Feeding your microbiome. What to eat for a healthy gut.

Gut bacteria and your gut microbiome is talked about a lot these days. Gut bacteria changes daily based on what you are eating because what you eat feeds the bacteria in your gut.

These bacteria affect not only our immune system but our central nervous system and how your appetite is controlled. They affect your blood sugar, your parasympathetic and sympathetic drive as well.

Gut function and the bacteria in your gut are pretty important.

Having a diverse microbiome, a variety of bugs, helps us achieve better health

When you hit menopause (this is important for all women to know because all women will eventually hit menopause) your risk factors of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, etc. increase significantly.  You can see a decrease in fine motor skills, cognition, increased depression and anxiety and a greater risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

This is true even if you are physically active.

What is the best way to improve your gut bacteria?

It is NOT a probiotic.

Probiotics have their place for sure. Scientists are able to study specific strains of probiotics for  specific conditions.

The thing that improves your microbiome is fiber.

When the fiber we eat from vegetables and fruits gets to our colon, it ferments producing short chain fatty acids like butyrate, acetate, and propionate.

These short chain fatty acids prevent the bad bacteria from making their home in your gut. They also help you produce neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine.

Having good gut bacteria also helps improve our bone mineral density by influencing the production and recruitment of immune cells that produce inflammation that causes bone turnover (how we build bone).

Premenopausal women have a different microbiome than men and post menopausal women have a similar microbiome to men. This is thought to be because of the change in sex hormone levels as we (women) age.

There are bacteria in the gut that are responsible for helping get estrogen into our cells and when you hit menopause you need less of those bugs so they die off. So we have less of these bugs available to help us use the estrogen we still make.

Estrogen also helps prevent leaky gut.

Less estrogen (estradiol) = more inflammation, increased leaky gut, decreased gut bacteria diversity.

All of this plays a role in increasing fat storage.

Eating well, increasing the diversity of bugs in your gut, having a healthy gut = lower inflammation, better energy, less fatigue, less fat storage, increase in neurotransmitters and growth of brain tissue and better bone density.

Poor diversity in gut bacteria pre-menopause can trigger autoimmune diseases post menopause along with the CVD, diabetes and the other stuff mentioned before.

A gut that has a healthy microbiome has approximately 90% Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes family and having a lower Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes ratio means a leaner body, better blood sugar regulation, immune and brain health.

Menopause encourages the growth of Firmicutes. We want to encourage the growth of Bacteroidetes.

We do this with moderate exercise and fiber. A wide variety of vegetables, fruits and whole grains. The daily recommendation for fiber is 30g per day. Most people don’t even get 15g per day. If you are not eating ½ a plate of plants at every meal you likely are not even close to the recommended amount.

Getting a variety can be a challenge but if you put some thought into it, you can get up to 20 or more different plant foods a day. It doesn’t have to be 20 servings, just 20 different plants which would include herbs, nuts, seeds, spices, and maybe even juice.

Here is what that would look like:

Breakfast: Overnight oats using dairy free yogurt like coconut yogurt, banana, blueberries, cinnamon, almonds, pecans, cashews, and a teaspoon each of hemp and chia seeds and maybe some diary free milk to make it less thick.  That is about 10 different plant foods right there.

Lunch: 4 oz protein of choice, 4 cups ripped mixed greens which might have 4 different kinds of greens in it, tomatoes, carrots, radish, cucumber, microgreens, primal kitchen salad dressing (likely has at least one herb in it). That might be around 13 different plant foods if the microgreens have multiple plants in it.

Dinner: Some kind of protein cooked with olive oil and sprinkled with an herb blend of 4 herbs with brown rice, onions, a bean and a side of stir fried zucchini, mushrooms, garlic and shallot. That is about 12 different plant foods.

Dessert could be berries with coconut cream and any snacks you need throughout the day can be protein and veggie or fruit such as nut butter and apple or celery and nut butter.

The more plants you get in the better.

I’ve been meal prepping these types of things, especially the breakfast and lunch examples for a couple weeks now and it makes life so much easier. I’m the type of person who won’t eat if there is nothing prepared in the fridge so this helps me a lot. I’d also rather snack on a snack bar or a cookie than veggies so having less of that kind of stuff in my house and giving me veggie and fruit options is just better for my personality.

