How to Eat for Good Gut Health

< Full Episode

Transcript: How to Eat for Good Gut Health

Season 10, Episode 8  | March 25, 2025

[MUSIC]

Welcome to Life Time Talks. I’m Jamie Martin. And I’m David Freeman. And in this episode, we’re talking about eating for good gut health. As many people have probably heard, we have these little microorganisms living in our guts. And there are many, many of them, that have an influence on our health and wellness. So as this discovery has become more mainstream knowledge, many have been wondering what they can do to support their gut health.

And while there are a number of lifestyle factors that we can consider, many of them surround what we do nutritionally. So we’re going to be really focused on that food and nutrition side of it today. And do you want to introduce our guest?

Yeah. Yeah. Who’s going to be walking us through today is going to be Ms. Samantha McKinney, RD, CPT, and is the national program manager for nutrition, metabolism, and weight loss here at Life Time. She’s been with Life Time for over 13 years in multiple roles and currently on the team that leads nutrition programs and supplements for Life Time members, helping them optimize their metabolism and results from the inside out. It’s a great movie. It’s a great movie. All right. And speaking of the inside, we’re going to get right into it.

Well done, David. Yeah, inside out.

Alright. Sam, what is gut health? Let’s just start right there.
Such a big topic, and such an important one. I mean, it’s essentially the health and vitality of everything from your mouth, all the way through to the other end. That entire thing is your gut or your digestive tract. So it encompasses a lot of different steps, chronological order, some ancillary organs involved there, too. But good gut health is pivotal and kind of foundational to your overall metabolic health.

Absolutely.

Buzzwords, let’s talk about them. You got leaky gut, microbiome. Those two, let’s start there, microbiome and leaky gut. What is it? What does it mean?

So microbiome is the balance of good to bad bacteria, essentially. And you have a gut microbiome. You actually have an eye microbiome. You have a genital microbiome. Microbiome, like we have more bacterial DNA on us and in us than our own DNA. So it’s a huge important factor to our health. Now, obviously, for the purposes of this discussion, we’re talking about gut microbiome and the balance of good to bad bacteria and organisms as well. There are some parasites in yeasts and things like that, too.

But when people start talking about dysbiosis, for example, that is kind of a fancy medical term of saying bad balance of bacteria, as far as leaky gut. So leaky gut is specific to the small intestine in the medical literature, more medical terminology, leaky gut is referred to as intestinal permeability. Those are one and the same. So you can interchange those two.

And what that usually means is if you start to look at the small intestine, where the foods get broken down into their elemental pieces and their nutrients where they get absorbed, leaky gut or intestinal permeability is whenever you have things that are going through that intestinal lining that shouldn’t be. They might not be in their most elemental forms.

So it can go through that intestinal lining. That could be pathogens. That could be undigested food particles, not ones you could physically see, we hope. But bigger than what should be passing through. And that is a negative activation then of your immune system because your immune system is designed to defend you. And so when it sees something it shouldn’t, it starts to get activated. And that can all tie back to intestinal permeability or leaky gut.

So let’s talk a little bit about that intestinal wall because it’s pretty thin. And losing the integrity of that can happen for a variety of reasons. But, I mean, can you just explain how susceptible it is to potential damage?

Yeah, it can be, especially in our modern lifestyle. Our historical ancestral approaches, less so. It could still happen, of course. But in our modern lifestyle, we’re eating a lot of factory —made foods, foods that maybe are edible but not necessarily optimal for our health. We’re exposed to more environmental pollutants.

There are people that are anti, saying toxins because everything’s a chemical and everything’s a toxin, those makes the poison. But regardless, we’re exposed to accumulative amounts of foreign chemicals that our bodies would not have been exposed to, let’s say, 300 years ago.

We’re under an immense amount of stress, that can cause intestinal permeability. Most of us are on some sort of medication chronically. We’re probably taking antibiotics if we’re sick. So all this stuff really mounts in your body, and it causes a separation in the — they’re called tight junctions, as those cells are supposed to be really, really tight together. And as soon as they start to separate a little bit, things sneak through that really optimally. Nature doesn’t want sneaking through.

So then it gets into your bloodstream and all of that. Yep.

Let’s talk about how prevalent gut issues are. And in a lot of ways, most of the common signs someone might be having gut issues if you can break that down because some people might just think this is their norm. So you help break that down as far as what’s not necessarily normal in that space.

We’ve talked about that a lot in terms of, hey, just because something’s common doesn’t mean it’s normal, And I mean, just start to think about, how common it is for somebody to have heartburn? How common it is for somebody to have bloating? How common it is for somebody to have excess gas? How common it is for maybe somebody to have constipation or diarrhea? None of those things are normal. I mean, part of the human experience is you’ll never live a life that’s free of all of those. But you should not be regularly experiencing any of that.

