Alkaline water and diet, good or bad?

Alkaline water and diet, good or bad?

Alkaline water and the alkaline diet fad.

Is alkaline water good for me?

No, it is not.

Why do some people drink alkaline water?

There is a popular thought that if you drink alkaline water, it will make your body alkaline. Most people who have ailments have bodies that are too acidic. So some think therefore that the cure for illness is to make your body more alkaline and they think that alkaline water is the easiest way to do this. Many drink alkaline water who are not sick but are hoping to prevent future ailments, but it doesn’t work.

Does alkaline water make the body more alkaline?

No. If anything it makes the body more acidic. Alkaline water is a stress on your stomach. Stress makes the body more acidic.

Is alkaline water bad for the stomach?

Yes. The body in general is supposed to be on the alkaline side, but one organ that likes to be acidic is the stomach. You may have heard of ‘stomach acid.” The stomach makes acid to digest your food. If you drink alkaline water, the stomach becomes alkaline, then has to work much harder to create an acid environment at your next meal. Of course too much stomach acid is a problem too, but that’s usually caused by a bacterial infection or a hiatal hernia, neither of which is caused by eating acidic foods or beverages, or from being overall too acidic. Alkaline water could make the symptoms of an over-acid stomach feel better during a flare-up, but it won’t fix the underlying cause of the over-acid stomach.

What if I drink alkaline water between meals so that it doesn’t interfere with digestion?

This is still bad. The stomach consists of cells called epithelial tissue similar to skin cells. Women who learn how to treat their face to prevent wrinkles know that “beauty” washes are usually acidic, not alkaline. Those who have tanned an animal skin know that the way to clean the underlying fat from the animal skin before tanning it is to soak the skin in alkaline water to “eat” the fat away. But they know to be very careful not to leave the skin in the alkaline wash too long or else the entire hide will begin to dissolve as the alkaline water literally eats the hide into mush! And of course to condition the hide so that it is “tanned,” becoming a strong yet soft leather that lasts a long time, they soak it in an acid wash consisting of tannic acid. Bottom line: acid is generally good for epithelial cells, alkaline generally breaks down and destroys epithelial cells. Drinking alkaline water over time can tear down the stomach lining.

So what about an alkaline diet?

One interesting part of an alkaline diet is that things like citris, which are acidic foods, make your body more alkaline. And things like pasta, which are more neutral pH, make your body more acidic. In general fruits and vegetables and greens make you more alkaline, and refined foods, sugars, and animal products make you more acidic. So yes, an “alkaline” diet is good for you. But it doesn’t mean that you are eating foods that are alkaline.

How do acidic citris foods make the body more alkaline?

Because they are full of minerals. Once digested, the minerals are released and they make you more alkaline than the acid made you acidic.

But I can’t eat citrus because it gives me acid reflux, if they make me more alkaline, why does it seem to cause my stomach and throat to burn?

Because the minerals aren’t released until after you digest the citrus. So the acid in the citrus irritates you.

But I thought that in some cases of acid reflux, the stomach is actually low in acid and taking an acid supplement can make it feel better?

True. But only if you aren’t too acidic in your body. Even though the stomach likes lots of acid, if the body has too much acid, then adding more acid to the stomach will irritate things.

And so if my body has high acid and my stomach has low acid, but I can’t take an acid supplement because it burns me, and I can’t digest vegetables or greens well because my stomach acid is low and I get lots of gas and bloating, how can I possibly correct my acidic body?

With minerals, especially calcium. Calcium is the main way that the body stays alkaline. Greens and vegetables have high calcium levels, a better source than even milk. But you can’t absorb calcium without enough vitamin D in the blood. D comes from sunshine or supplements. See my articles on vitamin D here, here, here, here, here and here. But to answer your question about an acid body that reacts to acid foods even though they should make you alkaline, get your vitamin D levels up to 80 ng/ml and take a calcium supplement until the symptoms go away. After 3-6 months, if your acid reflux is gone and you are eating lots of veggies and greens, you won’t need the calcium supplement anymore, just the D.

So what’s the bottom line?

1) Don’t drink alkaline water, if anything, add some lemon juice to your water to make the water acidic yet alkalizing once digested.

