Raise your hand if you鈥檝e ever felt bone-tired? Utterly exhausted? Lacking the energy to do the things you know you really should be doing? Feeling that it is almost painful to be awake?
Normally I鈥檇 be saying that鈥檚 your body saying you should rest, get more sleep, take a few days off. Which is often good advice. But what if this lack of energy was due to something else?
What if there鈥檚 another reason why you feel so exhausted all the time?
It could very well be that your microbiome (your gut flora) is out of balance. I talk a lot about the billions of good bacteria that reside in our digestive systems, and I have posted about this subject regularly this month on Facebook and Instagram, but if you don鈥檛 have the right balance of gut flora you are going to feel fatigued or moody, like you鈥檙e living in a fog and just mentally off.
There are lots of reasons you may have an imbalance of gut flora 鈥� the use of antibiotics and heartburn medications, excessive stress and food sensitivities, to name a few. However, the recent COVID pandemic has most likely been a cause of your fatigue, and not just because you鈥檝e spent 47-plus hours watching Netflix.
If you鈥檝e been in lockdown, quarantine or sheltering inside for long periods of time during the COVID pandemic your healthy microbiome, where most of your mitochondria reside, the body鈥檚 energy 鈥減ower plants,鈥� will now be reduced for a few reasons and this means you will have less energy.
Unfortunately we have been collectively bathing in hand sanitizer, multiple times a day, that not only kills bacteria and viruses on your skin, but it also manages to wipe out a lot of our gut bacteria as well.聽
Additionally, our lack of community and exposure to other people (and their personal biome) has also decreased our healthy gut flora lending to our feeling of collective fatigue and low energy.
Most people don鈥檛 think about their microbiome (gut flora) when they regularly feel tired and fatigued, but getting your gut back in balance will have a significant impact on your energy and vitality levels.
So what should you do?
Probiotics are one of the best places to start. There are many different kinds of probiotics but a couple of my favorites are HMF Metabolic and ProbioSAP.
Fermented foods are also terrific. Kombucha and raw unpasteurized sauerkraut are very useful to help repopulate your gut.
Reducing stress levels is crucial since prolonged periods of stress have been shown to impair the gut microbiota and leave you susceptible to increased infection.
Eliminate artificial sweeteners as they have been shown to impact the health of our microbiome while excessive intake of refined carbohydrates, sugar (including alcohol), and processed foods will also throw off our gut bacteria.聽
The gut is known as the second brain and looking at your energy from this perspective might give you another tool or two to help you feel better. I hope it does.
If you have any questions feel free to contact me at [email protected] or 306-224-0012.