So you should be able to eat food. You should be able to go into your system. You should feel OK, not be in pain, not be uncomfortable. You should be having one to three normal solid bowel movements every day. You should not be skipping days. They shouldn’t be watery. You shouldn’t be straining. We can’t talk about gut health without talking about bowel movements. I’m so sorry. But like —¬¬¬
It’s the reality.

— yes. But you need to be having good bowel movements every single day. And that’s what it should look like. So any deviation from that is usually a sign that your gut health is off. The other thing that I will say that most people don’t realize is that some of the most glaring symptoms of imbalanced gut don’t have anything to do directly with digestive symptoms.

So oftentimes, not every time, but oftentimes, if someone is really struggling with skin conditions, like skin issues, some holistic health providers will refer to your skin as your second gut. So if somebody has, let’s say, a ton of eczema, rosacea, psoriasis, et cetera, that can point to gut imbalances.

The other thing that can lead to gut imbalances is a lot of congestion, sort of phlegm production, getting sick really often. Most of your immune system, about 70% lies in the health of your gut. So people that maybe, they’re like, hey, I’m just going to be honest, they’re like, hey, I poop fine. I don’t get bloated. I’m like, but if you’re sick all the time, your gut is off. It is, like, we have to — yes, we have to fortify your gut.
Autoimmune conditions are on the rise right now. So many people are struggling with autoimmunity. And that is not just gut health, but there’s almost always a gut health component to letting that trigger and start. So the most common things that I’ve seen are, like I said, the skin issues, autoimmunity, getting sick all the time, just congestion. Even think overactive immune system. So if someone has a ton of allergies, like there’s seasonal allergies are just awful.

I can think of off the top of my head, at least five clients that I’ve had, that they’ve had horrible, horrible seasonal allergies, and they saw me for other things. But through the interventions that they did, their gut health improved, and they’re like, oh, my gosh, this is the first year in 20 years, I haven’t had bad seasonal allergies in the spring. So again, it’s all tied together. But outside of overt gut issues, those red flags are congestion, skin issues, autoimmune.

The other thing that can affect our gut health, too, I want to make sure we bring up, is the use of antibiotics. And that can have an effect on the microorganisms in there.

Yep. Yeah. Absolutely so. It’s more antibiotic overuse. If you catch a bacterial infection, that’s not usually something that your body is just going to fight off.

You need support.

Yes. But the problem is, if people, if that’s their first line of defense, as soon as they get a sniffle and they’re maybe overusing it — granted, there are times that you need to be taking it, but if you are abusing how often you’re using antibiotics, then it’s going to destroy your gut microbiome. And sure, you might kill off that pathogen. But what are you doing is in the long run, you might be weakening your overall immune health by impacting your gut negatively.

Other things that can really impact it is sometimes not having enough food variety can impact your gut health. Eating the same exact thing every day, or even just the food choices that you’re making might be really causing some trouble, too.

I mean, you said, like, obviously we could think of amoxicillin and other things that you were just speaking to. Is there any adverse things that can happen to the gut when you’re taking like ibuprofen or Advil as well?

Yeah. So any over-the-counter medication or prescription medication, there’s always a risk —benefit ratio of taking those. You have to figure out why you’re taking those and what the risks are. But some of those are — a lot of over-the-counter medications can be liver irritants or gut irritants. For sure, those can be a little bit of a struggle. I mean, obviously, your liver is really connected to your digestive system and how well you’re digesting things.

I would also say, if people are on, let’s say, proton pump inhibitors for heartburn or heartburn medications — actually, let me touch on heartburn for a second because that is like — that’s pretty important. So when people have heartburn, they immediately think, oh, I have too much stomach acid, And some people do. Some people actually have too little.

So the acid in your stomach that helps you digest food, it is extremely powerful. If you were to put a drop on a carpet, it would burn a hole through it. It’s hydrochloric acid. So if somebody has too much stomach acid, and it’s kind of refluxing back up, yes, that’s a problem. And going on an acid —lowering medication is obviously important.

But there’s a large proportion of people that are not having enough stomach acid, that can be tied to thyroid conditions, or different things can impact how much stomach acid you produce. Well, that really strong acid that you have in your stomach, it mixes with your food when you eat. You don’t have enough of it to have an appropriate rate of digestion. So now you have this strong acid, but not enough to do the full breakdown to the level that it should be. Mixed with that food, and it’s just sitting there, so you’re more likely to reflux it back up.

So people will go on acid suppressive medications, and they do feel better because now they quenched it entirely. What they don’t realize is that acid is incredibly important for things like cleaving open B12, cleaving open zinc. Certain nutrients need that to get broken down enough. So by the time they’re in your small intestine, you actually absorb them. You can actually use them. So you can develop some pretty massive nutrient deficiencies if you’re on those long-term.

Wow.