Using my meal planner can help you get ideas of how to get more plant foods in. You can sign up for a free 3 day anti-inflammatory meal plan and I think monthly plans run $9.99 per month to $14.99 per month so it’s quite affordable. I also us the Feel Better App that used to be called Deliciously Ella. It is an app that has exercise, meditation, and recipes which are all plant based. I like using it because it helps me get more plant based foods into my diet. You don’t have to be a vegan to enjoy a plant based app. Another thing I have been using to ensure I get my veggies in is Imperfect Produce. I had a weekly plan where I could order organic veggies weekly which helped me eat more produce in general because I wouldn’t want to waste it before the next shipment came. I have paused it for the summer because i’m now buying from  farmers markets which is slightly more expensive but I love supporting local farms.

You don’t have to buy organic but if you are dealing with autoimmune disease, it is ideal because the less chemicals and toxins you put into your body, the better.

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Stress, gut health and hashimotos

A super short episode talking about all the things stress effects and how it can contribute to thyroid problems. It feels a little incomplete but I published it anyway. :)

Can Probiotics Help Hashimoto’s

The short answer is no. The long answer is it depends. There is so much more to probiotics than I have ever imagined. They are not one size fits all and the strain that you take is everything. Let me explain. 

Probiotics in general are defined as live microorganisms that when given in sufficient amounts should produce a health benefit to the host organism (i.e. us). The caveat here is that there is no one sized fits all probiotic for everyone and every situation and that probiotic you can get at your big box store or even at a more health centered store may be a big old waste of your money. 

I’ve given out pretty general information on this topic before and what I have recently learned about them has changed and it is information you should have in your took kit. 

There are two major probiotics that you often hear about are lactobacillus and bifidobacteria. These are the two that we are exposed to at birth through the birth canal and our mothers fecal bacteria and the environment around us. If you are breast fed the bifidobacteria is able to grow quite strong. Breast milk has around 1 billion bacteria per liter which include lactobacilli and bifidobacteria and is a good reason to encourage breast feeding. It is natures way of protecting infants. 

I grew up in a time when it was not encouraged to breast feed and I was also born to a mother who had been on penicillin for 10 years so I got the short end of the stick when it came to being inoculated with bacteria. If you were formula fed your flora as a baby will have looked more like that of an adult with less bifidobacteria and more of other kinds of bacteria. When we were fed solid food the flora will have changed again. 

The important part here is that we feed our gut the proper things to allow for the beneficial microorganisms to grow in numbers and not allow the less beneficial ones to take over. This is where you will see a decline in health and feel symptoms. Whatever those symptoms may be for you. It is all bioindividual. 

One thing that is extremely important for you to understand is these are micro organisms we are talking about. They have a genus (for example lactobacillus is a genus), a species (acidophilus, plantarum, rhamnosus etc) and a strain is even more specific (lactobacillus rhamnosus GG or L. rhamnosus HN001). Each strain does something different in the body and those strains - the rhamnosus strains are not interchangeable for healing or supporting the body. It is a very specific thing. 

Some very important properties for probiotics are that they can make it through the upper GI unharmed. So they can pass through stomach acid without being destroyed, they make it past the bile salts without being destroyed and they can get to their destination and set up shop. An important property of probiotics is that they stick around in the mucus membrane and cells of the large intestine. This allows them to take up space where the pathogenic bugs would want to go- so the bad guys don’t stick around- they just move on through and you maintain your health. 

Lactobacillus bacteria are a very diverse group of microorganisms that produce lactic acid as an end product of carbohydrate fermentation. We can find these bacteria in fermented veggies, fermented dairy, in our GI tract and for women in the vagina. These bacteria help stimulate a proper immune response by helping prevent pathogens from getting in to our circulatory system. They increase the white blood cells that destroy cells infected with viruses and help our immune system remember which viruses and pathogens we have seen before so they can be attacked again. They also enhance the ability of cells to destroy pathogenic bacteria and viruses. The lactobacillus bacteria also eat the same nutrients as the pathogenic bacteria so if there are enough lactobacilli eating all the food there isn’t enough for the pathogens and they die off keeping you healthier. 

