If you want to heal your life, have good energy levels, feel strong mentally and physically, and achieve optimum mind-body balance, then start by healing your gut.
Over the last few weeks, I've been sharing about my new Mindfulness and Neuroscience Protocols and how they have helped myself, my husband and hundreds of my clients renew their minds and improve their health.
Terminate The Mindfulness Blockers
It's hard to unpack your emotions and embrace mindfulness if your body is craving, fatigued or in pain, your brain is foggy, and you're feeling overwhelmed.
We always start with our 7 Pillars of Wellness to support optimum fuel and functional support. This restores the foundations of your health, allowing you to enter a more vital place both mentally and physically so you have the capacity to look deeper into mindfulness and implement neuroscience techniques (as outlined in my blog last week).
How To Enhance Energy Levels
Healing your gut is a great place to begin. Improved gut health will improve your energy levels, immune system, vitality, mood, and mental health.
Sometimes, when you start eating more fibre, you can get bloated due to the old faecal toxic matter clogged in your colon and because your digestive system is a little weak and needs healing. This is normal, so don't pull back, but let us help you navigate this journey to get a good result and not be too uncomfortable.
Fibre Transit Time Symptoms
The trick is to ensure that you still have good transit time with the added fibre to avoid IBS symptoms. This is a healing mechanism, and if you do get bloated eating more salads and vegetables, you most certainly need to sort out your gut health.
The uncomfortable symptoms you experience are caused by your body simply communicating that it needs help. This doesn't mean you go totally carnivore and ignore these messages and remove a food group, such as simple carbs in the form of fruits and vegetables. You don't even have teeth like a lion or the same type of digestive system, so just eating meat is NOT the answer.
Healing your gut in the answer!
The Secrets of Your Gut To Hack Your Health
We all need to take a step back and stop the crazy. Fad diets never have and never will work.
The latest Netflix Documentary, Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut, perfectly demonstrates this. We all need a healthy, biodiverse gut to thrive.
To help heal your gut and boost your biodiversity from colourful veggies, I suggest slicing all ingredients in our rainbow salad fine or grating to support your gut microbiome and avoid bloating. By having salads finely chopped (or starting with warm steamed veggies or soups), you take the pressure off your digestive system because the food is much easier to digest.
Gut-Healing Foods
If you have IBS symptoms, see this blog for my top ten gut-healing foods. You will need supplements in the short term to heal your gut. Then, you can return to living a balanced life and eating all the foods you love in moderation.
I'm not vegan but feel better on lighter protein like wild fish. Other clients, like my husband, can eat all organic grass-fed proteins and feel great. So, you need to work out what is right for you or reach out to us so we can help you determine your wellness blueprint.
Decode Your Urine
You can also complete one of our home Naturopathic Urine Tests, which reveal exactly what you need to implement to heal your gut and improve your overall health.
If you have low energy levels, IBS, mood disorders, brain fog, lowered immune system, hormone imbalances, skin issues, or find it hard to lose weight, then you need to heal your gut.
If you want to get started, we also have a Gut Healing Pack, which includes a full wellness and nutritional plan that hundreds of our clients have used with excellent results.
Rainbow Salad Health Benefits
So, how can eating a rainbow salad help improve your gut and overall health?
- Diverse Fibre Sources: A rainbow salad contains a wide range of colourful vegetables, each with its unique types of dietary fibre. Dietary fibre is essential for gut health as it serves as food for beneficial gut bacteria (probiotics). When these bacteria break down fibre, they produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which nourish the gut lining and help reduce inflammation.
- Prebiotic Rich: Many vegetables in a rainbow salad, such as onions, garlic and asparagus, are high in prebiotics. Prebiotics are non-digestible fibres that promote the growth and activity of beneficial gut bacteria. They serve as fuel for these microbes, helping to maintain a healthy gut microbiome.
- Antioxidant Variety: The vibrant colours of a rainbow salad indicate the presence of various antioxidants, such as vitamins A, C, and E, as well as phytonutrients like flavonoids and carotenoids—also recently shown to be powerful in supporting longevity based on the Blue Zones findings. These antioxidants help reduce oxidative stress in the gut, which can otherwise lead to inflammation and damage to gut cells.
- Reduced Inflammation: A rainbow salad's combination of antioxidants, fibre, and anti-inflammatory compounds can help reduce inflammation in the gut. Chronic inflammation in the stomach can lead to conditions like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
- Improved Digestion: The fibre in the salad helps promote regular bowel movements and prevent constipation. It also aids in the digestion process by adding bulk to stool and assisting in the movement of food through the digestive tract.
- Balanced Microbiome: Consuming various vegetables in a rainbow salad can help maintain a balanced gut microbiome. A diverse microbiome is associated with better overall health, including improved digestion and immune function.
- Hydration: Many vegetables in a rainbow salad have a high water content, which can help keep the digestive tract hydrated. Proper hydration is essential for maintaining healthy bowel movements and preventing constipation.
- This salad also has 5 of the top-rated clean 15 vegetables from the 2024 EWG report, so you will naturally consume fewer pesticides!
Add gut-friendly ingredients and gut healers like kefir, sauerkraut, or kimchi, rich in probiotics, to complement your salad and further support your gut microbiome.
Gut Healing Rainbow Salad Ingredients
- 1 carrot grated
- 1 Lebanese cucumber thinly grated (remove skin)
- 1 medium tomato thinly sliced
- 1 cup shredded red cabbage - very fine
- 1 sliced shallot
- 1/2 red Spanish onion - grated
- 4 sticks of raw asparagus- chopped finely
- 1 celery stick - grated
- 1 radish thinly slices or grated
- 2 handfuls of rocket or green leaves of your choice (but not bought in a plastic bag)
- 1 small head of broccoli - grated or chopped finely
- 1 avocado
Garnish
1 tbsp green pumpkin seeds, walnuts, 1 clove of garlic per plate finely grated (i use a parmesan cheese grated) + sauerkraut or kimchi to taste & 1 tbsp of hummus on the side if desired.
Method
Grate and finely chop salad so that it makes these vegetables really easy to digest & mix. Pour over extra virgin olive oil, Apple Cider Vinegar, a pinch of sea salt & pepper, toss and enjoy! Serves 2.
Supplements For Gut Health
If you don’t feel like doing a complete gut healing cleanse, add 1-2 of our Rejuv Digestive Support Capsules before eating salads and vegetables. This will help your body deal with the extra fibre, so you get all the benefits without the short-term bloating.
If eating more fibre makes you more constipated, take 2 of our Natural Lax Capsules before dinner at night until your colon clears.
Support All Digestion Dynamics with a Gut Healing Pack
Our Gut Healing Pack supports all digestion dynamics so you don’t suffer and end up in a healing crisis. The pack includes our Para Cleanse and Candida Gone Capsules to clear out your overgrowth of bad bacteria.
You’ll also receive our Gut Repair Capsules in the pack to reinoculate with the good bacteria to restore the optimum ratio in your microbiome and Natural Lax Capsules with colon cleansing herbs with purgatives combined with carminatives to prevent griping to loosen residual intestinal congestion and support a full colon detox. The included Digestive Complex Powder restores the correct function of your digestive system.
See this blog if you need a Gut Reset to scale up your health.