Interesting. So let’s just — I want to keep going on that for a second. But you can support that. You often hear about things like digestive enzymes. And we’re going to get in, and maybe we should — that should be part of this conversation we’re going into. So what we can do to support our gut health? What are some of the nutrition strategies that we can implement that could be helpful for us?

Where do I start?

I know there’s so many. I know.

So I would say, first and foremost, I would take a good long, hard look at what you’re eating on a day to day basis. So you want to be obviously eating whole, nutrient-dense foods. Right now, the complex gut health cases that I’ve dealt with as a practitioner at times, I would say there are people that because they have gut disturbances, their whole food, air quote, “healthy choices” that are whole food-based caused them problems.

They’re like, I actually feel better off a frozen pizza and refined foods and crackers than I do eating whole real foods, And that’s usually, you’re pretty far down the line with gut disturbances at that point because you have so much dysbiosis. It’s hard for you to really break down the fibers. And that’s why they cause some of those issues.

But generally speaking, I would say, are you eating foods that are dubbed as more inflammatory type foods? Are you eating a lot of fast foods? Are you eating a lot of high sugar? Are you drinking, for example, soda pop on a regular basis, or are you drinking a ton of really high fructose juices, things like that, that can really be detrimental as well? Are you eating foods that maybe you’re sensitive to, and you don’t realize? Doing an elimination diet can be super helpful.

Other things is even the speed of eating. People don’t realize there’s two arms to your immune system. There’s the sympathetic immune system and the parasympathetic immune system. The sympathetic part of your immune system that’s called the fight or flight side of things. You need that for survival. And then the parasympathetic is rest and digest.

And if you are constantly in that sympathetic overdrive, constantly in fight or flight, constantly running around, constantly eating on the run, just kind of stress bucket, you will not be able to digest your food. There’s nothing you can supplement or eat outside of that. You just have to control that.

Other things, people don’t realize that sometimes — I alluded to this earlier — but your nutrient deficiencies can be tied to your gut health, and then your gut health can cause more nutrient deficiencies. So that can be cyclical, too. Thyroid issues are a big one. So looking at data mining historically within Lifetime members, that have historically done some of the lab tests that we’ve offered, we remember looking through some of that data.

And it was 53% of the people doing those tests had suboptimal levels of their most active thyroid hormone. And the reason that that’s important is your thyroid hormone tells every cell in your body to do what it’s supposed to do. One of those things is production of digestive enzymes and stomach acids. So if that’s slow, your digestion is kind of going to suffer, too.

A lot of people — and I’m looking at you, David, alpha over here — high-intensity exercise over time can also negatively impact your digestive enzymes, too. So you can’t really digest food as well. And this is why, and think in your lives, people you know that are really high-intensity, high-level athletes that maybe don’t pay as much attention to their nutrition, they almost always reliably have gut issues.
And part of the reason for that is there’s a category of digestive enzymes called proteases that helps you break down protein. When you are in are constantly in, I would say, in a state of repair from high-intensity exercise, those proteases get diverted to sites of injury or repair or recovery. So then your gut health suffers.

So then you’re not getting to your gut where they’re needed, actually. Well, they’re needed in both places. But you don’t have enough of them to do both.

So I feel like I’m kind of going around to a lot of different topics right now, but am I answering —

Yes.

— to your question?

So that was really hit on. Here’s the things that might be problematic. So now from a food side, what are the things that are important to include to make sure we’re taking care of the gut health?

Yeah. Well, almost kind of back to, I would say, some of the fiber things that I’m talking about. There is a category of carbohydrates that for sure are FODMAPs. And so I want to talk about FODMAPs because they’re found in generically labeled healthy food. So they’re found in things like broccoli and apples and garlic and onions. Those FODMAPs, when somebody ignores their signs of negative gut health and lets it go too far, you can start to get to a state where you actually can’t break down FODMAPs.

So this is why how I mentioned those people that are eating, healthy, air quote, healthy, they’re like, I feel terrible, I feel bloated. I have bath emergency. Sometimes that’s tied to, hey, you’re now in a state where you don’t actually tolerate and break down FODMAPs, and it causes you a lot of uncomfortable gas and bloating. So we actually have to get you to the point not where you’re avoiding these healthy foods forever, but get you to a point where you’re still healthy and resilient that you have as inclusive of a diet as possible. We have to figure out why you’re not tolerating those FODMAPs, too.

And those are whole foods in often cases —

Yes.

— and the things that people are thinking are the right thing.
—
Yes, exactly. And so I would say with that one, if somebody is having trouble with FODMAPs, that you kind of need a more, I’d say, comprehensive gut approach. And those are usually like FODMAP issues are typically tied to people that are having those more obvious gut symptoms. Does that make sense?
Yep. Well, it does, but what would you say are the more obvious gut symptoms, just to make sure we’re clear?

