The Top 5 Supplements To Heal A Damaged Gut
Natural supplements have gained immense popularity in recent years. One of their best applications is gut health; due their proven track record of effectiveness, and great safety profile.
“Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.”
Let’s face it, America is a gut-busting culture. The reasons are vast and varied, but that’s a topic for another day. Last year over 74% of American’s reported living with digestive discomfort. Other research summarized by The Washington Post points to the fact that immigrants who move to the United States almost immediately lose around 15% of the healthy microbes living in their digestive tract. Again, the reasons are still up for debate, but we can’t dispute that our guts are currently the runt of the litter. We have the technology to produce some of the greatest medical innovations the world has ever seen, but we can’t seem to figure out how to have a good bowel movement. Fear not, the solution is only as far away as your local market or health food store.
Hippocrates is credited as the father of modern medicine. Medical Doctors and Osteopaths both take The Hippocratic Oath before graduation, swearing to follow the path he set for them. Hippocrates knew what was up. He wrote extensively on the foundational importance of diet and lifestyle in the prevention and treatment of chronic disease. Some of his most famous quotes include:
“All disease begins in the gut.” -Hippocrates
“Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.” -Hippocrates
“Look well to the spine for the cause of disease.” -Hippocrates
I’ve read a number of Hippocrates works. It’s strange, I’ve poured through them and I still can’t find where he talks about Nexium or Zantac. I’m not here to trash the medical community. I’m the first one to sing their praises on multiple fronts. Clot busting drugs saved my 97 year old grandfather’s life. He’s now pushing 99, and still lives independently, with his blushing bride of 73 years, Nancy (also known as Grammy). By the way, she just turned 100. They’ve both been helped multiple times by modern medicine. That said, they aren’t both so far on in years and still living so well because they steadfastly took their pills every morning. In fact, they hate taking pills. Their parents and grandparents taught them that to be healthy you really only need a few things: think good thoughts, move your body, rest and recover, and eat nutritious home cooked meals prepared with locally grown foods.
For the first time in American history our health expectancy is falling. It’s really not that much of a surprise. The greatest generation didn’t go to the store to buy organic food; it just was organic. They moved their bodies. Constantly. And they cooked. Nearly all their meals were prepared in the home kitchen, from whole foods. The food industry made us a number of promises that sounded too good to be true. It turns out that they were. Long story short: buy whole foods, cook em’, and don’t sit around all day. In theory it’s not that hard. Unfortunately, for many of us, it’s too late to eat a spring mix and grilled chicken thigh salad and expect immediate digestive relief; myself included. Enter nutritional supplementation. The right supplement protocol, on top of an appropriate diet, can be your path to salvation. Make sure to work with a licensed professional to determine with that diet is, and what those supplements are.
That said, these 5 supplements are some of my all time favorites. I either still take these every day, or have taken them at some point. This blog post hasn’t been written from theory. It’s been written from practice. I’ve been in those trenches. These are 5 rungs of the ladder that allowed me to rise and shine.
The Top 5 Supplements for Gut Health…
1. L-Glutamine
Most of our gut linings have been trashed. It’s a sad state of affairs in the world of American digestive health. Fortunately many of us have seen the light. For those who want to get off the fast train to IBS City, there’s L-Glutamine, or just glutamine for short. We’ve all heard we should eat enough protein. Proteins are long chains, made up of many links; each of those links is an amino acid. There are 20 different amino acids that can come together to form those proteins; glutamine is one of them. It’s known as one of the “conditionally essential” amino acids, which means it’s possible for the body to make it, but chances are you also need to consume it in your diet to meet the body’s demand for glutamine. Research tells us that the demand for glutamine goes up significantly, specifically in the gut, during times of prolonged mental or emotional stress. The effects of stress on the body are very real. Stress isn’t a feel good, woo-woo concept. Prolonged mental stress slowly rots our bodies from the inside-out; and the outside-in.
If I could only take one supplement for gut health, this is it. Heres why: The cells lining the gut are called enterocytes. Enterocytes have a fever, and the only prescription is more L-Glutamine. They crave it. Without sufficient levels of glutamine the junctions between the cells in your gut become increasingly permeable, and less able to obtain the nutrients needed from your food. L-Glutamine is like painter’s caulk; it seals the “cracks” in the gut lining, and restores it to its natural, fully functional state. L-Glutamine is a gut punching supplement powerhouse.
