How to Optimize Your Microbiome With These Diet Tips for a Happy, Healthy New Year!
I hope your holidays were joyful and I wish you a happy, healthy new year! Now that we’re getting past all that holiday food, a lot of us intend to start the year with healthy diet resolutions. After my body had an inflammatory reaction to the Covid vaccine last year, I learned about the importance of the microbiome. I went on an elimination diet, eliminating all possible inflammatory foods. Now I am adding one food at a time to see which ones trigger bodily discomfort. I’m on my way to a new healthy diet. I’d like to share with you important diet tips for a happy, healthy new year. Age doesn’t matter.
How I Started a New Healthy Diet
When I was faced with managing my own pain while waiting for doctors to help, I came across a New York Times best-selling book called Healing Arthritis by Dr. Susan Blum. At the time, my doctor thought I might have arthritis. I was later diagnosed with polymyalgia rheumatica. Luckily, this will go away after long-term treatment. Meanwhile, arthritis or not, the healthy eating plan in this book is a game-changer. If you want optimal health, the diet guidelines presented at the end of this book will deliver.
Dr. Blum is a functional doctor, which means she has studied how to heal the whole body. The crux of her treatment to heal arthritis is a clean eating plan and in-depth supplementation to reset the digestive microbiome. She explains that the digestive tract is responsible for 90% of the body’s immune response.
To find out how I used Dr. Blum’s book to boost my healing process, you can read more in my post “What Is the Truth About How Foods Can Cure or Damage Your Body?”
What Is the Microbiome?
Susceptibility to illness and other physical problems often stems from an imbalance of bad bacteria versus good bacteria in the digestive system. This is your microbiome, also known as gut. So you want to optimize the microbiome with plenty of good bacteria to keep the bad bacteria in check. There is a lot of information nowadays on this issue, with talk about leaky gut, the importance of probiotics, etc.
Ultimately a clean diet can make you healthy, youthful and beautiful. So let’s get to those diet tips I promised!
Diet Tips for a Happy, Healthy You!
In “Gut Health, Your Health: The ecosystem known as the microbiome affects every system in your body” published in Costco Connection, December 2021, author Casey Hersch presented the following list. She qualified these guidelines with the statement:
“Get to know your body — there is no one-size-fits-all diet. Ask yourself, ‘Will my gut bugs like this?'”
Food Factors
- Try a largely plant-based diet such as the Mediterranean diet.
- Eat a variety of organic fruits and vegetables.
- Avoid refined sugars, processed foods and hydrogenated fats.
- Eliminate high-fructose corn syrup.
- Add fiber to your diet.
- Enjoy healthy fats such as olive oil.
- Choose fermented foods rich in probiotics, like yogurt, sauerkraut and kombucha drinks.
- Drink filtered water.
- Eliminate gluten and observe: Do your symptoms improve?
In addition to improving your diet, it’s important to strengthen your system and keep stress and trauma from upsetting your microbiome. You can do this with lifestyle changes such as getting enough exercise, sleep, fresh air and stress-reducing activities.
Let’s Connect!
Do you have any new year resolutions to improve your diet and health? Please share them with us by leaving a reply below. If it’s later in the year when you read this, maybe you have some ideas about what can help us sustain a healthy diet for lifelong health. What works for you?
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Angie
Thanks for all the tips! Many of them I already follow, but it’s nice to see the list and get a reminder.
I hope that the new year is an especially good time to get healthy diet reminders! From my experience, healthy habits have a way of slipping now and then despite all good efforts and intentions…
Oh Angie, I am so sorry t hear that you had an inflammatory reaction to your Covid vaccine and have had other health issues to contend with. These are absolutely fantastic tips, and anti-inflammatory diets are a very good idea for everyone. Low FODMAP foods can also help with inflammation.
Thank you so much for your empathy and for your suggestion, too!
I’m so sad that you’ve been sick, but I’m glad that you got the correct diagnosis, and there’s something to do about it. I had diverticulitis 4 years ago, and the antiobiotics that I had to take more or less wiped out my microbiome. It took about a year to rebuild but lots of yogurt, kimchi, priobiotics, and other veggies helped.
Thank you, I am so relieved that this will eventually go away. The diet seems to really make a difference in lowering the pain. I am so sorry that you went through such a horrible disease! Food really can be medicine and it goes hand in hand with making us well in the end. The foods you mention are so good for the microbiome that they enhance immunity immensely. My husband and I have begun to stock kombucha regularly now (another probiotic food). Here’s to your radiant health!