Rainbow womanI’ll often get emails from readers saying that they’re doing everything they should in Listen To Your Gut, but they’ve hit a plateau and they’re not improving. Based on hundreds of consults over the last decade, here are the crucial areas people usually need to look at:

1. Get your hormones checked out and balanced. Although I advise people to do this in LTYG, since there are no instructions, I think people tend to miss this crucial step. Hormones need to be tested and balanced by a doctor specifically trained and experienced in working with them.

We did a very targeted teleseminar that comprehensively covers this issue called Chronic Illness & Hormone Balance with Dr. Wendy Ellis. Dr. Ellis works with Dr. Jonathon V. Wright, at Tahoma Clinic in Washington – who was made famous by Suzanne Somers’ books on HRT. You can contact Dr. Ellis at the clinic (she does phone consults where appropriate) or if you listen to the teleseminar, Dr. Ellis gives out her personal email where you can ask her a question or two, or get a referral to a GOOD hormone doc in your area.

You should also watch this video on Managing your Thyroid & Adrenal Glands – The Secret to Healing Chronic Disease by Dr. Frank Shallenberger, MD who has a clinic in Nevada and is also a very good doctor for these issues.

Balancing your hormones will help your immune susceptibility and also help you to gain weight or – in the case of a child – maximize their growth potential as well.

2. If you’re struggling with probiotics and find you just can’t tolerate any kind of traditional probiotic supplement, then forget about trying to get your probiotics from traditionally dairy-based sources. Instead, look to fermenting vegetables for this  – Nourishing Traditions is a good cookbook for that – just eat a small amount of fermented carrots, cabbage, beets, etc. with your meals. There are also other good  recipe books on Amazon for fermented veggies and even some good freebies on the internet, just do a Google search on “fermented vegetable recipes”. I found this post easily that has a number of good fermented veggie recipes – just leave out the cayenne on the Kimchi recipe.

Or, you could try Dr. Ohhira’s Probiotics OMX 12+ which is non-dairy and derived from fermented plants. However, it does still contain lactic acid bacteria, so if that’s your sensitivity, then this won’t work and best to just eat homemade fermented vegetables:

“As Dr. Ohhira delved further into the science of good health, he discovered that certain naturally fermented foods consumed in Asia are a rich source of lactic acid bacteria. After years of studying the known strains of lactic acid bacteria occurring in fermented foods indigenous to Southeast Asia, Dr. Ohhira developed an award- winning probiotics that recolonizes the microflora in the digestive tract and enhances good health – a product that is several technological generations ahead of other probiotics.

Ingredients of OMX probiotics include 92 types of natural crops including special leaves, bark, herbs and fruits, which grow wild in a vast region of the Kibi Highlands and Hiruzen Highlands of the Chugoku district in Japan, several kinds of seaweed and various organic vegetables. This proprietary blend is combined with 12 strains of lactic acid bacteria, which include the most prominent strains of bacteria possessing the highest proteolytic power in the world. In fact, scientists have established that the lactic acid bacteria contained in Dr. Ohhira’s probiotics OMX 12 plus are 6.25 times stronger than any naturally occurring lactic acid bacteria.”

If you have an extreme probiotic intolerance (note: I mean EXTREME intolerance, and not to be confused with a Herxheimer Reaction) due to inflammation (I talk about this on page 170 of Listen To Your Gut), then there is no point in supplementing with probiotics of any sort until you have calmed the inflammation in the gut.

This is best achieved by using anti-inflammatory and gut healing substances (like MucosaHeal, George’s Aloe Vera Juice, wild oregano oil, elemental diet, etc.) first, whilst weaning yourself off drugs (like Prednisone) that prevent healing. Then, after you have healed your inflammation to the point where your gut can tolerate bacteria, you can try to introduce probiotics, very gradually, only one species at a time, beginning with B. infantis. This approach is best combined with the next point below…

3. Do EFT specifically on food intolerances or allergies. YES it will help even though we think of food allergies as a physical phenomena. We have numerous interactive teleseminars using EFT, and I have also set up a webpage with lots more information and eBooks available on this powerful mind/body healing tool.

4. REST more. I can’t tell you how many people are trying to work as usual, go to school, play sports etc. and wondering why their body is not healing. Healing takes a LOT of energy. You need to rest a LOT for your body to be able to heal.

When you do physical activity, it needs to be nurturing and relaxing (like yoga, tai chi, walking, etc.) not competitive sports.

If you are bleeding, then you need to lie down horizontal in order for the blood to clot. As long as you are up and moving around, you’re working against gravity. It’s just common sense: If you have a cut on your finger, do you keep using that finger? Or do you immobilize it and give it a chance to heal without being moved, bumped, scraped, etc.

Soar higher,
Jini
____________________________________________________

Jini Patel Thompson’s books on natural healing for digestive diseases have sold in over 40 different countries. Her health articles have been published in journals and magazines in the U.S., Australia and U.K. www.ListenToYourGut.com