Hello, everyone! Welcome to the Restorative Health Solutions blog!
Today, we are going to be talking to you about the fourth step of the leaky gut protocol: reinoculation phase.
As a reminder, you learned about the remove phase (removing inflammatory foods, address underlying infections, removing toxins/chemicals from your environment). Then, we talked about the replace phase (adding in HCL and digestive enzymes). Most recently, we dove into the repair phase (rebuilding the gut through supplementation, diet and lifestyle).
Now, you are onto the reinoculation phase. This phase focuses specifically on adding back in the “good” bacteria and trying to diversify the population of microbes that live in the gut and contribute towards optimal health.
In the beginning, we showed you this picture below:
With leaky gut, you typically get an imbalance between the good and bad bacteria. In the remove phase, we focus on decreasing the bad bacteria, but don’t focus on increasing the good bacteria in that stage of the protocol. However, now is the time to repopulate your gut with the good stuff!
How Do You Increase the Healthy Bacteria in Your Gut?
First, we talk about what you can do in the diet to increase the healthy bacteria in the gut. Remember, the good bacteria needs a source of fuel and that fuel comes from dietary fiber. This dietary fiber comes from eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables (mainly vegetables). The best way you can do this is to buy a different combination of plant-based foods each time you go grocery shopping instead of always eating the same foods over and over again.
For example, if you like salads, mix up what greens you buy. One week you can buy romaine, the next week buy spinach, the next week buy mixed greens, etc. Always mix it up. By eating a variety of plant-based foods, you will be introducing a lot of fiber into the gut. This fiber will then be fermented by bacteria to produce short chain fatty acids (SCFAs). These SCFAs are anti-inflammatory and great for overall health.
What if You Can’t Eat Enough Veggies and Plant-based Foods?
Another easy way to get a lot of veggies in the diet naturally is to chop up a bunch of veggies with a little fruit and make a smoothie. It is much easier to get more plant-based foods in the diet by blending them into a drink that it is to eat them.
If You Still Can’t Consistently Get Enough Plant-based Foods in Your Diet, You Can Always Take the Following Supplements:
- High-quality fiber supplement
- Fruits & Greens supplement (20 servings of fruits/veggies per scoop)
- Short Chain Fatty Acids (SCFA) supplement
Does Eating More Veggies and Fruits Increase My Good Bacteria, Too?
Getting the diet right is a HUGE piece to repopulating gut with your good bacteria. However, most of the time you don’t have much good bacteria present after having leaky gut. Now that you have the fuel for the healthy microbes, what can you do to increase the amount of healthy bacteria?
The best thing you can do through the diet is eat fermented foods that contain a good amount of healthy bacteria.
Here is a list of fermented foods:
- Kombucha
- Kimchi
- Sauerkraut
- Pickles
- Yogurt (preferably dairy-free)
- Kefir (preferably dairy-free)
Most people do not get much for fermented food in the diet. Even for those that do, is it enough to reoinoculate the gut sufficiently with healthy bacteria?
In most cases, we recommend supplementing with a high quality probiotic along with the increase in dietary fiber (from increasing consumption of plant-based foods or by taking a fiber and greens supplement) and taking a SCFA supplement. This combination seems to work really well in repopulating the gut with the good, healthy, friendly bacteria!
When the reinoculation phase has been properly addressed, we then go onto step 5: Brain Rehab.
In our next blog, we will go in-depth about the brain rehab phase, why it’s so important and how it can potentially help you to get over the hump and decrease reoccurrence rates of leaky gut.
What Can Restorative Health Solutions do for You?
At Restorative Health Solutions, we strive to get to the root cause of the symptoms/condition and help patients reach their optimal health. We also guarantee to replace the one-size-fits-all approach with a personalized plan for YOU! If you or a loved one is having any suspicions of leaky gut or is interested in getting a thorough and complete work-up, we’d be happy to help. To schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation with one of the doctors, please call 952-479-7801 or CLICK HERE to fill out our contact form.
