Gut Integrity & The Microbiome

‘The gut’ refers to the hollow tube that travels from our mouth to anus. It is home to what we call our ‘microbiome’; the diverse ecosystem of microbes that keep us healthy. Many of us have heard of the microbiome as nutritional research in the past 30 years has focused heavily on optimizing the bacteria in our guts, showing that not only can bacteria make us gain or lose weight, give us mental focus or brain fog, cause poor memory issues and nutrient malabsorption or strengthen our immune system and protect us from cancers – but what we have discovered more recently is that these bacteria are also responsible for the communication between our cells.

Intestinal permeability

All of our mucus membranes such as our gut lining, our sinuses and our skin are made up of cells that sit next to each other in ‘tight junctions’. These junctions determine what does and does not pass into our bloodstream. They work a little like a mosquito net; they let the air and light (or nutrients in this analogy) in and they keep the mosquitos (or harmful microbes, toxic compounds, allergens, etc) out.

However, when our membranes are inflamed, we produce a substance called Zonulin which causes these tight junctions to separate and allow all the bugs into the room so to speak. When this happens, the entire microbiome is affected and the communication network between the cells in our gut can be degraded.

But what causes our gut to become inflamed and Zonulin be produced? ‘Volatile organic compounds’ such as environmental toxins, herbicides, fungicides, pesticides in food, air pollution, some pharmaceutical drugs, processed foods, chronic mental, emotional or physical stress, gluten and as we are learning more and more in the scientific literature, an imbalance of the microbiome.

The Microbiome

The term ‘microbiome’ refers to the ecology of the gut. We can think of it like a garden - we get some fruit, some flowers and some weeds. If the soil in our garden is no good then we end up with more weeds but if we have nutritious soil and we tend to our garden, the plants all grow synergistically keeping one another in balance. Our gut bacteria act as messengers in this garden - think of them like the Greek God Hermes, carrying important signals from cell to cell, making sure that everyone has the correct information about the entire garden and thereby building a cellular community, all reading from the same page.

When this cellular communication (called Redox signaling) is intact, messages can be sent to say whether a cell is healthy or not and if something needs to be altered. This then determines whether a cell proliferates, migrates, differentiates or even spontaneously dies.

Without this signaling, we can find that not only can we grow unhealthy cells with poorly functioning mitochondria, but we can end up with an imbalance in the microbiome - the weeds can overgrow - which may lead to parasite infections, overgrowth of harmful bacteria, fungal and yeast overgrowths, potentially leading to further inflammation and further breakdown of those tight junctions.

When our ‘gardens’ are imbalanced in this way, it can show up in symptoms of nutrient malabsorption, bloating, abdominal pain, IBS, IBD, food sensitivities, chronic pain, mood disorders, chronic fatigue, metabolic issues and auto-immune conditions.

You can see that without optimal balance in the microbiome, we can get into a cycle of poor cellular signaling causing inflammation and gut permeability, whilst gut permeability causes poor cellular signaling.

What do we do about it?

It has been shown that to have optimal health, the human body should have 20,000-30,000 strains of bacteria present. However other studies have shown that the average person has around 500-1000 strains. There are many reasons for this, predominantly our change in lifestyles in the last century or so, which has exposed us to less bacteria and more chemical compounds than ever before, less contact with nature and more sterile environments and a huge increase in processed foods and inflammatory pesticides such as Glyphosate.

This has lead many of us to the conclusion that taking probiotic supplements will fix things, however this is a short-sighted view as a mono-culture of any bacteria can be harmful to the body, it is in fact a variety of bacterial species and getting the bacteria to the right location that is the key.

Restore Ion

On our 15 & 21 day Rēset Programs, we use Restore Ion Gut Support as part of a functional gut health protocol. This liquid is made from bacterial metabolites rather than bacteria themselves. It is essentially an extract of really old soil from a time when our Earth had more bacterial strains and therefore more nutrients.

Restore Ion contains the same redox molecules as our intestinal bacteria and therefore it kick-starts our cellular communication pathways and degrades zonulin. This means that cells know if they are healthy or not, they can fix mitochondrial issues and they can even evaluate the levels of specific strains of bacteria, yeast, viruses and other microbes that are present in the gut and adjust as it needs to in order to be healthy.

Studies with Restore Ion have shown that the same liquid can cause an unhealthy cell to die off and a healthy cell to proliferate because it simply provides the nutrients that allow the body to use it’s own inherent systems to find balance and optimal health.

We are in no way affiliated with Restore Ion, we just appreciate the research they have done. Restoring gut integrity is tricky but vital to optimal health, this is one more tool in the toolbox.

Check it out and the other supplements we use as part of our Gut Healing Protocol on our 15 & 21 Day Rēset Programs: https://www.reprecisionhealth.com/store

Read more and dive into the research on Restore Ion website (we have no affiliation): https://intelligenceofnature.com

By Samantha George

At Rē Precision Health we teach tools to regulate the nervous system through education and immersive experiences online and in our bubbles of paradise in Mexico and Portugal. Our programs have positively impacted (and even saved) hundreds of lives. 

Guest stories here: https://www.reprecisionhealth.com/reviews

All information provided in our resources in for informational purposes only. It is not intended to replace a medical/mental health professional.