Sometimes, I feel like I’m living every 12-year-old boys’ dream when I talk with my clients about poop. Frequency, consistency, and appearance are important in determining overall health. Today, we’re diving in and dissecting what could be wrong with your stool and what it should look like.

Your stool can be used for testing to diagnose disease, determine the variety of gut flora, and the foundation of a solid joke. Badum-tssss.

Your stool can tell me a lot about your health, particularly your digestive health. It can tell me if you’re:

• Consuming enough fiber and water
• Too stressed out and you don’t know it
• Exercising too aggressively
• Consuming foods your body doesn’t quite agree with (rebellion at its finest!)
• How well you know your own body.

Most people take a look in the toilet when they’re done. It just happens. We may not talk about it with others (unless you’re my son) but we look. Who knows why. Perhaps there is something ingrained in our DNA that requires us to turn around and take a peek. Or it may just be sheer curiosity.

Regardless, looking is normal and good.

I talk poop with all my clients

I don’t prep them in advance so they know it’s coming but I ease it into our initial session. I do my best to not make it uncomfortable for them since talking poop with a stranger is always weird. I usually start with benign poop questions like frequency, etc. And then I’ll get down to business – again badum-tsss! Here are some of the questions I may ask:

1. How often are you going?
2. Is it hard or difficult to pass?
3. Does it sink or float?
4. Are the edges flat or is the stool ribbon-like?
5. Is it overly foul-smelling?
6. What color is it?
7. Describe what it looks like.

For some clients, I ask this at each of their sessions because this tells me a lot about their overall health and how they’re progressing along. Here’s what I am looking for when I ask each of these questions:

1. A healthy bowel releases one to three times daily.  

Everybody should be passing stool at least once per day. I’ll say it again…you should poop daily! If you poop more than three times daily, that’s an indication your bowels are moving faster than they need. This robs you of the nutrients you’re consuming from your food. We would also need to figure out why they are moving so quickly.

If you’re going less than once daily, your stool is hanging out a bit too long and your body will start to recycle the waste back into your body. This isn’t a good thing!

2. I know there are some that make their bathroom trip their “me” time. 

And that’s okay. When else can you slip away from the outside world undisturbed? Hopefully, you’re undisturbed, unless you have a toddler or brought your phone in and people keep texting you. Regardless of how much time you spend in the loo, you should only be spending a few minutes on the throne pooping. There should be no grunting, forcing, cursing, bracing, or screaming. You should be able to sit down and pass your stool with no pain and without breaking a sweat. If you struggle, there’s something amiss. And if you don’t feel empty, you’re constipated regardless of how often you poop.

3. Floating stool could indicate you are not absorbing the fats that you are eating.  

In case you’re wondering, this is not a good thing. It could indicate a too quick transit time. Or there’s something bigger going on with your gallbladder. So I may ask some follow up questions about that. My first question would be, do you have one. If the answer is yes, I want to know how their gallbladder feels (right side pain or should blade pain). And if they have any other bowel issues. There’s a lot to unpack with this one.

4. If the edges of your stool are flat or perhaps your poop looks like a ribbon on a party package, I need to know.  

To me, this indicates you may have something going on in your colon that I’d like for you to chat with your doctor about. I may also ask if you’ve had a colonoscopy, how recently, and what the results were. Something as simple as hemorrhoids could cause this. And something as major as polyps, Crohn’s, or colitis could cause this.

5. Yes, poop smells.  

But you know your poop better than anyone else. Is it smellier than it normally is? Have there been any changes to the odor? This is important because it could be a sign that you’re not breaking down your food properly. And we need to figure out why.

6. Color is key.  

Yes, your poop will change colors from time to time. For instance, if you have beets, you may notice the next day your poop is red or much darker than normal. This is okay if you actually consumed beets. It’s similar to babies who eat lots of peas and then poop green. But for the most part, unless you eat beets daily, your poop should be brown. The brown color comes from bile used to break down the fatty acids you consume.

