WSJ covers importance of GUT HEALTH: one of my favorite topics, essential for good health

The Wall St Journal covers the importance of GUT HEALTH!!

A Gut Check for Many Ailments

What you think is going on in your head may be caused in part by what’s happening in your gut.

A growing body of research shows the gut affects bodily functions far beyond digestion. Studies have shown intriguing links from the gut’s health to bone formation, learning and memory and even conditions including Parkinson’s disease. Recent research found disruptions to the stomach or intestinal bacteria can prompt depression and anxiety—at least in lab rats.

Better understanding the communication between the gut and the brain could help reveal the causes of and treatments for a range of ailments, and provide diagnostic clues for doctors.

“The gut is important in medical research, not just for problems pertaining to the digestive system but also problems pertaining to the rest of the body,” says Pankaj J. Pasricha, chief of the division of gastroenterology and hepatology at Stanford University School of Medicine. read the rest here

I’ve written extensively about the importance of gut health. I’m going to repost my nutrition and gut health post below where I collect my work on the subject. This work for me has been vital to my slow improvement.

Nutrition and Gut Health

IMPORTANT NOTE: I recently discovered that while I did indeed get all the reported improvement mentioned below it was mostly superficial (meaning the Irritable Bowel Syndrome may have been healed and other symptoms improved, but it’s likely that my long-term chronic illness associated with the drug withdrawal required a much deeper gut healing which I’ve been attending to lately)

It’s taken years of study and experimentation to get to the point where this next step was the obvious one to take.

I’m now collected a lot of information that allows for that deeper healing. 

• FOOD AS MEDICINE
• Heal the gut — heal the body and mind
• Evolutionary Psychiatry: nutrition and mental health

More recently I posted a wonderful video, with my commentary of a woman who cures her MS with a similar diet. Many chronic illnesses are helped this way:

• Minding Your Mitochondria: heal chronic illness with diet

Gut / intestinal health is foundational to all health including mental well-being. It’s the first thing attended to when I chose to come off psychiatric drugs. In healing my gut I needed to alter my diet. I’ve collected articles below that speak to these changes I made.

People who have taken psychiatric drugs often have gut issues. Sometimes these issues predate the psych drug use (as it did for me) and sometimes the psych drugs destabilize the gut and body in general and so the drugs are the cause of such issues. In either case it’s common that the use of psych drugs in time will further exacerbate the problem.

Because everything works together as we are truly holistic beings I was able to heal all sorts of issues I had prior to setting off on this journey…a few of them are listed below.

Diet and nutrition has corrected multiple problems for me. A short list of the things that come to mind immediately is:

• Twenty years of severe irritable bowel syndrome. (I went to dozens of gastroenterologists before discovering my own wellness through my own research)
• Psoriasis, a horrible skin condition, is virtually gone.
• My knees which were suffereing from what seemed to be arthritis for several years are no longer painful.
• My hair is much thicker and shinier than during my whole life. I had incredibly thin and sparse hair. It’s not luxurious even now, but the difference is amazing, striking and visible and palpable.
• Vast improvement of my endometriosis which I’m still working on. (I still sometimes have bad pain, but it’s much more intermittent)

That list is taken from the post “Total health and well-being” which is basically just saying what I said above. We’re holistic beings and everything we do effects our whole being. So healthy gut is a somewhat central place to start and it seems to make sense to a lot of people as a large percentage of people have gut issues and an even larger percentage of people on psychiatric meds do.

For more posts more specifically on gut health see below:

The information provided here is by no means exhaustive. It’s a good idea to expand your research beyond what I share below as it mostly pertains to my own particular experience which sometimes includes others, but certainly there will be cases that differ from mine.

• How I cured my irritable bowel syndrome–healthy gut is needed for healthy body and mind
• Another post with much of the above info, but also a critique of using SSRIs for gut issues (they often CAUSE gut issues)
• Healing the gut is imperative if one wants healthy body/mind/spirit: IBS, or Irritable Bowel Syndrome can be cured — with Dr. Mark Hyman
• Healing the gut for good mental health — probiotics
• Some thoughts on nutrition good gut health stops and starts with what you eat
• Total health and well-being Diet and nutrition has corrected multiple problems for me including a bad gut.
• Gluten sensitivity and celiac disease revisited: have you ruled out gluten causing problems in your life?
• Gut health is important for total wellbeing, both mental and physical
• Mind-altering bugs…