2. Probiotics (& live fermented foods)
Fifteen years ago we’d never heard the word probiotic. Bacteria was the enemy. Bacteria was germs. Kill em’ all. Antibiotic everything. Because, why not? Today things have changed; quite a bit actually. We’ve made tremendous strides in human nutrition in the last few decades. Part of that learning was learning about all the mistakes we’ve made. When I was a kid I thought it was cool to take antibiotics. It meant I was really sick; that I wasn’t faking it. We now know the disastrous effects that come down stream from that kind of thinking.
The landscape concerning human nutrition, biochemical individuality, and the microbiome is still shifting beneath our feet. Daily. Every day that passes is one day closer to understanding the complexity of the ecosystem that is the human body. We may never understand the human body, in all its symbiotic and synergistic glory.We are much more than the sum of our parts. But what we know for sure is that we are not meant to exist as a sterile slate. Our microbiome is a thriving community of microbes (bacteria, yeast, and viruses), that carry with them untold volumes of genetic information. Without prolific microbiomes, we wouldn’t be here to write and read about them. Probiotics are beneficial bacteria that help restore a sense of normalcy in the gut and the microbiome. We’re still not exactly sure what the interplay looks like between every strain of bacteria in our gut. It’s hard to say what normal is when no two microbiomes look the same. But we what know for sure is that a lack of diversity in our microbiomes is, time and time again, correlated with the development of chronic disease. From chronic asthma and chronic sinusitis, to IBS and GI dysfunction, a lack of microbial diversity is inextricably linked to the development of chronic disease.
Lose your gut bugs; lose your health. It’s that simple. Probiotics are the tip of the iceberg concerning microbial diversity. There is still debate on whether they repopulate your gut, or whether they just kind of stabilize things in the short term. Whatever their mechanism, the research supporting the use of probiotics in the pursuit of health and wellness is constantly growing. They’ve been linked with everything from improved gut health, to lowering the risk or diabetes, heart attacks, and depression. Are they the panacea we’ve been looking for? Probably not. But they are a tool in the toolbox that I will never be without. Ever.
3. Digestive Enzymes
Enzymes are the biological key to our human locks. They serve untold numbers of functions in our bodies, from helping form our neurotransmitters, to helping us break down and metabolize our food. Without digestive enzymes our body is not able to break down food into small, digestible particles and molecules. Amylase is the specific digestive enzyme that helps us break down carbohydrates. We naturally form amylase in our mouth/saliva (and pancreas) when we chew and eat. Amylase is the solvent that helps us dissolve carbohydrates. Say you eat a big bowl of pasta. Amylase is the catalyst that helps dissolve that pasta; first in your mouth, and then in your stomach, and beyond. Without amylase, that pasta passes into your gut partially digested. What then? The bacteria in your gut have a field day. They are like trout in the stream, and you just created one heck of a mayfly hatch. We want to feed the bacteria in our guts, but we don’t want them eating at the China Buffet multiple times a day. Amylase is just one of the players on Team Enzyme. Two of the other set-it-and-forget-it Fantasy starters are lipase, and protease (among others). There will be future posts exclusively on digestive enzymes. Stay tuned for those.
So, if our bodies make digestive enzymes, why do we need to press them into little tablets, package them in bottles, and pay money for them. Here’s why: over the course of a lifetime our digestion has become compromised. Due to chronic, low-grade mental and emotional stress we have allowed ourselves to drift away from a rest-and-digest state, and into a fight-or-flight state (think using your phone all the time, instead of reading a book and talking long walks). By the way, go do that after you’re done reading this. Go for a long, slow walk. Just look at what's around you. OK, back to the gut. As a result of that autonomic nervous system hyper-vigilance we no longer naturally produce adequate amounts of digestive enzymes when we eat. Again, we’re constantly in too much of a mental fight-or-flight state, and not in rest-and-digest mode. That imbalance is the cornerstone of so many chronic health issues. Our tissues are slowly being broken down and eroded, instead of built-up and allowed to heal.
Digestive enzymes allow you to more fully digest your food. Do this as an experiment: on Day 1 eat a large, high carb lunch full of resistant starches like potatoes and rice; then settle into and wait for the bloat that’s about an hour or two away. Your food baby will be very real. So will the gas production. Sorry spouses! The next day, eat a similar lunch, but also take a solid dose of quality digestive enzymes. [With any supplement you directly get what you pay for. Don’t cheap out. Taking cheap supplements is worse than taking no supplements at all, because you think you’re addressing a personal health need that, in reality, is not being met; and is likely getting worse due to lack of proper treatment.] You’ll notice a pronounced difference after that Day 2 lunch. The enzymes will help you digest your food more fully in your stomach, instead of letting the bacteria have a field day with the undigested food in your small intestine and colon, which is most often the underlying mechanism of GERD and acid reflux (in addition to SIBO, or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth [another future article]). Digestive enzymes are a heavyweight supplement powerhouse; one that I probably could live without; but one that I definitely don’t want to. They were instrumental in helping me recover from GERD and other digestive discomforts.