7. It should look like soft-serve ice cream.  

It shouldn’t be hard, broken in pieces, or super loose like diarrhea or watery. I’ll show you what I mean in a second here. Picture soft-serve coming out of the machine…this is what healthy poop looks like.

I like to use the Bristol Stool Chart. This chart was designed by Dr. Stephen Lewis and Dr. Ken Heaton at the Bristol Royal Infirmary in Bristol, England. Both gastroenterologists created a useful tool for all health practitioners to use to help patients/clients feel more comfortable discussing poop. We need to discuss poop because it’s a “gateway” to health!

Here’s the chart:

Source

Where do you stand?  

You should be at a 4. I know that it shows 3 as normal as well but I don’t like 3. I also know that many practitioners don’t like 3 either. It means you’re going down the path of limited fiber and perhaps limited water. It also may indicate your transit time is slowing. So, let’s shoot for 4…soft serve ice cream.

If you OCCASIONALLY experience something else for a very short period of time, that’s okay. If it returns to normal in a day or so, I wouldn’t be alarmed. If it never returns, I’d start digging in to find the answer to the change.

So, what are some things you can do in an attempt to correct your poop? You’re welcome to follow the process below, but just know this does not apply to everyone. If you’re experiencing long-term poop abnormalities, I’d bring it up with your physician or your nutritionist/dietitian (but they should have already asked).

1. Check your fiber and water intake.  

You should be drinking half your body weigh in ounces daily. So, if you’re 100 lbs, you should be drinking 50 oz of water daily. Do not include working out in this equation. What you drink in the gym doesn’t count.

Ensure you’re consuming 25 to 35 grams of fiber daily. This comes from whole grains and vegetables, to name a few places.

2. Are you managing your stress?  

We all have stress but what are you doing to manage yours? Do you:

• Have an outlet?
• Meditate?
• Take walks?
• Have fun?
• Laugh daily?
• Do yoga?
• Run?

Are you picking up what I’m putting down here? Stress can cause diarrhea and bloat. Many cases of IBS are stress-induced. Managing your stress may be all you really need to bring your stools back to the consistency they should be.

Find an outlet that works for you and do it daily. Fun Fact:  I over-exercised and overstressed myself into IBS a few years ago. I changed my workout routine and worked really hard to reduce my stress and…viola!

3. You could always add in probiotic or fermented food! 

Fermented veggies are so yummy by themselves or on a cracker. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it! You can buy a variety these days. And fermented veg is definitely better, in my opinion, than taking a probiotic. But some will need probiotics, therapeutically, if they have specific health conditions.

4. Maybe you’re eating something that does not agree with the body.  

For a few weeks, track what you eat and how you feel afterward. It could be so simple as a specific food is wreaking havoc on your digestive system. Removing that food could change your life, literally.

That’s it.  That’s poop in a nutshell…so to speak.  How’s your poop? Do you know what your poop looks like? Are you at a 4 on the Bristol stool chart?

Sunny Brigham, MS, CNS, LDN is a board-certified clinical nutritionist and a licensed dietitian-nutritionist with an MS in Clinical Nutrition. She helps women reduce fatigue, eliminate bloat, and lose weight by healing the digestive tract, reversing Hashimoto’s, and repairing their relationship with food. Find out more at Complete Health. Article reposted from Complete Health. 

October is the month of candy. Halloween brings endless bowls of drug store candy – M&Ms, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Candy Corn – all filled with sugar, artificial flavors, food dye, GMO cornstarch, and other scary ingredients! Plan ahead and you can avoid the usual crap by making your own healthier (but still tasty) treats!

Almond Butter Cups

Try these Paleo Almond Butter Cups with dark, fair trade chocolate (try this one sweetened with stevia), coconut oil, and coconut flour. Sweetened with a touch of maple syrup. Easy, healthy, and delicious!

