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On average, and when eating without restrictions, how many days a week do you suffer from:
9. Stomach cramps:
10. Diarrhoea:
11. Constipation:
12. Bloating:
13. Acid reflux:
14. Excessive wind:
WORKING OUT YOUR SCORE
Add up the scores for every question (1–14) and use the chart below to check the current state of your gut health.
Gut-Health Total……………………………………………
My Gut-Health Score………………………………………
WHAT DOES YOUR GUT-HEALTH SCORE MEAN?
9–10 Severe
Disrupts your everyday life.
You may already be under the care of your doctor, and if not you should consider it.
The Gut-Health Plan may help you but you should also take medical advice. Be prepared for the programme to take longer than normal, and to find many food sensitivities.
7–8 Moderate to Severe
Although your gut health doesn’t bother you every day, you suffer more often than not and are always thinking about it.
The Gut-Health Plan should help you to get to grips with your gut-health. You are likely to find one or more food sensitivity.
3–6 Mild to Moderate
Your gut health doesn’t affect you every day. But it is slowly but surely getting worse. You might find that it gets worse during periods of stress and uncertainty and at inconvenient times, such as when you are on holiday.
The good news is that this programme can help reverse the flow and help you understand and improve your gut health.
1–2 Mild
You may suffer from occasional symptoms. You are unlikely to have any intolerances. If you feel that your gut health is getting worse, then this programme will get you back to optimum gut health.
THE 5 BIG TRIGGERS (#ulink_e58a62e7-dcc3-5cbb-9663-98644e134756)
During the 28-Day Gut-Health Plan we are concentrating on the five most common food triggers for gut health:
1.Lactose (Milk)
2.Red Meat
3.Nightshade family (tomatoes, (bell) peppers, chilli peppers, aubergine)
4.Gas-producing (gassy) Vegetables (onions, garlic, broccoli, beans)
5.Wheat
We are concentrating here on food intolerances as opposed to allergies.
An intolerance:
Develops over time
Gets worse as you get older
Doesn’t always affect you in the same way
Can allow you to still eat the food in smaller quantities
With food allergies, you are either born with them or develop them as a young child. The reaction to foods is intense with only a very small quantity. Your food allergy may have involved medical treatment of some kind, although there is no cure. If you have an allergy, it is very black and white. You know about it and are hopefully receiving medical support. For our purposes, being coeliac is definitely an allergy. If you have an allergy, you can still find support for other possible food intolerances in this book and hopefully find recipes that support your allergy and your lifestyle.
Remember that any food intolerances develop from an underlying gut-health problem. You can inherit gut-health problems or they can be caused by the foods you eat and the lifestyle you follow. This is why gut-health symptoms tend to worsen as you get older.
We start to mend the gut by first introducing probiotics. These will improve the bacterial balance. Foods will be digested better and are less likely to come into contact with the gut wall. Although probiotics will improve your entire gut, it is a slow process and doesn’t deal directly with any food intolerances you might have developed.
For this reason, in addition to the probiotics, we start the 28-Day Plan with a 7-Day Rest and Restore phase that removes the five common food triggers from your diet. By removing the intolerance (the food that your body considers most toxic), we can reduce the inflammation in the lining of the gut. It is only then that the gut can start to heal.
When the gut has started to heal and symptoms have reduced, we can then reintroduce trigger foods gradually and see what effects they have on YOUR body. The aim of the programme is not only to improve the health of your gut, but also to understand your own specific food intolerances so that you can learn to balance the foods you eat with the effect they have on your body.
We introduce food groups in a particular order, with the trickiest and most difficult triggers to diagnose coming last – gassy vegetables and wheat.
LACTOSE (MILK)
Lactose or milk sugar is a sugar found only in milk or milk products.
Milk vs Dairy
A common misconception, however, is that anything made from milk contains lactose. Which is why some people may be confused and eliminate all dairy from their diet.
Dairy does define all food made from milk. However, in ‘hard’ or solid dairy products such as butter or cheese all the lactose has been removed. If you think back to domestic science, or perhaps even the nursery rhyme, milk is split into curds and whey. Curds is the solid protein and fat and contains no lactose.