2) To alkalize your body eat greens and veggies, and take vitamin D (take calcium as needed for severe cases).

3) Avoid processed foods and eat animal products in moderation.

What if I do all this and I still have indigestion or acid reflux or bloating?

Reread my article on diet and on cleansing.

Extra:

Vitamin D when chronically low is linked to cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, arthritis, dementia, pregnancy complications, autism, and autoimmune diseases. All of these diseases are also linked to too much acid in the body. The body acid does not cause these diseases. Low vitamin D causes low calcium which causes high body acid.

So the following will largely prevent all modern disease, no alkaline water or diet tricks needed:

1) Eat fresh real food and avoid processed foods.

2) Take lots of vitamin D.

Vertigo/Dizziness

I recently had my first personal experience with vertigo, and oh my, it is a frightening experience! I have a new appreciation for the emotional severity of this condition, to say the least.

Those who suffer from vertigo know what I’m talking about. I used to place vertigo lower on the list of really bad conditions, I mean, there is no pain involved (unless you get injured from falling, or end up vomiting repeatedly), so how bad could it really be? Let me tell you, it is very bad.

I’m specifically talking about the type of vertigo I recently experienced: Benign positional vertigo (BPV). I woke up and felt fine. Then I got out of bed and immediately felt the room tumbling backwards and I sat/fell back onto my bed. I was moderately nauseous. The dizziness and nauseousness passed within 30 seconds, but as I sat there on my bed, I had an overwhelming feeling that it was going to happen again at any moment. So after several minutes, I slowly stood up and slowly walked into the bathroom, being careful not to move my neck or head anymore than absolutely necessary. As I carefully sat on the toilet, I felt a mild wave of nausea and dizziness. I thought that maybe if I just slowly kept getting ready for work, it would go away. No such luck. The more I moved around, the more easily I became dizzy and nauseous.

My saving grace was that in 2015 I had learned from my trips to Michigan what causes BPV and how to fix it. So, I knew exactly what was going on with me and that it was curable. Had I not known any of this, I would have been in a panic. But I was dreading the treatment, because it involves causing the vertigo to happen repeatedly for 30-60 minutes!

Dreading the treatment, and still hoping it would just go away without it, I decided to head to work. I had Roshannah drive me there, to prevent a wreck should the vertigo suddenly take me over while driving! The car ride was very difficult, even the slightest acceleration or brake made me mildly nauseous and on the edge of dizziness. As I’m writing this I’m realizing that I keep saying that it was “mild” or on the “edge” of a problem. I’m realizing that the reason it was actually so “very bad” was because of the fear. The one episode where the floor quickly moved as I fell backward into bed was so frightening that any hint that it could happen again was terrible.

Finally at the office, I realized that this wasn’t going to go away, it had to be treated. And by this point I realized that it was specifically forward head nodding that would set it off. There was no way I could treat patients all day without looking down at the table. So I had Roshannah call and cancel my morning appointments to give me time to attempt to treat my condition. If unsuccessful, I would have to cancel the rest of the day as well.

Before I go on with the story, let me say that dizziness and nausea can be signs of very serious, even deadly conditions. The reason I knew I was not having a medical emergency was because I had none of the following symptoms:

A new, different or severe headache

A fever

Double vision or loss of vision

Hearing loss

Trouble speaking

Leg or arm weakness

Loss of consciousness

Falling or difficulty walking (I had this once, but it immediately subsided once I stopped forward head motion)

Numbness or tingling

Any of the above symptoms mixed with sudden vertigo can be a sign of a stroke or other life threatening condition that may need immediate medical attention, so go to the emergency room right away if you have the above symptoms mixed with vertigo.

I did have falling or difficulty walking, but only right after nodding my head forward, which I was being careful not to do.

So when none of the above symptoms are present and the vertigo only happens when the head is in a specific position, this is BPV and is only an emergency if you cannot walk at all or if you can’t stop vomiting.

Now back to my story.

As Roshannah called the morning patients to reschedule them, I knew I had about 90 minutes to properly diagnose and treat my condition if I was going to expect to treat patients in the late morning, afternoon and evening. So I needed to act quickly. Despite this time crunch, I spent a long time studying pictures of inner ear drawings. My inner voice’s excuse for dragging my feet was that I wanted to be sure I knew exactly which of the three canals was involved and which treatment to perform. But really, I was stalling, because I did not want to experience the dizziness and near vomiting nausea again.