Bloating, gas, diarrhea, constipation, like things just aren’t going well. Like, my digestion is off, anybody that would say that. And there’s a whole case with gluten as well, too. There’s so many questions swirling around gluten. Obviously, there’s celiac disease, which is an autoimmune disorder, tied to gluten consumption. But I would say people can have non-celiac gluten sensitivity.

Now, sometimes people feel better when they pull out gluten because gluten, most gluten containing foods are actually a source of FODMAPs, too. So if they’re getting that gas bloating, so getting rid of that. But the other thing about gluten is that sometimes it can upregulate your production of something in your gut called zonulin, which is a protein that can loosen those tight junctions and contribute to more of that intestinal permeability.

So even if you don’t feel necessarily different on or off gluten, when I have a client that is having gut issues, usually there’s exceptions to every rule, but usually, will be avoiding gluten during that time period, to give their body a little bit more of a rest and help support them through that, too.

Well, yeah, I mean, that’s why we’re unpacking this conversation right here with understanding, that was more food side of it. So now, let’s say that we’re starting to tackle food things on point. Then we come into the lane of supplementation that can help as well. So what kind of supplementation? I know I shared it with you as far as how I just went through the detox. It was a great reset in a lot of ways. And one of the supplements that were in there, fiber. And I had fiber each and every day. So can you walk us through some of the benefits of the supplements that can help support resetting the gut?

Yeah. Well, I would say sometimes people will ask, and I love that you asked this because people think gut health supplements as a category, and like, oh, do I need enzymes if I’m taking probiotics? I’m like, oh, those are functioning completely different. It’s not an either/or for those. So let me walk through the main ones that I usually see.

So number one is digestive enzymes. Your body should be producing digestive enzymes when you eat, that helps your foods break down so that those nutrients have a better shot of being absorbed. And that the nutrients get absorbed and hopefully the things that shouldn’t go through stay in.

So you can take digestive enzymes just when you eat, in particular, high protein foods. So like the LTH Digestive Enzymes. What I love about that one is that it’s formulated to still be compliant with those that are maybe on an acid suppressing medication. So usually, of course, check with your doctor to be sure. But usually even if someone’s on a heartburn medication, et cetera, they can take that. And I’ve had clients report like that was it. That was a game changer for me. I put those in, and I’m not bloated anymore.

Interesting.

And that’s great. Another one is L-glutamine, so L-glutamine. The LTH option is called Repair. It’s a single-ingredient supplement. L-glutamine is an amino acid, and some people will take it to help kick start recovery from exercise. But one thing that’s really good is that usually about 5 grams or so. A lot of times people will start to notice like, hey, I feel like my digestion is starting to make a turn here. And it’s suggested that the enterocytes are cells lining your intestinal lining. They can benefit from L-glutamine. So some of that leaky gut, intestinal permeability, that could be a tool in the toolbox there.

Next category is probiotics. And this one could be a whole series of podcasts. But essentially, probiotics are made to try to help restore and support your body’s good gut bacteria. So the LTH option is calledBbalance. And it’s a good general probiotic blend. Usually probiotics are measured in a unit of measurement called CFUs. So ours is a 30 billion CFUs, are usually in the billions.

And probiotics, there’s so much research being done in this, and I think we’ll know dramatically more in 5 or 10 years than we know right now. But there is a ton of research and scientific literature investigating the impacts of certain strains of probiotics for certain issues. The LTH version is made to be a general purpose one. It has six different strains in there that are well researched for overall general health. So cycling that in or at least doing it around times that you have to maybe be on antibiotics, et cetera, can be super helpful.

Now, two other categories that I want to mention is number one fiber, like you talked about, David. So the analogy that I always use when it comes to probiotics, and I would say dysbiosis and this whole good to gut bacteria thing. And I feel like I might have used this on a previous podcast, if you remember that. I’m sorry. But I always refer to it as like a garden. So think of the probiotics, the good gut bacteria as the flowers and the not so good bacteria as the weeds.

You’re always going to have some weeds. That’s OK. You don’t want the weeds over growing. You want the flowers over growing. So probiotics, the analogy is like you’re dropping flower seeds. Well, you need fertilizer. And that’s where prebiotics come in. So prebiotics help your body’s natural good gut bacteria flourish. And so what is used in our D.TOX kit, like what you just completed, David, It’s a prebiotic fiber, right?

Yep.

Now, the challenge with that is sometimes if people have maybe guts that need a little bit of support, if they throw in prebiotics at too high of a dose and they don’t work their way up, you’re feeding all that good gut bacteria. These are real living organisms. They produce gas, so you might get some gas and bloating if you ramp your fiber and your prebiotics too quickly. So sometimes if people start doing detox, usually people are OK. But if somebody’s not. We’re like, hey, just work your way up to the full scoop of fiber instead of just going from zero to a full scoop on day one.

