How to Biblically Care for the Gift of Your Gut

[Originally published as Healthy Gut]

To fulfil the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: [for] as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years. (2 Chronicles 36:21)

This verse suggests that healthy soil and therefore healthy nutrition are really important! The purpose of having them let the land rest (keep sabbath) was for better nutrition in the food. Of all the evils God could have focused on, he focused on the fact that they had not let the land lie fallow every seven years. While the surface-level goal was to do right by the land, it is equally clear that without such rest, the land could not properly provide for its human inhabitants.

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What does food grown on healthy, rested soil do for us? Provide us with the micronutrients we need.

But, besides these more obvious features, a healthy diet — alongside a healthy lifestyle also provides us with something fundamental to our bodies’ health: a healthy gut.

In another article, I discussed the kinds of emotional effects a properly functioning gut provides for us and scriptural examples of this reality. Today, I’d like to point out a few practical things we can do to care for this amazingly complex gift from our Creator God:

Properly Caring for our Intestines

The Mucus Lining

This is where the healthy bacteria live and make our neurotransmitters. Eighty percent of serotonin is found in the gut where it is made by bacteria that live in the mucus. This slimy coating also protects the lining of the gut from irritants and unhealthy bacteria that live in the central corridor of the gut.

How to protect this mucus coating

1. Eat “slimy” food: oatmeal, bananas, okra, bone broth, kombucha, “slippery elm” or aloe, which you can find at health food stores.
2. Avoid aspirin it dissolves the mucous lining. Use Tylenol (acetaminophen) instead but read the directions because too much Tylenol can hurt your liver.

What happens when this mucus barrier is compromised?

When a person experiences inflammation, thin mucus, and too many “enemy” bacteria, they develop something called leaky gut as the bacteria eat through the connections between gut lining cells. These gaps allow large food particles to get into the bloodstream and agitate the immune system.

Often in adulthood, a person’s gut, as well as their entire immune system, reacts to exposure to foods they had eaten a lot of as a child. An elimination diet or food allergy test can help you find which food you will need to avoid to prevent a flare-up. This is because once you have developed a permanent priming to become inflamed to foods you have been sensitized to.

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Feed the Helpful Bacteria in your Gut

1. Good bacteria like to eat fiber. So eat a high-fiber diet or take Metamucil or Benifiber or anything that says, “might cause gas.”
   Start slowly so that you may adjust to the fermenting and resultant gas without being uncomfortable.
   Drink lots of water with the fiber. Irritated bowels move food through too fast. Consuming fiber not only feeds the healthy bacteria, but it also holds onto the water and keeps the stool soft. This prevents diverticulitis, appendicitis, hemorrhoids, etc. (Fiber Con is not a prebiotic since the bacteria can’t digest or ferment it, it will keep the stools soft and won’t cause gas but does not feed the bacteria.)
2. Eat living healthy bacteria: these are Lactobacillus plantarum and Bifido bifidum. You can eat sauerkraut, miso, tempeh, buttermilk, kimchee, Kefir, or yogurt, or you can take probiotics (Try to find a kind that has at least a count of 50 billion with at least 10 varieties of bacteria).
   These healthy bacteria are the ones that respond to requests from the brain to make more serotonin as well as dopamine and nor-epinephrine, GABA, and glutamate.

Don’t Feed the Enemy Bacteria

These live in the center of the gut and they thrive on sugar and starches! Any food that only exists because we have powerful machinery in factories to refine, such as sugar, white bread, white pasta, etc. Even potatoes have such simple carbohydrates they feed these harmful bacteria.

Besides eating a slow-carb diet, there are several things we can do to help maintain a healthy gut.

1. Cast all your cares on the Lord: Anger, ruminating on problems, worry over the possible future, bitterness or guilt over the past, etc. all dump out adrenaline, cortisol, and thyroid, causing the gut’s immune system to crank up and shifting blood from the gut to the muscles, all of which irritates the gut.
2. Use antibiotics sparingly as they kill the good as well as the bad bacteria. Make sure you actively replace the probiotic bacteria after taking antibiotics.
3. Be careful with steroids such as Prednisone. They will calm down the inflammation but some inflammation is needed to fight off attempts by the enemy bacteria to invade.
   It is better to have a gut that is not inflamed because of the above steps.