healthy diet

Five signs of poor gut health – and how to start improving yours

Story by Lizzie Thomson @ MSN

Spring may be showing the first signs of springing, but the betting is that your gut is feeling far from its best – whether you realize it or not.

Stodgy winter food, a tendency towards carbs, lack of fresh fruit and a tendency to live less active lifestyles for what will have been months now could taking its toll.

But if you want to banish the winter blues, then prioritizing a healthy gut is a great place to start. ‘Most people forget that the gut does much more than simply digest your food. Gut health impacts your energy, skin and immune system, your ability to concentrate, sleep, and much more,’ says nutritionist Shona Wilkinson, from nutrition and supplement brand DR.VEGAN.

Is the Keto diet safe for Gout Sufferers?

Contrary to popular belief, the Keto diet is not protein focused. Rather, this diet focuses on a high fat and low carb diet to shock the body into ketosis. Ketosis is a metabolic process where the body is able to focus on burning fat with carbs mostly out of the picture. The body doesn’t have to work hard trying to burn the carbohydrates for energy, therefore, blood sugar is lowered and fat burning becomes the main focus.

Is this good for the Gout sufferer? Continue reading “Is the Keto diet safe for Gout Sufferers?”

Gout, Arthritis, Inflammation: The relation to the diet

This may be one of the most complex areas to understand, and we are gaining new knowledge all the time. For far too long we have remained focused on certain food triggers rather than the source and the reasoning behind our reaction. Food selection is very important. The larger, and often overlooked, picture would be the lack of pH balance to each meal, general unhealthy food choices for far too long, high-heat cooking methods, and an overabundance of processed and now genetically modified selections in the typical diet.

Questions to consider:

Is red meat the enemy OR is it the grain fed caged source vs. grass fed and free to roam source?
Is the inflammatory inducing acid of the protein the problem OR are we not providing enough alkaline food sources in the same meal to buffer the acids and still benefit from the good it has to offer?
What is the true source behind the body’s inflammatory reaction?

You will continue to find conflicting information on what is considered to be a ‘healthy diet,’ rendering you helpless in making concrete decisions on your approach for change.

Here is what we do know:

Arthritis and Gout are no longer considered “old man diseases”……..and they are dangerous!

These painful joint conditions were once considered the inevitable outcome of old aging joints. However, these painful conditions have more than doubled in the past 10-15 years, with a shocking amount of sufferers now found to be under the age of 40. Doctors have seen the sharpest rise in patients in their 20’s and 30’s, some 30% since 2012, suffering from a disease that was once thought to be limited to royalty. Not so coincidentally, the rise in obesity, Diabetes Type 2, and prescriptions such as low-dose aspirin and diuretics has occurred almost simultaneously.

Even still there is large percentage of the population that suffers silently having never been diagnosed, or sometimes misdiagnosed. Gout especially can be overlooked by medical professionals due to inaccurate blood measurements of Uric Acid. Unless the fluid is directly aspirated from the joint it can be difficult to identify. Many that are under an attack at the time they are seen by a physician will have low to normal blood serum Uric Acid levels. Why is this? Continue reading “Arthritis and Gout are no longer considered “old man diseases”……..and they are dangerous!”

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