Healthy Candy Corn

These Paleo Candy Corn Gummies will satisfy your candy corn cravings! Made with healthy ingredients like coconut milk, carrot juice, and turmeric – all held together with grass-fed gelatin – these candy corns are the perfect treat. 

DIY Trail Mix

This is certainly not a new trick – but a very tried, true, and trusted one! Mix your own trail mix and create individual servings in paper snack bags. Try any raw or dry roasted seeds and nuts, coconut shreds, unsweetened 100% chocolate chips and anything else you want to jazz it up. 

Scary Halloween Apple Mouths

Kids (and adults) will eat up these cute and healthy treats. Super easy and quick to make with only 4 ingredients – apples, almonds, almond butter, and lemon juice.

A healthy digestive tract is linked to overall wellness. Here are answers to some of the most common questions about leaky gut syndrome:

What is leaky gut syndrome?

Leaky gut syndrome is a condition in which the lining of the gut is compromised by small holes. These holes, like tears in a paper coffee filter, allow toxins and food particles to pass into the bloodstream, where they are not supposed to be, and where they can trigger health problems. The condition is also known as intestinal permeability.

In a healthy gut, the lining is thin but durable. It forms a tight barrier that allows important nutrients to pass through to the bloodstream while keeping large food particles and bacteria inside the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and headed toward the exit. In a leaky gut, larger particles are able to pass through the gut barrier and disrupt the body’s internal ecosystem.

What causes leaky gut?

A wide variety of factors can irritate the delicate lining of the gut, including diets high in sugar and processed foods, diets low in phytonutrient-rich whole foods, exposure to toxins and synthetic chemicals, exposure to unwelcome bacteria (via food poisoning, for example), medications such as ibuprofen and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), overtraining or insufficient rest between bouts of exercise, poor-quality or insufficient sleep, circadian clock disruption, and stress.

Over time, the irritation caused by one or more of these factors can lead to inflammation, which weakens the tight junctions between the cells in the gut lining. Then, in a vicious cycle, the particles that leak through the weak cell junctions trigger more inflammation, making gut health even worse and adding fuel to the fire of other inflammatory conditions (more on that below).

How common is leaky gut? 

Because the environmental factors that irritate the gut are common, leaky gut is common. Functional-medicine experts believe that most people experience some degree of leaky gut.

Are there tests for leaky gut?

There is no single, definitive test for leaky gut. That said, a handful of different tests can pinpoint direct and indirect signs of intestinal permeability. Experts recommend these six tests.

What are the symptoms of leaky gut syndrome?

Leaky gut symptoms can be gut related or more systemwide. These are some of the telltale GI symptoms:

• Bloating
• Gas
• Cramps/pain
• Discomfort

These body-wide symptoms and conditions have also been associated with leaky gut:

• Fatigue
• Joint pain
• Rashes
• Respiratory issues
• Asthma
• Autoimmune diseases
• Eczema
• Psoriasis
• Acne
• IBS
• Ulcerative colitis
• Food intolerances
• Arthritis
• Chronic pain
• Multiple food and chemical sensitivities
• Hyperactivity (in children)
• Schizophrenia
• Seasonal allergies
• Chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia
• Weight loss resistance
• Brain fog/trouble concentrating

How does a leaky gut lead to body-wide problems? 

Problems in the gut can lead to problems all over the body in several key ways:

→ Leaky gut stresses the liver. One way leaky gut affects the larger ecosystem is by taxing the liver. The liver is in charge of processing and eliminating toxins from the body. When the flow of undigested food particles, carcinogens, and toxins coming into the bloodstream is significant, as is often the case with leaky gut, the liver can get overwhelmed and sluggish, allowing toxins to accumulate in the body. A buildup of toxins, in turn, can lead to oxidative stress and inflammation, which are factors in many of the conditions associated with leaky gut, including acne, achy joints, arthritis, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue.

