🌍 Gut 102: Get Your Gut and the EARTH Back into Balance

Celebrate Earth Day and Your Health Everyday ~ Reality Check

“Let food be thy medicine.” ~ Hippocrates

“ Let what we eat heal Mother Earth.” ~ Mama Donna

In our last blog, Gut Health 101: Where Good Health Begins or Ends, I explained our guts in a way that you probably never thought about before. In this blog, we will take it one step further and find out how to get our guts back into balance, with our bodies and with the Earth. I want you to fully understand the important connection between the components of our bodies and the elements of Nature. As we approach Earth Day, we need to celebrate our deep connection, our roots, to this magnificent planet.

Nature teaches us about balance, so why do most of the population have some kind of gut disorder? Is it greed for profits or lack of shared knowledge that has brought on chronic indigestion, leaky gut, acid reflux, IBS, and other painful digestive conditions and diseases?

The world’s people are getting force-fed an artificial diet, and it is making us sick. Food manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies created the demand for additive nutrient-void foods, and we are on a treadmill going nowhere if we continue to eat the Standard American Diet (SAD).

Most food and drug companies produce products that erode mental and physical health while misusing Earth’s valuable resources. Think about the energy, resources, trees, and fossil fuel needed to make one plastic packaging and neon pink product for Pepto Bismol. This leading antacid promises relief for an upset stomach due to overindulging in a diet of processed foods. It’s a sick cycle, and they’ve got us hooked. The medical profession should be renamed Disease Care, not Health Care.

So how did we get here? In a nutshell, the World Wars and the Industrial Revolution drastically changed our way of life. In a time of invention, processed foods helped to feed soldiers their field rations. The innovative technology for the time became mainstream and has continued to evolve, as have escalating health problems.

There was virtually no Type 2 diabetes in children just fifty-five years ago. Obesity was rare, as were many of the chronic illnesses today. These diseases, and many disorders, can be minimized or eliminated if business shifts to keeping people healthy versus being in the business of making people sick!

Since natural farming techniques turned into massive chemical agricultural systems, the vital nutrients from the soil have been increasingly depleting. At the expense of our health and that of the Earth, the majority of food companies have convinced the masses that cheap processed food is the best, tastiest, and healthiest option. Because of this, the essential bacteria required for proper digestion in our gut have been depleted. Large pharmaceutical companies work hand-in-hand with the industrial food complex; both industries capitalize and profit on our poor health.

What do you put in your gut? Do you know where it comes from? How was it made, packaged, and transported? EVERYTHING YOU PUT IN YOUR BODY impacts the environment and your health. The growing and preparing of the food or products you put in and on your body directly affect your health, the soil, the economy, and future generations.

Get your gut back into balance with expert advice.

What you choose to eat has a significant impact on your microflora, which is essential to a healthy digestive and immune system. Dr. Mercola, Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride, Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Zack Bush, Donna Gates, Sally Fallon, and so many other professionals agree that the ideal way to optimize your gut flora is to include fermented foods in your daily diet. One serving of fermented vegetables can contain 10 trillion colony-forming units of various healthy bacteria! Commercial probiotics supplements are not nearly as effective and are costlier.

It’s important to understand that you only get so many chances to stay healthy before you are at the mercy of Big Ag business, Big Pharma, and mounting medical bills. Like soil, which takes 200-400 years to make, your gut can’t renew itself in a short amount of time. Yes, you can heal your gut but some people get so sick they need to have part of their digestive system cut out. We are not chameleons; our body will not grow back like a lizard’s tail.

The good news is we can repair our gut flora by adding healthy probiotic foods. Like we amend the soil using compost, you can amend your gut flora, enabling you to live a healthy life.

Our gut is where we renew our resources. If you have ever taken antibiotics, used antibacterial soap, peel vegetables, and avoid bacteria at all costs, it’s time to relearn and get back to basics. Society has brainwashed us into believing all bacteria are harmful. The key is to get more of the healthy bacteria into our guts.

Optimum health relies on diversity, just as a healthy planet relies on biodiversity. Interconnecting everything from the soil to our souls, we can get and stay healthy. Diversity and biodiversity are the triggers for a healthy world. And this includes bacteria.

Speaking of triggers, my special guest on A Dose of Positivity this week is the master of Myofascial Trigger Point Therapy - Sharon Sauer, CMTPT. See details in Announcements below.

I care deeply about you and the Earth. I hope this post piques your interest to learn about the value of healthy microbes in your gut and on the planet, so we can all thrive together. We need to eat well every day, celebrate Earth Day every day, and take care of one another all the time.

Mama Donna’s Simple Beet Kvass Recipe

Here’s a delicious, easy to make beverage loaded with healthy microbes you can make in minutes. A few sips a day is all you need to help keep your gut happy and healthy.

All you need is a ½ gallon mason jar, beets, salt, filtered water, a plastic lid, and a few days waiting time.

INGREDIENTS:

2-3 beets, depending on the size; enough to fill the jar ⅓ of the way

4 tsp. sea salt

2 quarts filtered water

1 whole cabbage leaf or other green leafy vegetables

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Cut beets into 1-inch pieces and place them in the half-gallon jar.
2. Add salt, and fill the jar with water, leaving 1-inch headspace.
3. Add cabbage leaf.
4. Put a lid on the jar and put it in a dark corner of your kitchen.
5. Culture at room temperature (60-70°F is preferred) until desired flavor and texture is achieved, about 5 -7 days.
6. Once your kvass is done, move the jar to the fridge. The kvass flavor continues to develop as it ages. It can last for months but that would be silly, as the point is to drink up and enjoy the health benefits daily.

You can make a second round of kvass using the same beets. Simply, after finishing your first found, refill the jar with the recipe above minus the beets. After second round, compost the beets to ignite your compost pile, or run through your garbage disposical to clean out the plumbling.

Optional: Add garlic, pickling spice, turmeric, ginger, dill… or whatever flavors you enjoy. I sometimes add a teaspoon of fennel or caraway seeds.

🥰 A Dose of Positivity

Join us for a weekly uplifting discussion every Thursday at 1 pm Hawaii time, 4 pm PST, and 7 pm EST.

This week, we'll talk about trigger point therapy and how you can take charge of your physical well-being without drugs or surgery.

Sharon Sauer has practiced Myofascial Trigger Point Therapy since 1984 when she graduated from the Bonnie Prudden School of Physical Fitness. Sharon also interned with the physicians who conducted the basic research on which the field is based. These included Dr. Andrew Fischer, Dr. David Simons and Dr. Janet Travell, the first woman to serve as Physician to the President (John F. Kennedy).

Sharon co-authored a book published in the US, Korea and Japan entitled Trigger Point Therapy for Low Back Pain, which can be purchased through her website, www.myopain.com. Sharon can be reached at [email protected].

Sharon has trained both practitioners and patients in self-care techniques to help regain full function and pain relief. Her protocols provide safe, simple techniques to address common musculoskeletal problems such as low back pain, sciatica, tennis and golfer's elbow, and head and neck pain.

Here's the Zoom link: https://bit.ly/3HlyUfj

See you soon! 💕

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Gut Health ° Earth Day ° Gut Microbiome ° Mother Nature ° Natural Farming ° Micro Flora ° Immune System ° Fermented Vegetables ° Probiotic Food ° Soil Health