Time was getting thin, so I bit the bullet and began the treatment.

Because only forward head nodding caused the symptoms, I knew it was the superior vestibular semicircular canal. But I didn’t know if the stone that had formed was stuck in the front, back, or top of this canal. I took a guess that it was at the top, and decided I wanted to move the stone forward first, then down, slightly back, and then hopefully out the drain. So I decided to lie face down on the treatment table with neck in neutral so that gravity would pull the stone where I wanted it to go. This was the equivalent of nodding my head forward 90 degrees, a scary prospect since 10 degrees had caused dizziness and near vomiting.

To avoid falling over, I jumped onto the table into the face down position as fast as possible (it’s hard to fall if you are already lying down, right?) Successfully face down, the dizziness began, but it only lasted about 10 seconds (which seemed like 10 minutes), then it was completely gone! But it was like the calm before the storm because I knew that this meant the stone had left the motion sensing hairs of the canal and was now free falling in the canal fluid. It would hit the hairs again once it fell far enough and hit the “bottom.”

Sure enough, the dizziness started up again about 60 seconds later, lasting about another 10 seconds.

So did the stone hit the hairs and stop, or did it bounce? I waited in fearful anticipation to find out. Three minutes later, nothing more had happened, so I assumed the stone was settled into it’s new position. So I reached my arm up to the face cradle of the adjusting table I was lying on, careful not to move my head suddenly, and slowly tilted the face cradle up about an inch. Instantly it felt like the room was spinning. But only for about 10 seconds, then it stopped. Again, about 60 seconds later, the dizziness started as the stone settled into it’s new position along the path of the canal.

I repeated this about 4 more times until the face cradle was at the maximum vertical angle. My head was pretty close to vertical so I decided to quickly lift my head the rest of the way to vertical. Luckily this time the dizziness was milder. Once things calmed again in this vertical head position, I was able to stand up and look at the computer screen images of the inner ear canals again while cautiously not moving the position of my head. It looked like the stone should be on the ledge of the exit hole and all I needed to do was slowly tilt my head backwards until about at a 45 degree angle. So I carefully sat on the table with the face cradle still lifted up, I leaned back keeping the top of my head upright. With my body face up on the table with my chin tucked to my chest, I now leaned my head back a bit onto the face cradle. Luckily only a mild dizziness for 10 seconds, then 60 seconds break, then 10 seconds dizzy. So it was still not out.

I then began to lower the face cradle backward an inch at a time. After about two times, the dizziness stopped no matter how far down I moved my head! So I laid there for about 5 minutes getting up my courage to stand up again. Gambling on my expertise, I held my breath and jumped up off the table… nothing! So I quickly looked down… nothing! It was gone! What a relief!

I did feel slightly off, almost like a shadow of dizziness lingered for about three days after. But no more vertigo and it has been about two months now, so I’ll keep you posted.

The procedure took about 60 minutes (yes I know, the times don’t add up, but most of the time was waiting to make sure the stone had reached “bottom” and not just bounced, as well as getting up the courage to cause the vertigo again), but it seems to have been curative. If anyone has recurring vertigo, they should not wait until it comes back. I believe you should come in and let me turn your head in all positions until we “set it off” so that we can locate the stone and figure out which canal it is in and which head direction treatment is needed to get the stone to permanently go away.

This treatment is called the Epley maneuver, but if it doesn’t make it stay away permanently, then it isn’t being performed correctly. Either the wrong canal is being treated or it is being done too quickly or the stone was assumed to be in the wrong part of the canal. Because I had no one to help me get into some of the positions that would have been needed if the stone were located elsewhere, I got lucky. I made the assumption that it was at the apex of the canal, hoping I was right. Because had it been on the back side of the canal, I may not have been able to treat it myself.

Let me know!

7 Essential Ways To Cleanse Your Body Safely

Chapter 2 (click here for chapter 1)

7 Essential Ways to Cleanse Your Body Safely

All modern diseases (heart disease, cancer, and autoimmune disease) have one thing in common: inflammation. And yes, inflammation is largely due to toxins in the body. Avoiding inflammation goes a long way toward preventing all modern diseases. And so keeping our body levels of toxins as low as possible helps keep us healthy.