Bifidobacteria are part of our GI tract naturally, the end product of their fermentation is acetic acid. They help prevent the growth of the harmful bacteria and keep our small intestinal environment in top shape. It is more potent than other acids at stopping the growth of E. Coli. It is also an important acid in the health of the colon. 

You can get lactobacillus bacteria from some foods like yogurt, sauerkraut, kimchi or other fermented vegetables. This would be where I would go first unless you need to supplement for a specific health issue like intestinal permeability. Not all yogurts are going to be worthy of buying and eating. I checked out a few brands and if you can tolerate dairy (questionable if anyone with Hashimoto’s should consume dairy at all) you can look at brands like Maple Hill Creamery and Wallaby Organic are two brands that have live active cultures added to them. This is what you want to look for- the live and active cultures on the label and of course keep the sugar content to a minimum. When consumed with dairy, the amount of bacteria can be much lower than when taken as a supplement. For some reason dairy is the perfect way to get the bugs in. 

Sauerkraut or kimchi is another good way to get a good dose of probiotics and is really really cheap to make if you are in to that. Personally I love making sauerkraut so that is something I eat frequently. The bacterial strains in the end product are usually Lactobacillus plantarum at around 100 million per ¼ teaspoon (I think I did the math right on that) and is enough to give you a therapeutic effect. So very inexpensive and easy to do. There is not a lot of research on the efficacy of the bacterial strains in fermented veggies so the health effects are not for sure but we do know that it keeps the bad bacteria in check. 

Other things that probiotics are good for is to make B vitamins and Vitamin K. They keep things moving along through the digestive tract which you know is important so we don’t reabsorb toxic compounds through the colon. They help make your digestion work better, help you absorb nutrients better, improve gas and bloating and more. One of the things that is important is the creation of short chain fatty acids. This product of fermentation and provides energy for the cells that line the colon.  Eating resistant starches like cold potatoes or cold rice is a good food for the bacteria that produce short chain fatty acids. 

When taking a probiotic supplement- quality matters. You have to make sure you know which specific strain you are taking- if your supplement label doesn’t list a strain, be leery of taking it. Many probiotics do not survive the manufacturing process of freeze drying, spray drying or frozen storage. Some companies will put a coating on them to help get them past the upper GI or stomach which helps survival and allows them to go to work where needed. I recommend you get probiotics from a practitioner and only take them if you need them. There are very specific strains for specific health conditions. Some strains have been well researched and will be helpful in giving you a specific outcome. There are strains used to help with airborne allergies, eczema, stomach flu, diarrhea, colitis, chronic fatigue syndrome, constipation, Crohn’s disease, candida overgrowth and more. 

The more fiber you eat from a variety of plants, the more food you provide for your gut bacteria to thrive. These are called prebiotics. The non digestible fiber from plants makes it past the stomach or small intestine and is used as a food source by some of the beneficial organisms in the large intestine. 

You can buy supplements that contain fructooligosaccharides, galactooligosaccharides  or lactulose- all of these will provide food for your colon, increase short chain fatty acids, and provide overall health benefit. Microbiome Labs has a good product called Megaprebiotic and Biotics Research has a product called IAG. These are good general prebiotic fibers you can take daily but they are expensive. The cheapest way is to consume a wide variety of vegetables and fruits each week so your gut gets a variety of different fibers. If you want to try either of these products mentioned contact me via my website contact form and I will set you up with an account at my dispensary. Everyone gets 10% off MSRP.

I hope you found that helpful and maybe a little interesting too. I am such a nerd for this stuff I find it fascinating. 

How would you like to have the disappearance of symptoms like reflux, stomach pains, bloating, night sweats, hot flashes, headaches, joint pain, constipation, diarrhea, cold hands and feet? Sounds pretty good doesn’t it? 

