If I had a euro for every person I met with chronic digestive issues, exhaustion, depression, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia or Rheumatoid Arthritis (to mention a few), I’d be a fecking millionaire. Why on earth are most people so bloody sick?
Even before I studied nutrition I knew I would specialise in gut health, it has intrigued me for years. The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates said that “all diseases begins in the gut”. Oh what a clever man he was, and well over two thousand years later the penny is finally dropping. When I first heard of Leaky Gut it made complete sense to me. We eat to survive and thrive, and if our digestive system is out of whack it has to have a knock-on effect on everything else, right? You may be sitting there thinking “I’m not so sure about that Deb, I’ve never heard of this before”, so I’m going to take you on a little journey back in time.
Let’s go back to ancient Greece when Hippocrates was a groovin’ and a shakin’ (460 – 370 BC)! Most people were eating from the land, and their diets were made up of wholesome foods like vegetables, fruits, grains, meat, fish, pluses, etc., you know what I mean, REAL FOOD. They probably had an ould glass of wine, but it would be every now and then, unless they were minted of course, and then they probably skulled back copious amounts of the stuff. But I’m talking about your typical, run-of-the-mill person, they ate a natural diet, organic food was all there was, modern day stressors didn’t exist, and the environment was pure because it was not yet infected by the chemical shit storm we now deal with on a day-to-day basis. Was there illness in ancient time? Absolutely, of course there was, but, was it as rife as it is now? I think we all know the answer to that question! So what’s so different today from back then, oh my gosh where do I start?
1. Processed foods and GMO
2. Chronic stress
3. Toxic overload from medication, chemicals, pesticides, fungicides, etc.
4. Excess alcohol consumption
Let me break it down for you. All of the above factors cause the body to become acidic, this in turn causes inflammation, and inflammation is at the root of nearly every illness. An acidic digestive system is a breeding ground for bad bacteria to grow and multiply, this throws your overall gut bacteria out of whack. Bear in mind you will always have good and bad bacteria, you just want to keep them in balance. Once you have an overgrowth of bad bacteria, your body will launch an immune attack to try to regain balance in the gut. But, normally people will keep doing the same thing as they always did, but they add in some medication because they don’t feel so hot, and the immune response keeps repeating, which in turn causes more inflammation. It’s a vicious circle! If this cycle continues over a period of time, holes or gaps will develop in the gut wall (there is a more technical way to describe this but I’m keeping it simple), allowing undigested food particles to pass through the gut wall into the blood stream. This causes a further immune response because these food particles are considered alien to the body so it attacks them, and the cycle of inflammation spreads into the body causing all sorts of havoc to our organs, hormonal glands and tissues.
Now, this is just a brief overview to give you the jist of Leaky Gut. So let’s add another spanner into the works! What if you have food intolerance’s or sensitivities (which lots of people do)? Well you may be doing your damnedest, eating healthy food, and following all the healthy eating cookbooks out there, but you’re still feeling like crap. Why is this? Because you don’t know what foods do and don’t suit your body! You’re a unique individual and the “one size fits all” approach does not apply to you, or anyone else for that matter! And, this is why I developed my Leaky Gut Programme, I teach my clients how to understand their body’s feedback system, so that they can work out what their body likes and dislikes at a very deep level. This information is invaluable, and it will mould your eating habits for the rest of your life around what feels good to your body and what doesn’t, and let’s face it we all want to feel good!
I have seen amazing results with my clients. Some clients started the programme taking a plethora of medication and finished medication-free. Inflammation markers coming down into normal range after years of elevation. Illnesses disappearing for good, leaving GP’s totally baffled, (this gave me a good giggle). My philosophy is that YOU are the head honcho of your own health, not your GP, not your specialist, but YOU. Do we still need the medical profession? We sure do, they are extremely important, but we also need to take ownership for our wonderful bodies and do our very best by them. That means feeding your body the foods it loves (most of the time, we are human after all), managing stress levels, reducing alcohol consumption, and keeping toxic overload to a minimum.
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