The human body detoxifies and cleanses itself naturally, as it has for 250,000 years since our days on the African Savannah. In fact, all animals since the dawn of multicellular life on earth have naturally detoxified their bodies.

So then why write this chapter?

Because we need to take specific steps to make up for the fact that we don’t live in “Eden” anymore.

You mean because there are more types and numbers of toxins today than ever before?

True, but no, this isn’t why many of us need to “go on a cleanse.”

I am going to tell you the safest and most effective way to “go on a cleanse,” but first let me describe the real reason why we have this toxic problem today.

There are two proverbial elephants when it comes to creating toxic humans, one sitting in your kitchen (or favorite restaurant), and the other casting a smothering shadow: 1) bad oils, and 2) clothing. Huh? Yes, clothing.

A) Bad oils: a three fold problem

a) Bad oils directly cause inflammation.

b) Bad oils are the number one toxin by shear amount and by enduring tenacity. They stick with you, stored in the brain, nerves, and organs, causing low grade inflammation for years. It takes 45 days to get half of them out of the body once ingested, and another 45 days to get the next 25% out, and so on.

c) Bad oils sludge up the liver and gall bladder, slowing down the liver’s ability to make bile, and the gall bladder’s ability to release bile into the intestines. Bile contains the strongest known antioxidant (extinguisher of toxin induced fires), called biliruben.

Why do we care about bile, is it just because it is a strong antioxidant?

Yes, that helps a lot, but the following are perhaps even more important:

1) bile carries neutralized toxins out from the liver to be eliminated by the colon

2) bile is essential for proper digestion and absorption of dietary nutrients by the intestine such as omega 3, and vitamins A, D, E, and K, (omega 3 is a strong natural anti-inflammatory)

3) bile neutralizes the acids from the stomach so the intestine does not get burned, inflamed, and leaky

4) bile kills toxic microbes so they don’t take up residence in the gut

5) bile stimulates the colon after each meal, preventing constipation

In summary, bad oils directly cause inflammation, but they also cause sluggish liver bile, leading to poor digestion and acidic irritation, setting off food allergies and leaky gut, causing body-wide inflammation, allowing microscopic toxin producing factories to establish in the colon (pathogenic bacteria), and constipation (anything less than 3 BM’s daily is not enough, and of course loose stool is just as worrisome) allowing the stool to putrify in the colon between bowel movements. The colon veins can’t help but absorb these toxins from the bowels which get sent directly to the already sluggish liver.

I think you get the picture, they are called “bad” oils for a reason.

So what are bad oils?

Bad oils are found in: fried foods, roasted nuts, peanut butter, solid-veggie-oil-butter-alternatives, shortning, many packaged foods, coffee (a roasted nut), and oxidized or old veggie oils. Once you open a bottle of oil, the air begins to oxidize it, you have about 10-14 days to use it before it goes bad. Coconut oil lasts a bit longer, up to 60 days. The most susceptible to oxidation is fish oil unless it is processed and packaged well. This is why I recommend Nordic Naturals brand fish oil, they take multiple precautions against oxidation and verifies it with third party testing. The most insidious place bad oils are found are in restaurant foods because often it is cooked with bad oils.

So obviously it is nearly impossible to avoid bad oils completely, but for every ounce of bad oil you avoid, you get that much closer to “Eden” where your body naturally stays healthy. Start with the biggies like avoiding French fries and fried chips. Make time to go to the grocery and eat at home or pack your lunch more. Those of us with health conditions early in life are actually a bit lucky in that we are forced to eat better sooner because if we don’t eat right, we feel worse.

B) Clothing

Huh? Yes, clothing. It blocks the sun from reaching your naked skin.

On the African Savannah we had hours of direct sun exposure daily without wearing clothes, sunscreen, or hats. The human skin lacks thick fur for a reason, it has unique properties found in no other animal and it wants lots of sun. Together with sunlight, the skin becomes an efficient toxin filter and microbe killer. Within the first few millimeters of the surface of the skin runs capillary beds that can hold up to 25% of the blood in our body when dilated. Ultraviolet light from the sun penetrates into these capillaries and destroys toxins and microbes, effectively cleansing our blood!

