with regards to hydration. We're made up of a LOT of H20.
With regards to digestive health specifically, it's really important to make sure that we're consuming the nutrients that are required to make things like stomach acid, enzymes, bile, etc. Getting a variety of plant and animal based proteins for amino acids, healthy fats for those good good fatty acids, and a wiiiiide variety of plant foods for phytonutrients, minerals, vitamins, and carbohydrates is super important.
Specific nutrients like zinc and iodine are required for stomach acid production. Likewise, amino acids and cholesterol are required for enzyme and bile production respectively.
Adequate water intake is also really important for our digestion! The small intestine specifically uses water to both help in the breakdown of foods, as well as to absorb nutrients derived from our food into our bloodstream. The large intestine requires enough water to make sure that stool is adequately hydrated to pass through our system sans problems!
Key takeaways here:
drink 1/2 your body weight in ounces of water everyday (at least!)
try to get as much variety of whole foods as possible (through animal and plant proteins, healthy fats, and LOTS of fresh fruits and veggies)
5. Meal timing & Spacing
Meal timing & spacing is one of my favourite recommendations that I make to clients in practice.
It's SUPER important when it comes to digestion, sustained energy, etc. — PLUS it can be really helpful for motility (my constipated friends, I'm looking at you!), bloating, and abdominal distention.
When we eat, it can take upwards of 2 hours to digest, depending on the protein content (which takes longer to digest versus other macronutrients like carbohydrates).
After our food is digested, there is a digestive function that occurs called "the migrating motor complex" or MMC.
This is a "sweeping" motion that acts like a janitor in the GI tract, "sweeping" leftover things along, so that they can be rid of via stool. This MMC is responsible for sweeping along any bad bugs, toxins, byproducts of digestion, residues, dead cells, etc.
The MMC takes upwards of 90 minutes to do its job. The caveat here, is that the MMC is ONLY able to do its job when we are NOT eating. When we snack frequently, it doesn't allow this MMC function to happen. Stuff left in our gut doesn't move along the tract in a timely manner.
This can lead to constipation, altered motility, a "back up" in the gut, and can contribute to imbalances in the microbiome. Bloating, trapped gas, and distention can also be related to this MMC not functioning properly due to frequent snacking.
Hence meal timing + spacing!
Ideally we want to try to eat every 3-4 hours to allow this function to happen:
~2 hours for our body to properly digest our food
PLUS upwards of 90 minutes for our MMC to function properly
If you're struggling with bloating, distention, gas, constipation, abdominal pain, and/or IBS, I'd definitely recommend you explore this, and see how you feel!
Especially you, my snack lovers!
6. Blood Sugar Management
Blood sugar management is something that's not often related back to digestive health, but it plays a really important role not only here, but likewise with regards to energy levels and hormones.
When our blood sugar levels are all over the place, and we find ourselves in a hypoglycemic state where our blood sugar levels drop too low, it initiates the stress response in the body. If you remember from earlier in this post, when our body is in a stressed states, things like digestive processes shut down (!!).
If this process occurs many times throughout the day, and the body is going in and out of the stress response, it can start to become really problematic for our digestive and hormone function.
Something important to note here, is the blood sugar mismanagement can also influence the food choices we make. When we're in a hypoglycemic state, our body automatically goes into survival mode where it's like "we need to get these blood sugar levels up ASAP."
In situations like this (are you familiar with being "hangry"?), you're more likely to reach for something that will give you a quick sugar-fix, because that's what your body is looking for in the moment. Reaching for something that might be less nutrient dense, could exacerbate this cycle, as it'll bring blood sugar levels back up, but soon after you might experience a crash.. and the cycle continues.
Getting in the routine of eating well balanced meals with lots of protein, good-quality fats, and fiber, evern 3-4 hours, is really important here.
If you're looking for further support about how to actually PUT these 6 foundations into ACTION in your life, then I'd love to invite you to check out my 1:1 program The Gut Restore Method.
These 6 foundations are the first part of my 4-phase framework that I bring my clients through in TGRM. In my program, we implement each of these 6 foundations in a way that feels GOOD and attainable for YOU specifically.
Once you have solid foundations in place, if there are still GI issues, fatigue, or hormonal imbalances — that's where we can get more targeted with nutrition and therapies like supplementation to support the body further in healing.
If you're interested in learning more about The Gut Restore Method, you can check it out here.
