up your overall health. But what’s happening when you’re bothered by GI
issues? We’re talking about a wide variety of complaints from going to the
bathroom too much or not enough, bloating, certain foods disagreeing with you,
or just overall stormy feelings brewing in your centre.
Good bacteria turn cabbage into sauerkraut. Not a fan? Try miso, soy sauce,
kefir, yoghurt, kimchi, or fermented pickles.
I remember one woman from an early episode of my show. Her bothersome
symptom: She would poop only once a week. Once a week? Heck, I knew
people who seemed to go once when the sun rose, once when the sun set, and
twice in between. But I had never known anyone who flushed her digestive
system only one time every 168 hours. She felt frustrated and uncomfortable, as
if her belly were loaded with bricks. Even worse, she was sure there was nothing
she could do about the problem.
I gave her a simple fix: more fibre in her diet. Since the average person only
gets about 16 grams of it a day and she was well below that, we gradually
increased her to 25 grams a day, using more fruits and vegetables and fibre
heroes like beans. (We did it slowly because if you increase fibre all at once, it
comes with a side order of a lot of extra gas.) Her story had a happy ending: She
quickly got “regular” and relieved the symptoms she had been experiencing.
For people dealing with a tumultuous gut, I recommend using food to help
calm the turmoil. And you can tweak the prescription depending on your