On top of this, sunshine creates vitamin D in our skin for calcium regulation. In modern times, without high levels of sunshine or D in the blood, we cannot absorb the calcium from our food well, so we instead steal it from our bones. The problem with this is that calcium from the bones tends to get “stuck” in the arteries and soft internal organs such as the liver and gall bladder, creating gall stones and thicker, more sluggish bile. Add bad oils to this recipe and you get a real problem.

So you see, the two elephants of bad oils and clothing are a dynamic duo. Together they lead to toxin induced inflammation and then to pain and dysfunction and ultimately disease. But specifically they lead to 7 distinct problems that need to all be addressed by an effective cleanse:

1) liver/gall bladder sluggishness,

2) stomach acid imbalances,

3) small intestine stress,

4) colon dybiosis,

5) adrenal/thyroid imbalance,

6) fat burning dysfunction,

7) social addictions to bad oils, processed sugar, etc.

At my clinic, I perform specific tests that tell me whether a person needs one or more of the following cleanses. Often a person only needs one or two, but sometimes six or all seven.

1) Liver/Gall Bladder De-Sludging

Poor Bile production leads to:

a) indigestion

b) less than 2-3 bowel movements daily and/or the need to strain to pass the stool

c) a lack of greenish tint to the stool (bile is green)

d) light tan stools are a sure sign of low bile (dark brown with a slight green tint is normal)

e) stool that floats in the toilet or oil droplets (stool should sink)

If any of these are present, you may need this cleanse:

Beta-TCP: Take 6 tablets in the middle of each meal daily for 10 days (one large bottle). Repeat if a-e are not fixed. Also, stop eating bad oils, eat more green leafy veggies, check your blood for vitamin D levels (see my article on vitamin supplements for optimal health), and get more mid day sun to your skin tolerance (see my article on sunbathing)

2) Stomach Acid Balancing

The liver and gall bladder release bile into the intestine after the naturally acidic contents of the stomach are released. Bile neutralizes the acid, making it alkaline for the second phase of digestion. When bile is deficient, the acid from the stomach can burn the intestine. To compensate for low bile release, the stomach produces less acid. This leads to poor meal liquifying, causing food to sit in the stomach longer, and allowing pathogenic bacteria to survive, like H. Pylori, the leading cause of acid reflux and ulcers. Yes, that’s right, acid reflux is often caused by too little acid being produced.

The other downside of too little acid production in the stomach is that strong acid is required to stimulate more bile production from the liver and gall bladder. So sometimes, even after cleaning out the biliary system, the stomach needs a jump start in order to jump start bile production. It’s called the stomach acid challenge. If after your third bottle of Beta-TCP you still don’t have healthy a-e above, then you’ll need to do this:

Betaine Plus HP: take 2 tablets in the middle of each meal, increase by two capsules each meal until you notice a burning, warming, or tingling in the stomach or on the skin over the stomach. This means you have found the amount that is just a little bit too much, so back down the dose by two at your next meal. That is the specific amount you need to reset your stomach/liver signaling. Continue taking that amount until you notice it burns again, then back off by two, staying at the new dose each meal until it burns again. Continue in this fashion until just two capsules burn, then you are done.

Some patients find that they need up to 20 capsules in the middle of a meal before it burns. Don’t worry, it won’t take long before you can wean down and then stop. Usually only a few weeks is needed to complete the process and you will find your digestion is stronger like it used to be when you were younger.

3) Clean the gunk out of the Small Intestine

If upon firm digital pressure you have any tenderness on the front edge of your rib cage right above your abdomen where your abdominal muscles attach to your ribs, then you need this cleanse. This is because these are lymphatic reflexes to the intestines that become tender when the intestine is sludged up. The tenderness could be anywhere from the far right, up to the lower sternum, to the far left edge of your rib cage.