That makes sense.

And then the last category I would say category/approach that’s really important for digestive health is making sure that you have a wide variety of foods in your diet. If you’re eating the same 10 foods day in and day out, you will develop dysbiosis. That’s not a good, healthy, nourishing approach to nutrition. It’s part of the reason why green supplementation for some people, they’ll report out this was a game changer for my digestive tract because I went from 0 to 40 or 50 or 60 different plant nutrients by just implementing this one thing.

And just to add to that, like lifetime has a green supplement that people are using. What’s that one called?
We’ve got LTH Life Greens, which is basically think of that as this is the best way to increase the diversity of plant nutrition in your approach. And then we have LTH Nourish, which is a daily drinkable multivitamin, plus greens plus adaptogens, which is meant to be a multivitamin greens stress adaptation all in one.
Awesome. OK, excited about that.

Yes.

Those are on the forefront here.

Yeah.

It’ll be here soon.

And the Life Greens themselves are live.

Yes. And I use those. I throw those in my smoothies all the time.

Yeah.

So that’s one additional thing to make sure I’m getting enough.

And there’s some digestive enzymes and probiotics in both of those options too. So you’re getting a little bit of a dose of those as well.

Getting that too. OK, so let’s walk through a couple of scenarios.

Yeah.

There’s the first one I’m thinking if someone has an active gut health issue that they need to repair. And then the second one would be if someone doesn’t have an active gut issue, but they just want to maintain or support their gut health. For each of those scenarios, where would you suggest that someone start? So let’s start on the repair side. Where does somebody start?

Yes, so I would say it depends. I laugh because I say that so often. But I’ll give context.

Yeah.

So if somebody has an active gut issue and we’re talking like, hey, you’ve got digestive stuff, let’s say you’ve run into a dead end with, let’s say you’re medically fine, you’ve seen your doctor and your doctor’s like, hey, medically you’re OK. You’ve just got some symptoms and you’re just trying to address it on your own or try to figure it out from there.

Yeah.

The very first thing I would do is eliminate the most commonly troublesome foods. So usually gluten and dairy are table stakes. And I don’t mean forever. This doesn’t mean, hey, you’re never eating gluten or dairy again, but we’re actively trying to figure out an issue. And what most people don’t realize is that the more severe or disruptive the issue that you’re dealing with, the tighter you need to get with your plan.
Because and again, and I almost want to give this context from a mindset standpoint, is I’ve sometimes worked with people and it takes some mental coaching where if we’re actively working through something, I have to coach people out of this, like catastrophic thinking like, oh, I’m never going to have birthday cake again. I’m like, who ever said that to you? I was like —

No one.

— you are having diarrhea every day. You’re bloated. Sometimes we need to tighten the reins. And the whole goal of us doing this short-term is to get you to a point where you’re more resilient and you can have more variety. So the rougher the issue, the tighter the plan needs to be. And that’s usually temporary. That’s the goal is that it’s temporary.

Because the goal is we want people to heal their gut so they can enjoy a variety of foods.
For yes, always. The goal is never a long-term restrictive plan. Never. And if you’re working with a practitioner where they seem fine with that run, run, run, run, run, run. So I would say gluten and dairy are probably the most common culprits. Other ones that are really common, surprisingly, can be eggs, even though they’re super nutrient dense and healthy, really common food sensitivity, corn, soy, and peanuts is another one.

And then when we start to get into autoimmune type issues. And, again, I wouldn’t jump right to this if you’re listening and you just have some minor issues, don’t think you have to eliminate all of this right now. But if somebody is starting to have they’re a little bit more complex. They have joint pain, autoimmunity. Then we start to need to look usually at nuts and seeds, nightshades as a whole category too. And again, for temporarily while we figure out what’s going on.

But the very first thing that I usually have people experiment with, if they’re not miserable and they’re fine doing some trial and error, I’m like, hey, go gluten and dairy free for 10 to 14 days and see how you feel. OK, that doesn’t work. Why don’t you do the detox eating approach for 10 to 14 days, see how you feel. And usually what happens from an elimination diet standpoint, the goal is when you’re done with a period of reset, let’s say 14 days, 30 days, whatever it should be relatively short-term.

The goal is to reintroduce foods one at a time so that you can pinpoint whatever the issue might be for you. So that’s where you start with active gut issues that are overt digestive symptoms. You usually start with an elimination. And during that elimination, and this is what’s key. During that elimination you are taking digestive enzymes when you eat. You are supporting your body with probiotics. You are in rest and digest mode when you eat. You’re actually sitting down at a table eating, not multitasking with 80 things and fully chewing your food.

Yeah.

Don’t be drinking 16 ounces of water with your meals because then you will be diluting the natural digestive enzymes that you are producing, making it harder to break down foods. But I would say that stress piece is super huge. Make sure that you’re actually calming down, and that you’re doing things to restore your gut during the elimination because the goal is when you’re reintroducing to set yourself up for success.

