Most North Americans have compromised guts from diet and stress, even without obvious symptoms. Watch for bloating, brain fog, and abdominal pain. A gut-intelligence test like Viome can reveal what's happening, and a five-pillar approach covering food, mindset, movement, spirituality, and community can help restore it.
So how does someone know if their gut's not optimal?
If you're living in this part of the world, which is North America, the majority of us, because of our diet, because of the way we live, because of our stressful environment, most likely we have an unhealthy gut. If you have symptoms, for example, if you have bloating, abdominal pain, discomfort, you feel unease. I had a patient literally last week, JJ, that told me, he was an executive, he said, "I wanna crawl under a chair and have no more meetings because of the way my gut feels." But it also is affecting him because he's got brain fog, he can't function well. But the vast majority of people don't have symptoms that are saying my gut is unhealthy. What I will tell you is that if you are having processed foods, if you're in environments that are stressful, work environments, relationship environments, the cortisol and the inflammation that's producing tells you that that is going to create an unhealthy gut, even if you don't have symptoms. Now we have some testing that's available now, right? So we have gut intelligence testing from companies, for example, like Viome. What I would say is that every one of us can help our gut. And then the way you help your gut is to be able to have it have the best microbiome, have the best environment that it can possibly have. And the simplest ways, when I talk about it in this book, is kind of a 5-pillar methodology. You know, food and diet is the most obvious one. People know what they eat is most important. But I will tell you that the mindset that you have, your purpose-driven living, if You have movement, spirituality, and community that can also really help you to be able to optimize your gut