Cholacol II: take 4 tabs, 15 min before each meal for 7-14 days. This scrubs the intestinal villi clean so that they can absorb your micronutrients better. The cause of gunk in the small intestine is usually gluten containing foods like bread and pasta. When the bottom portion of the villi are covered in gluten residue, you can still usually absorb your calories but you can’t burn them well because the micronutrients needed to burn the calories get stuck in the gunk.
4) Fix the Colon Microflora

Often times just fixing the liver bile production by avoiding bad oils and doing the above Beta-TCP cleanse will automatically fix the colon microflora. But if not, you might find tenderness upon firm digital pressure over the outside edge of your thigh anywhere from your hip down to your knee on either the right or left thigh. If so then you will need to do this step.

This has two parts:

a) kill off any bad flora with A.D.P. : take 4 x 3 daily for 40 days. This is emulsified oregano oil, a natural herbal extract that can kill most unwanted intestinal microbes. These are in most foods, especially restaurant food, but often only take up residence when your stomach acid and bile are disrupted.

b) Recollinate with good flora with BioDoph-7-plus: take 3 caps daily for 7 days then 1 daily for 3 more weeks. Only do this after you are completely done with the 40 days of A.D.P. But be sure to do this step immediately after the A.D.P. is finished, don’t delay or other bad bugs could start to come back as quickly as 24 hours after stopping the A.D.P. if you don’t immediately start putting good bacteria back in with the BioDoph-7-plus.

5) Heal the Adrenals and Thyroid

There are three stages of adrenal dysfunction. If you are in stage one or two, then eating a better diet, avoiding bad oils, getting more sunshine and vitamin D, cleaning out the liver, intestine, and colon, and jump starting the stomach will be enough to heal your adrenals in most cases. If you are in stage three however, you will need to take an additional step.

How do I know if my adrenals are in stage three?

You will have any number of symptoms (fatigue, moodiness, headache, foggy brain, etc.) that goes away for a short time right after eating a meal or snack. Or you will have strong sugar cravings or will tend to be hungry all the time that doesn’t go away after completing steps 1-4 above.

To fix stage three adrenal dysfunction, in addition to eating a healthier diet void of bad oils, you will need to do the following for 3-6 weeks, or until low adrenal symptoms go away:

a) stop all foods and drinks with added sugar, stop all caffeine and alcohol, stop all fruit juice, and limit fruit to 1-2 pieces daily. Sugar can be considered a poison of sorts for the adrenal glands.

b) eat a small snack every 2 waking hours so that you are never hungry

This will allow your adrenals to heal and it will jump start your metabolism. By fixing the adrenals, you will fix 80% of all thyroid dysfunction. If you are on thyroid medication or have been diagnosed with a thyroid disease, then healing the adrenals will not be enough to fix your thyroid. Instead you will require personalized treatment from a health practitioner because each severe thyroid case is unique.

6) Stimulate Fat Burning

If you are in stage three adrenal dysfunction and you skip step 5 in order to get to step 6 faster, you will get worse! And step 6 won’t work. Don’t do it!

Otherwise, if you don’t have low adrenal symptoms, you can skip five and start here instead. But to truly fix the adrenals you have to complete this step also. The adrenals won’t be completely fixed until your fat metabolism is fixed. When you can’t burn fat well, you rely on sugar metabolism which makes you crave sugar which tears down your adrenals again.

How to do it:

Nutriclear shakes: 2-4 scoops mixed in 16 ounces of distilled water for breakfast, another one for lunch, then eat a regular healthy dinner. If you get hungry between shakes, then take another shake. Take as many shakes as you need until not hungry. DO NOT MIX ANYTHING INTO THE SHAKE. If you put berries or juice or almond milk or anything else into the shake, it won’t work.
Once you can eat 2 shakes during the day without being hungry until dinner time comes, you can go down to one shake for breakfast, a healthy meal for lunch, and a healthy meal for dinner. Do this for 10 more days. Then stop the shakes. As long as you feel as good off the shakes as you did on them, you are done. If any symptoms return, then repeat this step as many times as needed.

7) Social addictions to bad oils, processed sugar, etc.

The cure for this is to follow the above 6 steps over a few months and in doing so feel amazing. Eating bad oils and processed sugars will make you feel not so good again. Soon you won’t want to eat bad foods because you will become addicted to feeling truly good instead of being addicted to the short term high that comes from bad oils and processed sugars.

The more friends and family you can persuade to do this cleanse with you, the better your chances at staying away from bad oils and processed foods in the future.

