Let me start off by saying that “gut health” is a new area of exploration for me, but one that I am finding increasingly fascinating and actually applicable to my own life. Sometimes I feel like you can learn a lot about a lot, but unless you can apply it to your life in some way, shape, or form – it generally isn’t considered by you to be “useful information”, and so it’s often times remembered for the period it needs to be remembered (like for an exam) and then forgotten.

Gut health isn’t anything like that. And I know it sounds boring and complicated, but it’s fascinating! I know this is coming from a nerd but seriously – read up on it! Your body is a MACHINE!

So before I get into a little about probiotics, I do want to add the disclaimer that I am not a doctor, and this is very low level, basic ideas. I understand there is more science to it, more specifics, etc. – I’m not trying to get into that. I’m trying to do a ground level basic understanding here 🙂

Our body is made up of microbes 🙂 aka various bacterias. There are good bacterias, and bad bacterias.  Good bacterias typically naturally occur within our bodies, but can be easily wiped out by bad bacteria. One of the things I am currently learning is that SO MUCH of our health and wellness (both physical AND mental) is controlled by our gut. Your gut is your second brain. The balance of bacteria can get you sick, or keep you healthy; can make you feel sad or make you feel happy; can leave you sleepless or give you a great night of sleep.

Bacterias matter, people!!

Back to good and bad bacterias: Bad bacteria can get in a number of ways from our environment that I’m not going to go into, because I’m sure you can figure it out. When it comes in, it makes us sick or unbalanced one way or another. The good bacteria can fight this off, and help us to recover – which is why we need to purposefully be including probiotics into our diets. Without them, disease and unbalance lives on. We continue to get sick. We get sick with the same thing. We aren’t sleeping. We are unhappy. We feel “off”.

How can you get probiotics back into your system? It’s really easy. Personally, I get both pre and probiotics each day with my Shakeology. I know at the very least, I am boosting with my breakfast shake; however, I additionally add in probiotics from other sources as well. Yogurt, you can get them in a pill form (but do your research because you need both live and inactive cultures and some pills don’t have that), and they are now coming in drinkable forms such as Goodbelly juices which contains 20 billion pro-biotic cultures per serving (and it tastes yummy).

Since paying more attention to what I’m doing, I have found that I am getting sick or feeling “bleh” less often. My sleep is improving. My mood shifts aren’t so random (like if I’m sad – I generally know why).

I’ll share more as I learn more, but if you take anything away from this, remember: We are made up of good bacteria and bad bacteria. Good bacteria fights off the bad bacteria and helps us to recover. We boost our good bacteria by including probiotics into our diets.

 

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