The damage doesn’t stop there. Inflammation can be a contributing factor in the development of leaky gut, and the more severe the case of leaky gut, the more inflammation in the body — it is a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle.

→ Leaky gut puts pressure on the immune system. The immune system responds to toxins in the bloodstream by ramping up its efforts to protect you — as it should. (The immune system’s job is to protect the body from harmful bacteria, toxins, and other pathogens.) But in some cases, a large flow of toxins leaking into the body triggers the immune system to overreact. It’s as if the immune system senses a five-alarm fire and goes on high alert, but then, eventually, it becomes a bit too alert, mistaking otherwise harmless food or body tissue for dangerous pathogens. This process can contribute to the development of autoimmune conditions and food intolerances and allergies.

→ Leaky gut disrupts the gut microbiome. A third way leaky gut can affect the whole body is by triggering unwanted changes in the gut microbiome. In recent years, research has identified the gut microbiome as a major player in overall health. Studies link gut dysbiosis, or an imbalance in the good and bad bacteria in the gut, with a wide range of conditions, including mental health and cognitive issues, skin conditions, lung diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and more. If leaky gut throws off the balance of good and bad bacteria in the gut, it has the potential to negatively affect systems across the body.

Gut dysbiosis is also one of the irritants that can trigger a leaky gut. This creates another vicious cycle related to leaky gut: The more severe the case of leaky gut, the greater the chance of gut dysbiosis — and the more dysbiosis, the greater chance of leaky gut.

It’s in these three ways — by fueling inflammation, triggering unwanted immune system reactions, and disrupting the healthy ecosystem of the gut flora — that leaky gut affects whole-body health.

How do you heal a leaky gut? 

Functional-medicine experts recommend a five-step process for healing leaky gut. Here is an overview of the healing protocol. For complete details on following the five-step plan, including dose recommendations for supplements and how to do an elimination diet, see “How to Heal a Leaky Gut.”

Step 1: Remove

If you’re experiencing symptoms, it’s tempting to start with drugs to quiet them. But many drugs, including NSAIDs like ibuprofen, make leaky gut worse. At best, they pave over symptoms without treating the root cause. Experts agree that the best place to start is doing an elimination diet.

An elimination diet is a temporary protocol that involves removing foods that irritate and inflame the gut lining and then reintroducing them one by one to track symptoms. You can find details on doing an elimination protocol here, including what foods to avoid and when and how to reintroduce them. (There’s a downloadable chart of the Institute for Functional Medicine’s elimination diet protocol here.)

It can be valuable to work with a trusted healthcare practitioner when you do an elimination diet. Be sure to seek a practitioner’s help if you try the protocol on your own and don’t experience any symptom relief.

Step 2: Replace

Once you’ve removed foods that aggravate the gut, it’s important to incorporate ones that actively heal the gut lining. Specifically, experts recommend eating a wide cast of whole foods, including lots of phytonutrient-rich vegetables, low-glycemic fruits, pastured and organic meat (or healthy vegetarian protein sources, such as legumes), and sources of healthy fat, such as avocados, small oily fish, and olive oil. The nutrients and other compounds in these foods, including fiber and omega-3 fats, are necessary for rebuilding tissue and repairing the tight junctions in the gut lining. Building a gut-friendly plate at each meal is important, and Sarah Kay Hoffman, author of The Leaky Gut Meal Plan: 4 Weeks to Detox and Improve Digestive Health, offers delicious gut-healing recipes here.

Supplements can help speed the healing process, too. A high-quality digestive enzyme can help a beleaguered GI tract absorb the nutrients it needs to heal. Experts advise taking one for a couple of weeks or up to a month. L-glutamine is another powerful supplement for rebuilding the integrity of the gut lining and, like digestive enzymes, can be used during the active healing phase. Taking a high-quality omega-3 supplement can quiet inflammation and help fortify the gut lining. You can find dosing recommendations for glutamine and omega-3 supplements here.)