Additionally, you need to be on a small number of vitamin supplements daily for life in order to achieve optimal health. Stay tuned for my next article on this topic. For a sneak peak, you can read my article on vitamin supplements for kids.

Leaky Gut Part 2: How to fix it?

So you’ve done the three week test and the results show that you have a Leaky Gut. And you did the GABA test and you may have a Leaky Brain. Now what?

Here are the top 7 things you can do, best done with the help of a health practitioner:

1) Don’t eat grains or dairy. Stay 100% away from all grains and dairy for at least 6 months. The Leaky Gut and your symptoms will never heal if you keep irritating your gut with these foods. Once the Leaky Gut is healed, some people can get away with small amounts of these foods without flare-ups, but they are living dangerously.

2) Lower your microbial counts to normal. Most of the time there is chronic low grade infections or “dysbiosis” in the bladder, vagina, gut, or sinuses because of the immune system spending too much energy attacking your food instead of your bacteria and yeast colonies. Because these aren’t full blown infections that an MD would diagnose, you likely don’t need prescription antibiotics for this (ask your MD). But you may need more gentle herbal remedies with anti-microbial activities to help your immune system kill some of the microbial numbers off. Emulsified oregano oil is a good one to use. But be warned, as it kills off microbes, the microbes release toxins that can make you feel worse at first. So to avoid this, it’s best to do number 3 below first. Sometimes just fixing the liver and biliary system (gall bladder) is enough to correct the dysbiosis.

3) Fix your liver. Sometimes the reason the gluten and dairy became so irritating in the first place was because your gall bladder wasn’t releasing enough bile into the small intestine. Bile buffers the acid released by the stomach so it doesn’t burn the small intestine. Without enough bile, the resulting acid burns can open the door to food sensitivity and can lead to Leaky Gut. See my next newsletter on Cleansing for details on fixing the liver and bilary system. Bile also keeps the gut microbes in check, so fixing the liver can sometimes fix the dysbiosis automatically without needing to use the herbs in number 2 above.

4) Balance your autonomic nervous system. This consists of the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). The SNS is the fight/flight system. It diverts blood and energy away from the gut in favor of the arms and legs muscles. The PNS is the rest/digest system. It brings blood to the gut. Stress triggers the SNS, taking blood away from the gut. The SNS also releases adrenaline and cortisol from the adrenal glands. These in chronically high amounts can be damaging to the gut. You have to take control over the stress in your life or at least learn how to stay calm and relaxed in spite of stress if you are going to be successful at healing your gut. There are many ways to lower the effect stress has on your body, here are a few that have helped me the most:

F.A.S.T. from NET (http://www.firstaidstresstool.com/),

Centering Prayer (http://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/category/category/centering-prayer),

Ki development (http://www.kionline.org/uploads/1/4/8/8/14880468/jailkibook_fall06.pdf).

5) In many cases avoiding added sugars and sugar alternatives is required if there are issues with dysbiosis or blood sugar handling issues. Also, in some cases, avoiding animal flesh for a period of time is needed if the stomach digestion is weak. A plant based protein powder like from rice or peas may be necessary. See the cleansing article for more information about the product we use for this called Nutriclear. It has pea protein plus nutrients specific for healing leaky gut like L-glutamine and methylfolate.

6) If your stomach in not producing enough digestive juices to break down your food properly, this will irritate your lower gut. For this reason you may need to do the “Stomach Acid Balancing” described in the next article, “Cleansing.” It consists of taking a specific digestive aid temporarily to jump start your digestion back to normal.

7) Foods that are slimy tend to help heal the gut. Examples are okra and nopales cactus. Just don’t fry the okra. Nopales can be found at ethnic supermarkets, at least in Fresno. To speed up the healing you can eat 1-2 servings daily of these types of food.

And lastly, be patient. It is a long road but it is doable. Once you are feeling better (3-24 weeks) keep going for another 2-3 months before adding back in grains or dairy, or sugar or meat if you had to stop these. Usually once you feel good, the healing is only 80% completed. You need to allow time for 100% healing of the Leaky Gut before easing up on the diet otherwise you risk having a major flare-up and losing ground.

Once you have fixed the Leaky Gut, you may need to do the rest of the tips in the “Cleansing” article (to come) for good measure.

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