Right now, because we are all dealing with some major stress and many of us financial issues including my own household which has seen a reduction in income by about 35-40%, I am offering my very awesome and accurate Nutritional Assessment Questionnaire with supplement recommendations, a plan and a 15 minute call with me to answer any questions for $37. This is for people who can take what I give them and run with it. If you need more guidance or hand holding to navigate diet and lifestyle changes, you may need more support. If not, this is a great way to kickstart your health when it is more important than ever to have a strong immune system and healthy gut to fight off viruses and bugs. This is a super affordable option and honestly a really really good deal. Email me at STephanie@outofthewoodsnutrition.com or fill out the contact form on my website with subject DEAL and I will get you all set up. 

Thanks for listening. I am so grateful for all of you. Please leave me a rating or review on Apple Podcasts so more people with Hashimoto’s can be helped by this information. 

Until next week. Stay sane.

How to eliminate toxins from the body.

Welcome to Episode 75. I’m so glad you are here and I’m really grateful that you are listening. You know, when you have hashimoto’s and you are in the thick of it- you are dealing with a hypothyroid, your medication might not be optimal, you have zero energy and you just feel kind of like giving up on it all. I don’t mean on life but just feeling like there is no way out- like this is all you have in life and it just feels really hopeless. I want to tell you that it can get better. You can get better. You can feel better. You can have a wonderful life and you can really live again. You have to do some work to get there though and I think that can feel daunting especially when it might feel like a lot just to get out of bed or just to make it through the day.

 I remember feeling like that, especially when I was first diagnosed. I had to get out of bed because I had a toddler and a newborn. My husband was not a lot of help and I was not good at asking for help. I put it all on me to get everything done and to be good at it all and that was freaking exhausting. That caused me to burn out my adrenals and sadly I had no idea about any of the stuff I am teaching you in this podcast. 

You all have a leg up on me. You can learn from all this information I am giving you and you can begin to take those first steps to start to feel better. Even if, like I posted on Instagram a week ago, it is just taking a few extra steps in a day. If you are struggling to make it through the day just doing regular day to day stuff- the next time you go to the store park in the back of the parking lot and walk those few extra steps. The next time you are watching tv, get up at the commercial and just stand for one of them, or walk around your living room just for one commercial. Then keep doing that until it gets easier and easier and you can go for a walk in your neighborhood. Little by little a little becomes a lot. You can do this. You really can and the reason I am here doing this is so you don’t have to suffer like I did. Seriously. I want life to be good for you because you deserve a good life, a happy life, a life fulfilled. You are worthy and you are enough. 

Ok. Now let’s get on with the bones of the show. This week in the detoxification series is all about how to get these toxins out of the body. Last week, I think it was I mentioned how you may need to heal your gut using something called the five R program and I couldn’t remember what the five R’s were. This is the week we dive in to what it means to heal your gut and why it is so important. 

Healing the gut is not only important as far as removing toxins from the body goes but it is so important for autoimmune disease in general.

 In functional medicine we are taught to start by healing the gut. A side note here is the gut can’t heal if you don’t provide it the right tools to do so which includes a diet change. You can’t eat fast food and work on your gut at the same time. You will be wasting your money. So diet changes first- like gluten free, dairy free for Hashimoto’s and hypothyroidism (and Grave’s disease too) then work on healing the gut. They kind of go hand in hand. 

The first step in the 5R program is removing all the stuff that is causing gut issues- stress, food intolerances and any microbes that should not be there such as parasites, bad bacteria, overgrowth of yeasts, etc.  You can do lab testing via a stool test to find out if there is specific bugs here but you don’t have to. It is probably cheaper just to go on a protocol because most of us if not all of us have some kind of bug in us that should not be there. If you have uncontrolled cravings you likely have some kind of bug/parasite issue because they will cause you to crave what they need to survive. They are very tricky buggers. I would say if you think you have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) you probably want to be tested for that because a general gut healing protocol won’t likely take care of that. 

Once you have removed all the problematic stuff, you need to replace what is either not working optimally or missing altogether from your digestive tract. So here I am talking about stomach acid, ox bile replacement or support for gallbladder and/or pancreatic/digestive enzymes. You may only need one or you may need all. It is quite common for people with hypothyroidism to be producing low stomach acid so it is something to consider. In general we need support with digestion. I’ve discussed digestion in detail before so I won’t go in to details here. Pancreatic enzymes come in handy to help us break down fat and carbohydrate. The idea behind taking them is not to take them forever or need them forever but to help the body heal itself so it can begin to make them on its own again. 

