Just as our bodies, our digestive system is often taken for granted and quite badly treated by most owners until it breaks. As the immune system is largely in the digestive system the consequences and connections to chronic diseases are clear. The physiological indication that we have harmed our gut is when we see that the intestinal wall is “broken” and we are diagnosed with Increased Intestinal Permeability, also called Leaky Gut. Therefore we need to stop doing what causes the intestinal wall to break and feed our gut flora with beans and other complex carbs, which is what we teach you at Olive Health Classes.
It is a condition where particles from the digestive tract leak out into parts of your body where they don’t belong and therefore the body treats it as a toxic. As any other toxic in our body the immune system reacts producing a cascade of “warriors” in different inflammatory processes. This might seem ok, but it’s not. It’s very dangerous to live with chronic inflammation, and the viscous circle is created. The organs get highly stressed, produce more inflammation and so on. Compare it with the danger of feeling constantly stressed by your environment. I only have to mention that all common diseases of today are inflammation based. That’s why we not only need to really think about what we put into our bellies but also we need to deal with the stress. That’s why short meditations and relaxing throughout the day is key to be healthy. Most animals and kids know how.
Some typical symptoms of an unhealthy gut is lack of energy, irritation, skin issues, too fast or too slow digestion, pain…heard it before? Many don’t even get the symptoms from the gut until they have a bleeding ulcer, have cancer or hypertension. You could belong to >90% of the population that live a “normal” life, that have light to sever leaky gut. It is not a question of if you have it but how severe yours is, and how much cortisol and other inflammatory substances your body produce because of it, and by that harming other organs. At Olive we always try to advice on what can be done instead throwing out more symptoms to worry about. It’s like discussing the likelihood of global ecological disaster. We are beyond the if, beyond the “finding out if we have it”. Now it’s time for action and if you have been to our retreats you know that you have to be kind to all of you, eat kind food, do kind things, and being kind to you means being kind to others.
