I am super excited to talk today about how a healthy gut affects your pain levels. First, I want to share a little something with you. The other day I was cleaning my home office. Trust me, it was a mess. As I was moving things around, I ran across my kid’s school photos from this year stacked on a bookshelf as well as a box of older school photo’s. This year my daughter is in ninth grade and my son is in sixth. Realizing this, I started thinking about the years they were in preschool and elementary and preschool; You know, when they were little.
I have officially entered that season of life where we have one kid in middle school and one in high school. I decided to lay out all of the pictures so I could look at how much they have grown. It is mind-blowing; They’re growing up so fast and it’s hard for me to believe my youngest is out of elementary school. Those days are gone. Life is short. I know it sounds like a cliché, but it really is. We only get this brief period brief of time with our kids.
So what does it all mean? What is life all about? Well, in my opinion, life is all about the legacy you’re going to leave behind when you leave this earth. So that leaves the biggest question yet.
What Do You Want Your Legacy to Be?
Is it all about acquiring things? Maybe filling up your closets with things you don’t use and forget about in a few weeks. Or is it something a little more? Is it about your relationships and the impact you make in the lives of your family and friends? I believe it should be the latter for most of us. Our legacy should be about those relationships; Your daily interactions and the quality time you spend on those relationships with one’s who matter the most. This is where you’ll find your legacy. This is where we can influence and impact their lives for the good. Leave that legacy of love, joy, and peace for them and the generations to come. We truly don’t have a lot of time to do it.
None of us know how much time we have left so we have to make each day count. There’s always an opportunity to leave a little positive piece of yourself with each person in your life. I challenge you to slow down a bit and think about the impact you’re having on your relationships. Think of the ways you can invest more time and positive energy into those relationships that matter the most. I’m going to share this little Bible verse with you that means a lot to me. It’s from Psalms 90:12 from the New International Version, “teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Think about that for a little while….
Now, I want to shift gears to talk more about your gut and how the true healing lies within you.
A Healthly Gut Helps Your Immune System
We’ve already established your gut influences your mood. It influences how you feel and your immune system. But, did you know your gut will also affect how you heal and your pain levels? If there is pain present in your body, there is a really good chance that inflammation is present too. Pain, irritation, and inflammation all go hand in hand.
Remember, our last session we talked about how 70% of your immune system is located in your gut; It’s in your intestines. Your immune system controls your body’s inflammation levels. Why is this tidbit so important? Let’s think about it for a minute. Why would most of your immune system be in your gut? It’s because the first wave of attacks from any foreign invader, such as bacteria, a virus, toxins, or any other substance is going to travel through your gut.
A healthy immune system is our main defense against inflammation and pain. The root cause of pain is usually inflammation and that starts in your gut
Let’s talk about this. Let’s talk more about how your gut is connected to your joints. So, you know, everybody knows who the pockets sees is, you know,
Hippocrates is the father of modern medicine; He knew all those thousands of years ago (born 460 BCE (Smith)), that all healing starts in the gut. When the gut is not healthy, there’s an imbalance with the microbes in the intestines. These imbalances lead to problems with the musculoskeletal system; We call this problem the gut joint axis. Microbiomes are the changes to the microbes located inside your intestines and gut. These changes can have a lot of effects.
The Absorption of Bacteria
The primary change I want to focus on is the absorption of bacteria. If that is not health, the secondary thing is you will start to have poor nutrient absorption. Tertiary, it can result in increased permeability of the intestine, or what we call the leaky gut.
Remember, in an unhealthy or leaky gut material is allowed to pass through into circulation. We talked about this last time; How the cells of the intestinal wall are tight against each other so it can create a barrier. When your gut is not healthy that wall becomes gapped, which allows the bad stuff in the gut to pass through and into the blood. Bad stuff such as toxins, bacteria, food, antibodies, food allergies, and different microbes. They can get into your blood system. These things can get deposited into the joints, tendons, muscles, and ligaments. If this happens your immune system will launch a response because it recognizes these as foreign invaders.
A Healthy Gut Can Help with Chronic Conditions
We are now starting to really understand how chronic conditions, such as arthritis, are not just simply caused by wear and tear. They could be caused from chronic inflammation in the joint as a result of this response that destroys the cartilage. We’re starting to think along these lines because we were seeing more people with arthritic joints that are non-weightbearing joints.
Example: arthritis of the wrist. Your wrist does not bare much weight yet we are seeing a rise of arthritis. It is just shooting through the roof. We are also seeing a spike in the knees, hips, shoulders, and spine. It’s becoming a real problem. We did not see this a couple hundred years ago so we know there is something going on with the way we live here in Western society.
I want to explore this a little bit more so stick with me on this….
When these foreign substances enter your bloodstream, they go through gaps in your gut and they get into your bloodstream. Your immune system then launches the attack by creating antibodies to attack and destroy called the Innate Immunity Response; it’s what we talked about last time. These antibodies attach themselves to what we call an antigen. Its purpose is to destroy it. By binding together with it, an Immune Complex is created.
Immune Complex
The leaky gut causes over production of these immune complexes because things are getting sifted into the bloodstream that should not be there. In turn, these immune complexes, the antibody and antigen that have come together, start to act like another antigen. This now causes another immune response.
The antibody goes after the antigen which creates this immune complex. But then the body’s like, “Oh, hey, wait a minute…… We got another something going on here. So let’s attack that!” The next thing you know, your system is just going crazy!!
This will cause chronic systemic inflammation! The immune complexes are circulating throughout the body and get deposited into different tissues; Such as your muscles, joints, and tendons. This will cause all the signs and symptoms associated with inflammation. Things such as pain, swelling, and stiffness. Not only that….. If your body is trying to heal from an injury and chronic inflammation continues, that pain will persist. Even if the injury is healed! Most injuries heal within 90 days. If you’ve had an injury and it’s now past 90 days and you’re still having pain, there is a very good chance you’re suffering from chronic inflammation.
A lot of that will come from your gut and then your body just can’t heal itself.
Getting your gut healthy is truly one of the keys to your overall health and healing.
How Do You Know if Your Gut is Healthy?
If you do, what can you do about it? I’m really glad you asked that question. The answer to that question is… Wait for it…. Yeah, just going to have to wait on that one.
By the way, if you’re having any trouble getting your body right from back pain, headaches, or even shoulder problems and you need help….. We have our breakthrough exam now for only $49!!! You can set up an EXAM session HERE for only $49.
As always, I’d like to leave you with this inspiring and thought-provoking quote from the author Andy Stanley. “It is when our hearts are stirred, that we become most aware, aware of what they contain.”
Until next time, Power Your Life and keep moving forward!
Work Cited
Smith, Wesley D. Hippocrates. 18 May 2020, www.britannica.com/biography/Hippocrates.