We need an enzyme called lipase to breakdown triglycerides and other larger fat molecules. The job of bile is to emulsify fats like dishsoap does to fat when you wash a pan. It breaks it down. That has to be working well in order for your body to be able to assimilate the fat from your diet and get your fat soluble vitamins. So if you have a stool test done they might look for fat in your stool- you might even be able to tell by looking in the toilet after you go to the bathroom. If you have shiny or greasy stools or floating stools those are indications that you might not be digesting fats. You need healthy bile which comes from consuming healthy fats and breaking them down. This, again, is where supplementation comes in handy. It can help your body until your body can do it on its own. You need bile to get the toxins out of your body through stool. Often ox bile is used to help with fat digestion and cleaning up the bile but you can start by taking artichoke leaf, milk thistle seed, dandelion root, or bitters. 

Protein digestion is also very important because you need protein to be properly broken down for the phases of detoxification but also if you have leaky gut or intestinal permeability, you need to have protein broken down so it doesn’t “leak” through the gut and inflame your immune system. You can try bitters before you try a stomach acid supplement. I like Urban Moonshine bitters but you can ask for bitters at a restaurant and drink that before you eat. If the restaurant has a bar they likely have bitters. But you can also consume bitter greens like endive, dandelion, wild lettuces, milk thistle, chicory or even potentially a little coffee. It is acidic and may stimulate your stomach to produce acid. There isn’t a whole lot of science to back that up though. 

You definitely don’t want to do a stomach acid supplement such as Betaine HCl if you have ulcers or an H.Pylori infection. You need to get those cleared up first. 

When food is not digested well it results in fermentation in the colon. Gas, bloating, feeding the “bad” bacteria and it means you are not assimilating the protein or the carbohydrates you ate. 

Constipation is common in hypothyroidism- fiber is the answer. We all should be getting 50 grams a day of fiber and drinking lots of water to ensure that fiber can do its job. Fiber mops up toxins and takes them out through stool. So, get your veggies in. The fiber in veggies helps with the third step of feeding the good bacteria in your gut. 

Once you have replaced digestion to good working order it is time to re-establish your gut bacteria with prebiotics and probiotics. There was a study done that found a link between inflammation in the gut, the microbiome and chronic fatigue syndrome. Fixing leaky gut and feeding those good bacteria can play a role in lessening CFS. Pretty cool. The biggest thing you can do to increase the gut bacteria is to eat lots of plants and a variety of plants and if you need a fiber supplement go for things like pectin, rice bran, chlorella, matcha green tea. All will pull toxins out of the gut. Mostly though, eat a lot of plant foods.  You can also take probiotics, make your own yogurt (dairy free is ideal for hashimoto’s patients) and there are a ton of recipes online if you google dairy free yogurt recipes. 

Repairing the gut is then next step. We do this with specific nutrients like L-glutamine, Omega 3 fatty acids, B vitamins, Zinc (carnosine), Vitamin E, Aloe vera or DGL. Specifically zinc is needed for wound healing and new cell growth. The lining of your gut turns over every 7 days or so and if you are deficient in zinc do you think you will have such a turnover? Maybe, maybe not. Be careful just taking a zinc supplement because you can deplete copper stores. You also need to reduce gut inflammation in order for the gut to heal which is why I said you also need to make diet changes to ensure your body has all the tools it needs to do this. 

Ok. Lastly, this is a functional medicine ending to repairing the gut. You need to balance your life. Reduce stress, get enough sleep, exercise, consume a healthy diet and find things that bring you joy! 

Head over to my website and tell me what you do that brings you joy. Leave a comment under this podcast post. Let’s start a conversation about how we can bring more joy to our lives. While you are there you can sign up for my newsletter for recipes and more sent right to your inbox. 

That is it for today. Thanks for joining me. Please leave me a rating or review on apple podcasts. It really helps more people find the show. 

If you or someone you know is struggling with Hashimoto’s or autoimmune disease, I am taking new clients and specifically allowing 2 new clients a month. Head on over to my website and fill out the contact form and we can see if we are a good fit for each other.