Let’s talk about that reintroduction because I know often when it comes to food sensitivities versus allergies, the symptoms may not show up right away. So how much time if I’m reintroducing, let’s say dairy, I should give myself a day to three days so to see if there’s any signs that start to happen?

Generally speaking, three days is a good benchmark. So there’s different categories of food reactions. And the ones that are not medical emergency, not histamine responding, not IgE, that’s like an emergency type of immune system response. That can happen, yeah, the next day or two days later or three days later. So keeping a food log can be super helpful during that time.

That’s what I would say because I feel like that’s always a thing where it’s like, oh, that could have been something you ate three days ago, but if I’m not paying attention to it, or if I’ve introduced gluten, dairy, and eggs back in the same day, which one is it?

And then you might actually need to, depending on how sensitive your system is, separate out certain categories of foods. So dairy might not equal dairy might not equal dairy. What I mean by that, for example, one really generally supportive gut health supplement would be colostrum. Like a powder colostrum for example. So like a LTH. Ours is called Revive. It’s a grass-fed colostrum. That comes from milk. Comes from the first milk of mammals right after they’re born.

Ours is super gently collected. Calf welfare comes first. We’re very mindful of protecting animals and sustainability. But colostrum in that powder contains 400 different bioactive compounds that can support your digestive lining. So there are people that, hey, maybe they do this elimination because they feel like their gut is a mess. Sometimes I’m like, hey, try introducing colostrum first and see how you do because you might tolerate colostrum but not tolerate yogurt. They’re very different.

So try colostrum first. Then the next thing might be a fermented food like a yogurt. Then maybe try a hard cheese like a Parmesan cheese, and then try milk in traditional dairy. And you might find variations within that.

Yeah.

So that reintroduction piece, yes, you want to do every food reintroduction within reason about three days apart. And that’s just your experiment to see how you feel, right?

Yeah, and we got other helpful resources and tools and programs that can probably help support and impact for our listeners. So we got some lab tests. And knowing that where these people that are listening can access this. But more importantly, I think a lot of times they go get the test, they get the results, and how it could be different within the way we do things here at Life Time. If you can help break that down.
Yes, nothing drives me batty than people getting their food sensitivities tested and walking away from a test thinking, well, here’s my list of no foods and that’s it. That’s such a counter. That is not our approach at all. So whenever it comes to food sensitivity testing, we do offer a really convenient at home food sensitivity test that tests 108 different foods. Again, this is not medical grade allergy. This is looking at, hey, what is your global reaction looking like. Are there any outliers, etc.?

Here’s the beauty of what our approach is. You take that test, and you get the results back. Then you fill out a form about yourself. Like, what are my goals? What am I struggling with? What are my symptoms? What are my supplements? What’s my exercise? And then a dietician will actually look at both of those. And then connect with you as a whole human to figure out, OK, what could be a good nutrition approach for you moving forward to try to boost your resilience a bit more from where you’re currently at to come up with a food —based game plan to figure out how to really address that.

And so when people get those lists of food, OK, I want you to think back to this intestinal permeability thing we talked about, leaky gut. Let’s say somebody has that and a lot of people do. And they go and they do one of these tests where — who knows where? And they get — I don’t know. They react to everything except 10 foods. OK, and then they’re like, all right. My solution is, let me get rid of everything. I’m just going to eat these 10 foods. Over the course of the next month or two, what do you think is going to happen if all they eat is those 10 foods?

Build a sensitivity.

They’re going to build a sensitivity to them.

You’re going to get worse. You’re literally going, yes, you’re literally going to get worse. And so you really do need a more comprehensive approach to this. There’s not one game —changing supplement for everybody. There’s not one game —changing approach. But this is why we’re so passionate about doing a food sensitivity test, trying detox where you’re resetting all of the habits, not just food, detox is a food reset, but it’s also a habit reset, where you’re getting enough protein. You’re getting enough fiber. You’re focusing on cooking. You’re focusing on preparing your own meals.

It’s a habit reset to align you with better overall health. That’s why we’re passionate about that. That’s why we’re passionate about the food sensitivity test. And even for somebody that let’s say, and we didn’t even get to the other example of what if somebody doesn’t have gut issues? But I’ll touch on that in a minute. Just implementing, let’s say, periods of doing extra digestive support for most people. They’ll do pretty well with that.

Yeah.

Like, hey, if I’m training for an event, for example, maybe I should throw in around of digestive enzymes while I’m ramping up my training. Hey, maybe I’m traveling a lot, and I’m eating foods that maybe are treated with antibiotics. Or maybe I had to go on antibiotics. Add in a probiotic and some fermented foods. There are different things that you can do to just support your resilience.