Step 3: Reinoculate

The irritation and inflammation caused by leaky gut take a toll on the overall health of the GI tract. So, the next step, after working to heal the gut lining, is to help reinoculate the gut microbiome with beneficial bacteria. Experts recommend taking a high-quality probiotic and eating probiotic-rich fermented foods. You can find recommended doses for probiotics, as well as fermented-food suggestions, here.

Steps 4 and 5: Repair and Rebalance

Once you’ve moved through the first three steps, maintenance is key — and the best way to keep your gut in good working order is with lasting dietary changes. This involves key shifts in what you eat, how you eat, and when you eat. Broader lifestyle changes — such as prioritizing stress management, getting regular exercise, regulating your sleep–wake cycle— also play an important role.

Reposted from Experience Life written by Laine Bergeson Becco, FMCHC an Experience Life contributing editor and functional-medicine certified health coach.

Late summer and into the fall is a bountiful and colorful harvest time at the farmer’s market. It’s a great time to stock up on your favorite produce and spend an afternoon preparing and preserving some goodies for the winter.

Make tomato sauce and ratatouille

When the nightshade vegetables hit the market in the late summer, stock up on tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers and make your own sauces (unless you are avoiding nightshades for health reasons!). Cook a big pot of sauce with tomatoes, garlic and basil or make ratatouille with of tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and zucchini. Freeze in portion sizes and use throughout the winter for making stews and sauces to top your zoodles.

Apples to applesauce 

Apples are the perfect fall food and provide prebiotics and polyphenols. So in addition to making a whole apple your go-to snack with some almonds or cashews, make apple sauce (especially if you have young kids, they love it and you can control the added sugar!), apple crumble with nuts and cinnamon, or even some apple chutney to spice up your Paleo dinner.

Ferment and last forever

Pickling, canning, and fermenting is all the rage these days. These old preservation techniques allowed people to eat vegetables through the winter when nothing would grow. Most importantly the process infuses the food with lots of good bacteria, or probiotics, which helps support the immune system (important as we head into fall and winter) and boost digestion. The late summer bounty is perfect for fermenting – cucumbers, carrots, green beans, zucchini, peppers (fermented hot sauce!), and more. Read more – Heal Your Gut with Fabulous Fermented Foods.

When it comes to gut troubles that make you feel especially lousy, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) ranks pretty high on the list, and as many as 45 million people in the US have it. Though ‘IBS’ is a virtually meaningless catchall phrase that sheds no light on what’s actually causing the symptoms, the struggle is very real – think frequent, gas, recurring abdominal pain, cramps, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, etc.   

So, what lies beneath all this gut misery? In my experience, and according to a growing number of researchers one of the most common culprits is  ‘dysbiosis,’ also known as an altered, or imbalanced, microbiome. But the good news is that with some gut-focused TLC, IBS is quite treatable, without resorting to a prescription pad. So, how to slay the IBS monster? Start here: 

To understand IBS, start with your microbiome.

If your digestive system is humming along nicely, that’s a beautiful thing — odds are, no major trouble in your gut paradise. For IBS sufferers, those debilitating symptoms are sure-fire signs that your microbiome – the microbial community that lives in the gut and helps keep you well – needs urgent attention. 

IBS sufferers may well be suffering from dysbiosis, a microbial imbalance that can interfere with the body’s ability to extract and effectively use the nutrients from food. It impacts both physical and emotional well-being, shortchanging both body and brain. Making matters worse, from dysbiosis, it’s a hop-skip to a ‘leaky gut,’ aka increased gut permeability, which is where inflammation starts, leading to all sorts of problems throughout the body, including skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis, brain fog, anxiety, depression, sleep issues, auto-immune conditions and accelerated aging, in addition to IBS symptoms.