An even simpler definition is:
‘If you have to cut it with a knife, it’s safe.’
Milk (lactose) foods to avoid
Milk, all types including skimmed and semi-skimmed
Cream
Custard
Fromage frais
Ghee
Ice cream
Margarine
Sour cream
Yogurt
Milk or white chocolate
Soft cheese such as cottage cheese, cream cheese, halloumi
Additionally, check the ingredients list on: cereals, baked goods, crisps, cooked meats and soups. Look out for any of these in the nutritional information, as they all signify lactose: casein, caseinates, sodium caseinates, hydrolysed casein, milk powder, milk solids.
Safe dairy foods
Butter
Hard cheese such as Cheddar, feta and Parmesan
Note that eggs are not a dairy food, contain no lactose and can be eaten safely.
Using lactose-free milk to simplify the removal of milk lactose from your diet
Lactose-free milk is now commonly available in every supermarket and is a really simple way to cut out lactose from your diet and see if it makes a difference to your gut health. You can also buy lactose-free yogurts, soft cheese and cream.
RED MEAT
Red meat can be problematic for your gut health for two reasons:
1.Red meat is simply one of the hardest things for your gut to break down and digest. It is often the case that occasional small quantities of red meat are OK for all but the most sensitive digestions. But increase the quantities, eat it late at night or together with a large, fatty meal and the likelihood of a problem increases hugely.
2.The other problem with red meat can be bacterial. This could mean that you have a problem with one meat in particular, be that beef, pork or lamb. This sometimes happens if you’ve had a bad bout of meat-related food poisoning in the past. The gut becomes colonized by the bad bacteria and you stay sensitive for years afterwards. Probiotics really help here as they can reduce or eliminate the problematic bacteria.
On the plus side, it is unlikely that you will have to eliminate red meat entirely from your diet. Just remember moderation is always the key to avoiding problems with red meat. If you do have a problem, cut out all red meat for at least forty-eight hours until all symptoms have passed.
Red meat to avoid
All forms of beef, lamb, pork and game
Minced beef
Burgers
Sausages
Ham
Duck
Game
Bacon
Salami
Chorizo
White meat (you can eat as much as you like)
Chicken
Turkey
All parts of the bird can be eaten, including the dark meat, such as turkey thigh.
NIGHTSHADE
Fruits from the nightshade family – tomatoes, bell peppers, chillies and aubergines (eggplants) – contain glycoalkaloids and/or capsaicin, which are surprisingly common triggers for a sensitive gut. It is estimated that as many as one in three of us could be sensitive to nightshades, although for many people it is a minor rather than major intolerance.
The highest concentration of glycoalkaloids is found in tomatoes. Tomatoes, either fresh, tinned or in pastes or passatas, are harder to avoid than you might imagine. Many dishes, from stews to curries, have tomatoes as their base. The problem with glycoalkaloids is that they can destroy cell membranes and can ‘burst open’ cells. This property is part of their natural defence against small mammals and birds that like to eat the sweet fruits of these plants. To the smaller stomachs of these animals, the glycoalkaloids have a toxic effect. As a much bigger animal, humans should be immune to their effects, but unfortunately, weakened gut linings have made people more susceptible to their effects. It has been suggested that by damaging the gut lining they may be one of the causes of leaky gut.
The other molecule in these red (and green) fruits is the tricky capsaicin. Capsaicin has a very different but equally nasty effect on the gut. Capsaicin is an irritant, and in the same way that you get pain and watery eyes if you just touch your eyes after chopping a chilli, capsaicin can irritate and inflame the gut lining, causing stomach cramps and pain. All chillies, fresh, dried or in powder form, contain the dreaded capsaicin. In fact, all red spices – e.g. paprika, chilli powder, cayenne pepper – contain concentrated capsaicin and should be avoided.
Fresh chilli peppers contain both glycoalkaloids and capsaicin, so are ‘the perfect storm’ when it comes to nightshade sensitivity.
Foods to avoid
Fresh tomatoes
Tinned tomatoes
Tomato purée
Tomato ketchup
Peppers (bell) – red, green, yellow and orange