OK, do we want to bounce back to that other example real quick? So for someone who’s just I want to support my gut health, I’m not having any major issues that are really distracting me from day —to —day activities, whatever.

Yes, so first and foremost, have a wide variety of foods in your diet, namely real foods. I’m not talking about red candy and blue candy and yellow candy. I’m talking about —

Just the rainbow.

Yeah, exactly. I am talking about have challenge yourself at the grocery store once a week. This used to be super fun to do with clients. Once a week, I want you to pick up a piece of produce that scares you. You don’t know what to do with it. And let’s figure out what to do with it. Sometimes those like CSA shares where you get stuff shipped to you. Super fun. But it’s actually a really great way to support your gut health because you’re introducing more diversity right into your digestive tract. So wide variety of foods, wide variety of produce in your diet.

The other thing is be mindful of how you eat. So what I alluded to earlier, are you sitting down? Are you chewing? Are you in rest and digest phase? And if not, focus on that because you might develop a gut issue if you continue ignoring it. The next thing I would say is just make sure that you’re chewing very well. That ties into your food environment, but don’t eat super fast. You should be chewing like 30 times per bite, which next time you eat a meal, try that. You’ll be like, wow, most of us are eating. Yes, most of us are eating way too fast.

Yeah.

I would also say, and this can vary person to person, but I usually like the approach of giving your digestive tract at least 12 hours of rest a day, meaning overnight maybe don’t eat from 7:00 PM to 7:00 AM. Have dinner done by then, and just give your gut a little bit of a reset every day. Part of the reason some people do really well with intermittent fasting, it’s not the only reason is because their gut is getting a break. So that could be really beneficial.

And again, I know throwing a lot, but none of these are inherently that hard. It’s just different things to remember. I alluded to this earlier, but don’t chug a ton of liquids at mealtime. And then throwing in things like, I mentioned, colostrum, for example. You could easily throw that into a smoothie. Personally, I dry scoop it. You just take it, throw it in your mouth and then chase it with water.

Yeah.

There are approaches that look at that as potentially even more beneficial than just doing it in a smoothie. Not by a long shot. But that way it just there’s more contact with the mucosa and the lining of your digestive tract if you do it that way all the way.

All the way down

Yes. But even just throwing that into a smoothie or any cool foods, you don’t want to throw that in hot foods. The LTH Revive can be super beneficial to just throw in. And most people, for example, things that benefit your gut can benefit other things as well. Colostrum is really well-known to help with recovery from high intensity exercise. It’s really well-known to help support skin health and hair health and all this type of stuff. So you could be killing multiple birds with a couple stones doing some of this stuff.

That’s awesome. Well, I think the overall benefit is, and you hear this often when people do the D.TOX or things, when you do an elimination diet or do a digestive reset, it’s not just your digestion that feels better. You often feel more energetic. Your skin may clear up. There’s all these other factors that may be affected by it, which you may not initially relate to it, but it’s often what you hear. I know I’ve heard thousands of clients have done the detox over the years and the gut health program as well.

Yeah, we’ve had over a million participants in the last decade, which is really crazy to think about. One other thing I’ll say is your mindset is huge. So I understand if you’re really struggling with gut issues, that can be tough. That’s when you want to go shoulder to shoulder with a practitioner that can guide you through. But let’s say you’re, like I mentioned, you’re functional. You just feel like your gut could be better, or your immune system. You’re tired of catching every single bug that you’re exposed to. You’re just trying to do something to fortify.

I encourage everybody to go at whatever they’re doing with a spirit of curiosity, truly. So, for example, and I think I’ve mentioned this before, but with detox, if you’re going into it and you’re like, I’m really interested to see how I feel 14 days from now, and then I want to reintroduce and monitor what’s going on. You’ll have dramatically different results than if you enter into detox and you’re like, oh, I can’t eat this, and I can’t eat that, and I’m going to miss my coffee and I’m going to miss my booze.

And if you’re negative, kind of a Debbie Downer, it’s not going to have as great of an impact on you because you’re stressing yourself out. Maybe right now, I don’t know, buck up and deal with the suffering that you’re experiencing because the detox, you’re not mentally ready for it. So you have to be really honest with yourself. If you can do that mindset shift, then it can be completely transformational.
And the beauty of it is, if you go into an elimination diet and you’re taking care of your gut and you’re chewing really well, and you’re managing your stress and you’re taking some of these gut supportive supplements, what I have found is, let’s say someone pinpoints eggs as their issue. They do this elimination diet. They reintroduce eggs. What happens to them? I’m going to make this up case study. Diarrhea and joint pain just back that they haven’t experienced in the 14 days that they eliminated.
You know what? That’s actually they’re genuinely intrinsically more motivated to — they don’t miss the eggs as much because they’ve experienced that, hey, these aren’t working for me right now. And so versus, oh God, I’m so bummed out. You know what I mean? They have less of that and more of like, hey, that just doesn’t work for me right now. It’s not even worth it. And they’re fine. And we have a lot of people that go through detox, for example, and they finish and they’re like, hey, can I keep eating this way? And at the beginning, they would have never thought that they would do that, but it’s because they feel so good at the end.