The first step to keeping leaky gut at bay is to start embracing prebiotics, the dietary fibers that we humans cannot actually digest. Your gut bacteria feast on the fiber, fermenting it and producing organic acids that help maintain and repair the gut wall, keeping cells tightly-linked and leak-free. Leak-free means partially digested food particles and toxins or metabolites of gut bacteria won’t escape into the bloodstream, nor will they able to increase the risk of IBS.  And a well-fed microbiome means a greater number of bacteria and a more diverse collection of bacterial species, all of which keep the gut healthy and resistant to all manner of gastrointestinal problems.  

So, what’s bugging your microbiome?

When IBS strikes, one of the first questions patients ask, after ‘why me?’, is: ‘what’s making me so sick so often?’ Well, there are a number of triggering and/or aggravating factors at play, and many of them are often overlooked by conventional medicine, or else treated by prescription drugs, which mask the underlying causes rather than addressing them. Just as bad, their effects tend to fade over time, so, if your microbiome is altered or imbalanced, it’s time to root out the most common culprits – the Debilitating Dozen:

1. Food sensitivities and allergies – that irritate and inflame the gut, setting off an immune response that can bring on a slew of symptoms.
2. Food poisoning – whether a single bad bout or a few light ones, it can derange the bacterial balance in your gut, setting yourself up for IBS. 
3. Leaky gut – aka ‘gut permeability,’ enabling toxins to leak out of the gut and into the bloodstream, triggering an immune system overreaction, resulting in IBS symptoms.
4. Bacterial or fungal overgrowth– for example, in the form of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO); or small intestinal fungal overgrowth (SIFO), sometimes described as candida or yeast overgrowth.  
5. Parasitic infections – low-grade, untreated parasitic infections, like entamoeba histolytica or giardia, which may clear up on their own but still wind up disrupting bacterial balance.
6. Stress – which can trigger changes in the microbiome associated with poor gastrointestinal health, including lower levels of “good” bacteria and their metabolites, and a less diverse population of bacterial species. 
7. Alcohol – even in small amounts (think one drink per day), can lead to changes in gut microbiome composition leading to dysbiosis.
8. Antibiotics – probably the most common cause of an altered microbiome, as they wipe out whatever gut bacteria are sensitive to them, your beneficial as well as your less beneficial gut bacteria.  
9. Proton Pump Inhibitors (PPIs) –  there is good research that people who rely on these drugs have less gut bacterial diversity and greater vulnerability to gut problems.
10. Hormonal birth control – Studies have shown oral contraceptives can negatively impact gut flora, which can increase inflammation and gut permeability, boosting IBS risk 
11. NSAIDs and antidepressants –both these categories of drugs can decrease diversity of the bacteria in your gut, increasing infection risk and the chances of developing a leaky gut (especially NSAIDs).
12. Lack of bacterial diversity – a gut bacterial community that lacks diversity, because of genetics, cesarean section births, lack of breast feeding or any one or more of the culprits on this list, is less able to defend against pathogens and more likely to overreact to stuff which wouldn’t sicken someone else with a more diverse microbiome. 

Step off the IBS symptom roller coaster.

Instead of trying to drug IBS into submission, I recommend going the holistic route which incorporates not only lifestyle upgrades, but also anti-microbial herbs and gut-friendly supplements to help balance the microbiome, tame symptoms, heal leaky gut, and boost gut function as a whole. I have found anti-microbial herbs to be effective and gentler on the microbiome (and rest of the body), especially when compared to the heavy pharmaceutical artillery many doctors are only too happy to bombard their patients with.

