How to Improve Your Gut Health Without Spending ￡1000’s on Lab Tests

"Lab reports are not king, symptoms are"

Listening to Graham symptoms of chronic bloating, hormone imbalances, and frequent, IBS symptoms more than ordering unnecessary tests led to an effective treatment and resolution of his symptoms.

Before going down the testing root, keep reading as it’s often not needed and will save your hard-earned cash. ?

So many of my clients have previously worked with an expensive functional medicine practitioner who’s ordered 100s of unnecessary lab reports, that came back before failing to get the root cause.

When Graham began working with me, we opted not to do any lab tests but to focus in on symptom relief.

We worked on dietary and lifestyle changes and over a few short weeks we found his gut health, energy levels, sleep, workouts, hormone imbalances, food reactions and chronic bloating improve.?

To get started with moving towards a healthier gut, I recommended a gut healing elimination diet designed to:

·?????Reduce or remove foods that may irritate his gut lining or feed bad gut bacteria.

·?????Heal and seal intestinal permeability (a leaky gut).

·?????Feed his good gut bacteria.

·?????Reduce chronic inflammation from poor dietary choices.

·?????Help him understand which foods were triggering his symptoms.

·?????Improve his sleep length, quality and help his hormones rebalance.

The Paleo diet (which is not really a diet in my honest opinion)?is the simplest and most well-rounded framework for the everyday people to start with.

It has been shown to reduce leaky gut, inflammation and minimising exposure to foods that may flare up an over reactive immune response [20,?21].

These include sugars, unhealthy fats, chemical additives, caffeine, alcohol and common problem foods like dairy, gluten, and soy.?

This can be a challenge for some and does take a bit of planning but it’s easy when you get your head around it and plan a few meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

This should be done for up to 2 weeks to allow it to take effect, if the paleo routine does not alleviate your symptoms, you can try progressively restrictive diets such as the?low FODMAP diet?or an?autoimmune protocol.

Trust me, if you find a diet that starts relieving your symptoms and makes you feel more energetic and healthier, it’s much easier to stick with.

Graham found a good amount of symptom relief e.g. reduced bloating, fatigue and improved sleep after a few weeks.

When you’ve arrived at this point, you can move on to step two.

Step 2:?Add in the right Probiotics

Once you’ve found a healthy diet that you feel good on, the next step is to support your gut with probiotics.

Probiotics increase the balance of good bacteria in the gut and crowd out the bad bacteria so you start to achieve a healthy balance between good and bad bacteria [22].

• Reduce gut inflammation [22] and improve leaky gut [23,?25,?26,?27]
• Promote a healthy immune response in your gut [23]
• Reduce anxiety and mental health issues [24]
• Help you lose weight [25]

The most popular and most researched probiotics contain a combination of?Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium?species.

I also use another two - Saccharomyces Boulardii?(a fungus probiotic)

and a multi strain?soil-based probiotic?— for best results.

These three categories of probiotics each have their own benefits, and high quality evidence have shown that multi-strain probiotics tend to lead to more symptom improvement than single-strain probiotics [28,?29].?

What Next?

These are the first 2 stages, both vital to heal your gut. If you feel significant improvement's by this stage, then you can skip to step 5 which involves reintroducing certain food types one at a time and seeing whether you have a reaction.

This is designed so that you do not have a restrictive diet for the rest of you life and you can enjoy a wide variety of food without symptoms.

If you still have gut issues, continue with stages 3-7 which I will write about in the next few weeks.

If you need more support with your diet feel free to send me a message on Linkedin or email me on [email protected]

*BONUS FOR MY READERS*

I am giving away free 30 minute Gut Audit's where I will ask you to fill out a questionnaire and then I will give you tailored advice on the call. No obligation to continue, value is at the forefront of my business.

To book Free Gut Audit CLICK HERE

Thanks for reading, Stuart Goldfinch A.K.A Gut Guru Stu ??

*DISCLAIMER*: ?I am not a medical doctor, these documents are intended for education purposes only and do not constitute medical advice, nor does it serve as a substitute for seeking advice from a doctor or medical professional. You are legally responsible for all food and supplements that you consume, and any changes in diet, nutritional supplements, medications, or lifestyle should be monitored by your physician. No liability is assumed by Stuart Goldfinch for any information contained in this document.