And probably lastly, again, in addition to working with a practitioner that knows what they’re doing, know that your gut health is never static. That’s the thing. So people can have iron guts and be great. And if let’s say, ignore your stress or you do a ton of high intensity exercise, you might develop gut issues and then it works the opposite way too. If you are in the trenches right now and you’re trying to figure yourself out, there’s a way out.

And there’s a way to get better. And there’s a way to rebalance your whole system and find a homeostasis that you feel really good about. But your metabolism and including your gut health, it can change from month to month, year to year, decade to decade. And that’s part of this really awesome journey of health that we’re all on, is we’re constantly learning and we’re never really there.
And so that constant curiosity too, about my circumstances this month are different than last. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

How does that affect what’s happening in my body right now?

And if something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. Don’t suppress it. And like, listen. Our bodies talk to us every single day with our symptoms and red flags. So you just got to listen, and implement some of those foundational things to really make yourself more fortified and resilient.

Yeah, I mean, just to take that all in, you just you got so many other variables at the same time knowing that the body’s forever evolving. The one constant is that mindset and knowing how to navigate with that mindset when you have these different things that come at you. So that was powerful piece that you just ended with on that. With that, I want to make sure that we cover everything before we get into this mic drop moment, Sam, because it’s almost game time for that.

I know. I think we covered everything that could be covered in a single episode of a podcast. I think that there’s a lot more to cover. But I don’t think we’re going to be able to cram everything in all at one time. But hopefully this gives some people parameters and structures or somewhere to really to chew on. How do you like that one? Something to chew on to get started with optimizing their gut. Oh gosh, I’m so proud of myself for managing your pun ability right there.

Just a little rub off. A little rub off.

You got it.

Mic drop moment.

Yes, Let’s do it.

OK, so, Sam, we talked — I had a hyper focus around gut. When you say the whole thing of trust your gut. OK, what I want to go at with this is going into something new. I want you to champion message for people around gut when we say trust your gut as it relates to having a healthy gut.

I’m not sure I understand this assignment.

So there you go.

Let’s rephrase that, please.

I got you.

So trust your gut.

Trust your gut.

Actually, can I interrupt you for a minute?

Yeah.

You’re like, look at me. You’re like, I don’t know.

Yeah.

OK, trusting your gut, actually, that there is that neurology to stress tied with that — your emotions and your gut health are actually physically linked. So whenever you get butterflies in your gut, if you’re nervous about something or if you just have that gut instinct like something’s not right, it probably isn’t. That’s actually a real physiological connection between your brain and your digestive tract. So I felt like I needed to squeeze in one more science thing. Or did I just answer your question?

One thing I think that —

Did I just answer your question?

I feel like that’s answering it. Well, I was just saying, when it comes to taking a step towards their gut health.

Yes.

And I’m saying trust your gut. You’re saying it correlates to whatever you might be thinking and what actions you need to be taking in that space. So I guess —

Did you want another slogan?

No, I mean, ultimately the people who just heard that.

Yeah.

How would you just frame that up to make sure that they understand it?

Oh, I mean, trust your gut feels so complete. The way that you originally said it, but I, oh, I would frame it up and just say, trust your gut. And then I might have an and. Is that OK? Or is that approved with the mic drop?

Keep going with it. Yeah.

So I would say trust your gut and reject any symptom that doesn’t feel right. Because just because it’s common or just because it’s dismissed doesn’t mean it’s normal and doesn’t mean it’s optimal. So start with the baby steps. Try chewing your food a little bit better. Try having more variety in your diet. Eliminate the most problematic foods and trust your gut and see what gets better. And if you somebody presents an intervention that maybe it just doesn’t feel right with your system. You’re like, I just I’m not ready for that, be honest and just say, hey, right now’s not the time for that. I’m going to trust my gut.
I love it.

All right. Well, Sam, you have been on the podcast many times — not on this episode many times, the podcast many times. So we were going to link to a bunch of those. You also have your articles at experiencelife.lifetime.life, and you’re on Instagram @coachsam.rd, anything else, anywhere else we want to point people. I think that covers it. Right?

I think that covers it. A lot of Experience Life content, and I just appreciate being on here, so thanks for having me.

Alright. And also, I do want to add that a lot of the supplements that we talked about today, they’re available on shop.lifetime.life as well as lth.shop — is another alternative way to get there. So people can find a lot of those supplements there. They’re all really good for supporting digestive health.
Yes.

Thanks again Sam.

Appreciate you as always.

Thank you.

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