CHICAGO (CBS) — Functional medicine gut experts say maintaining a healthy gut is key to managing stress and having more energy.
In his book, The Gutsmart Protocol: Revitalize Your Health, Boost Your Energy, and Lose Weight in Just 14 Days with Your Personalized Gut-Healing Plan, Dr. Vincent Pedre says that the key to achieving both of these things and more is maintaining good gut health.
“The gut is the foundation of overall health,” he said.
Dr. Vincent Pedre
Dr. Pedre says his latest book is based on more than 10 years of work he's done with patients on gut health issues.
“One of my missions with this book was to help people understand the underlying causes of a range of symptoms they might be experiencing in their body. So the GutSmart protocol isn't just about gut symptoms. It's also about symptoms you're experiencing in other parts of your body: migraines, allergies, asthma, autoimmunity, fatigue, joint pain. These are things you might think are just due to aging or something else, but they're actually rooted in gut health.”
Avoiding foods like wheat, gluten, dairy, alcohol and sugar often leads to immediate improvements in gut health, he says.
When it comes to sugar, Dr Pedre says it's one of the biggest inflammatory molecules and disrupts the gut microbiome.
“In fact, alcohol promotes the proliferation of harmful bacteria and yeasts in the gut, which starts a chain of inflammation that is the chronic cause of all degenerative diseases. Alcohol also contributes to gut chaos by imbalancing the gut flora, leading to increased intestinal permeability or leaky gut, which in turn leads to inflammation and weight gain.”
Dr. Pedre says small changes can have a big impact on your mood. One example is cutting back on sugar to less than 25 grams a day. Meditation and breathing exercises also improve gut health.
Anyone looking to get started on their gut health journey can take Dr. Pedre’s Gut Health Quiz and follow him on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn for more information.
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