4. Collagen Powder (& Bone Broth)
The internet has been a great tool for those hungry for more information about health, wellness, and the reversal of chronic disease. It’s also the wild wild west of information out there. It’s hard to know who to trust. Everyone with a computer and a blog can tell you what they think, but only a handful are doctors, or legitimate health professionals with your best interest in mind. Collagen is all the rage these days. So is it a nutritional lightweight? A flash in the pan? It shouldn’t be. Here’s why: collagen provides specific amino acids that muscle meats (think chicken breast and steak) don’t.
We were meant to eat foods high in collagen. The further we get from our intended human diet the worse our health becomes. If you fed trout Cheese Doodles and Domino’s Pizza they would be dead by the next dawn. Human’s have a tremendous ability to survive on almost anything. it’s one of the main reasons we’ve stood the test of time. But surviving, and living well are two very different things. Collagen is a huge part of the intended human diet. Back in the day we didn’t pluck the breast meat out of a chicken and throw the rest over our shoulder. We ate the whole thing. The. Whole. Thing. We picked the carcass clean. Then we ate the heart and liver (if we hadn’t done that first). And then what did we do? We either chewed on the bones, or we boiled that sucker for hours, and drank the delicious, nutritious broth. We ate nose-to-tail. Your great-grandmother wasn’t afraid of boiling a carcass, or cooking up some heart and liver. She was tough. Be like your great-grandmother. It’s time for a change. Step away from the Pop-Tarts and Sunny-D.
Collagen is a major constituent of skin and connective tissue. Your skin and connective tissue. Also the animal’s skin and connective tissue. Your body needs the right building blocks for all of its tissues, cells, and parts. You can’t frame a house with a whiffle ball bat and Veggie Straws. You use a 22-28oz framing hammer (or a pneumatic nailer), 2x4’s(or 6’s) and 3.5” 16-penny nails. The same is true for your body. You can’t eat a pile of muscle meat and expect your skin and joints to get the building blocks they need. You need to consciously feed your tissues, all of them; not just your quads and biceps. You need to feed those too, but quads without functional knees isn’t best case scenario. In addition to skin, tissue, and joint health, collagen provides a key leg of the 3-legged stool the liver needs to keep you alive. Collagen provides the amino acids glycine and proline. Glycine, cysteine, and glutamine are the three constituents that come together to form the cornerstone of the liver’s key detoxification pathway: glutathione. Glutathione is necessary for human life. Why wouldn’t you want to feed it? Get your glycine, get your glutamine, and we’ll talk about how to get your cysteine in depth in the future (for now just eat some egg yolks and brussel sprouts. Probably not together.)
5. DGL-Licorice
DGL licorice is the au naturale version of PeptoBismol, except it’s not a pink, sludgy poison concocted in a lab somewhere. Black licorice, on its own, does the same thing; but it’s also been shown to raise blood pressure in certain people. To prevent that from happening, nutrition scientists have identified how to remove the “glycyrrhizin” from licorice; which is the substance responsible for raising blood pressure in those previously mentioned sensitive individuals. That’s the DGL in DGL licorice. DeGlycyrrhizinated Licorice. It should really just be DG Licorice, but I guess the branding committee dropped the ball on that one.
DGL Licorice is a natural demulcent that calms and soothes an irritated gut lining. It's a great tool in helping calm an angry gut, post-meal (along with enzymes). Chewable tablets are preferred to those that you swallow. The process of chewing the DGL tablet forms a nice demulcent that soothes not only the stomach, but the esophagus on the way down. Certain brands of DGL-licorice come in different flavors, including those flavored with sugar. It’s best to avoid the sugar if you can help it, but a few grams of fructose isn’t the end of the world if you prefer the sweetened version.
Now that you know the possible benefits of The Top 5 heavy hitters for gut health, what you shouldn’t do is eat McDonalds or Subway for lunch, and then take these supplements at night. Food is first. Food always comes first. It’s senseless to take a probiotic and eat processed, sterile food. If you’re not ready to give up those foods, is it better to 1) eat them and take these supplements than 2) eat them and not take these supplements? Probably. But if you’re truly in the pursuit of health and healing, do both. Tighten up your diet. Eat a balance of whole foods. Limit sugars as much as possible. Then, think happy thoughts. Rest and recover. Move your body. And the rest should fall into place.
In Health, and until next time, my friends and family members!
- Dr. Drew
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