My protocols will often include a combination of different supplements depending on the particular situation:

• Mixed anti-microbials using a variety of herbs including berberine sulfate, olive leaf extract, oregano oil, grapefruit seed extract, sweet wormwood extract or artemisinin, bearberry extract, tribulus extract, black walnut hulls, thyme oil.
• Nutrients to support the gut lining like L-glutamine, zinc, fish oils, collagen or bone broth, and curcumin.
• Sometimes (usually at a later stage) broad spectrum probiotics to populate or repopulate the gut with a variety of helpful strains

As for the lifestyle upgrades, a customized dietary prescription will provide additional support to help heal and seal the gut, often incorporating one or more of the following approaches:

• An elimination diet, to remove the foods that could be irritating the gut and to help identify any food sensitivities or allergies that may be triggering or exacerbating IBS symptoms
• A low carb diet, with plenty of cooked non-starchy veggies
• A low FODMAP diet, which can be helpful to treat symptoms, and limit gas and bloating. 

Protect with gut-supportive habits that will send IBS packing.

Getting your gut in order after it’s taken a beating from IBS won’t happen overnight, but once anti-microbial supplements and dietary approaches are in place, the next step is to protect your bacterial balance with healthy lifestyle behaviors. I cannot stress enough how important it is to put in the work, to make your life more manageable now and lay the foundation for a robust old age. The simplest and easiest-to-address behaviors start with what you put in your body – and what you don’t. On the list of items to purge ASAP: 

1. Keep sugar and starches to an absolute minimum – as they feed the overgrowth of bad bacteria in the small intestine and starve good bacteria in the colon, potentially setting you up for leaky gut. 
2. Get rid of gluten – as sensitivities and allergies to it increase irritation of the gut wall, leading to permeability, inflammation, and debilitating IBS symptoms.
3. Rid the pantry of processed foods – which, convenient as they may be, are loaded with gut-irritating additives and devoid of the all-important fiber a gut in trouble needs. 
4. Redline sweeteners – aspartame, fructose, lactose, sorbitol, xylitol, even honey and agave, all can make IBS matters worse (though some patients are able to use stevia and monk fruit without exacerbating problems).
5. Eat the rainbow – variety is the spice of life, and it’s great for your gut health too – as the nutrients and fiber in (low-sugar) fruit and non-starchy veggies across the color spectrum feed and nurture a variety of microbial species.
6. Cut the cocktails – as in, completely, especially if IBS is making life miserable. Like it or not, alcohol is a toxin that alters the microbiome and inhibits digestive enzyme production, which not only makes it harder to digest and absorb nutrients from food but also inflames your gut. So, the less you drink, the less risk of bacterial overgrowth and dysbiosis.
7. Curb your meds whenever possible – be they over-the-counter or prescription, many everyday meds can throw off your bacterial balance, encourage the bad guys to thrive and trigger symptoms. If however, meds are unavoidable, work with your doc to keep the dosages to an absolute minimum and follow my prescription for repairing a troubled gut.

And on the must-add list:

1. Ramp up your fiber intake – working your way up to about 40 grams per day.
2. Pour on tasty spices – which on their own or in combination can create positive alterations in the composition of gut microflora.
3. Add more polyphenols to your plate – your gut microbes love polyphenols, so keep them well-supplied with healthy goodies like nuts, berries, coffee, tea and olive oil.
4. Have a scoop of fermented foods – as they contain live microbes that help repopulate your gut with every bite.

In addition to what you put in your body, how you care for it also makes a difference in how often IBS flares up or not. To help keep those symptoms from interfering with your day-to-day life, think:

• Good, restful sleep – too little or poor sleep disrupts your natural circadian rhythms, leading to changes in gut permeability, and reductions in beneficial bacteria – so start pulling your sleep act together, stat!
• Stress reduction – a stressed-out body and mind will negatively impact the diversity of the bacteria in your gut, as well as the other microorganisms that live there, and trigger inflammation, so tame stress with a simple meditation practice to help stop flare-ups before they start.
• Move more – to help increase the numbers of good bacteria in your gut, and positively modify gut microbiome while also helping to keep inflammation at bay. Just don’t over-do it. According to a recent study, excessive exercise was shown to have a negative impact on gut bacteria. 

How else to get your gut in order and send IBS symptoms packing? Check out my in-depth look at How to Heal Leaky Gut and Repair the Gut Lining.