Heal Leaky Gut – 5 Best Winter Plants to Eat

Most of the time healing a leaky gut requires supplementation.  Names like glutamine and probiotics typically top the list.  They do a good job and I frequently recommend them.  But even the best supplementation is limited if the food you eat is sabotaging your efforts.  I like to think of food as medicine, because it is.  One thing I learned early on is that food is either healing your body or destroying it.  That is equally true of the gut.  To heal leaky gut, the right foods are essential.

Change of Season

Leaky gut contributes to a long list of symptoms and diseases.  Most are not easily associated with a problem in the gut.  However, it is amazing the benefits one experiences when nurturing the gut.  Unparalleled and lasting effects can be seen by enhancing the relationship the gut has with the rest of the body.

Symptoms of Leaky Gut

• Fatigue
• Brain Fog
• Muscle aches and pains
• Joint aches and pains
• Excess gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea
• Bad breath

Diseases of Leaky Gut

• Autoimmune conditions – Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Celiac, Ulcerative Colitis, Crohn’s Disease
• Cardiovascular Disease
• Diabetes
• Brain degeneration
• Liver Disease

There’s a good chance you have one of these or have dealt with it from time to time.  We all have.  But if you want to heal leaky gut, foods are a crucial component.

The question you are probably asking is why am I singling out winter plants.  Great question and if you didn’t ask it, frankly you might miss one of the most important points I have to make.  Foods to heal the gut should be diverse.  They should not be the same all the time.  That means eating with the seasons.  Therefore, the winter plants that are going to help heal leaky gut are different than those in the summer.  More food options, equals faster healing.  Eating with the seasons is the secret leaky gut healing protocol accelerator.

So with that in mind, let me divulge my 5 favorite winter plants to heal leaky gut.  All 5 of these are consistent residents in my winter garden and can easily be found at the local farmers market and most grocery stores.

Top 5 Winter Plants to Heal Leaky Gut

“Please Mom, No More!”

If it was sweet it would probably be the perfect food.  Nonetheless, this mildly bitter food is easily made to taste great and should be in your diet to heal leaky gut.  I’m talking about broccoli.  We despise it when we are young and appreciate it with age.  Broccoli is an extremely diverse plant.  It contains a number of beneficial compounds that help with everything from hormone balancing to cancer protection.  It should be no surprise that these same compounds reduce gut inflammation.  Since the benefits come from multiple powerful chemicals in broccoli, don’t expect to mimic this with a supplement.  Food wins this round.

Sweet and Sour Anyone?

I don’t know if I could put together a list of foods to heal leaky gut without including cabbage.  There are so many reasons, but the most significant is that sauerkraut can be made from it.  I’m not talking about the pasteurized, wanna-be sauerkraut at the grocery store.  Nope!  I am referring to the sauerkraut you can easily make right at home.  It is jam packed with beneficial probiotics that will nourish a leaky gut back to health.  Imagine having your own little internal army constantly rebuilding your gut.  That is what the probiotics from sauerkraut can do.

Don’t like sauerkraut?  Don’t worry.  Eating cabbage steamed or sauteed in olive oil will also help to heal leaky gut.

Kohls Got Robbed . . . Wait What?

Kohlrabi is a vegetable you may not be familiar with.  You won’t find this one everywhere, but when you do, grab as many as you can.  This is truly a hidden gem.  And if you like to grow your own vegetables, this one grows fast and easy, even in a flower pot.  Kohlrabi has many favorable characteristics.  This include being an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory.  It suppresses some of the most inflammatory cascades as well as inhibiting inflammation associated with leaky gut.

If you like french fries, slice the stem up and bake until soft.  They turn out very similar.  The taste is slight different, but good.  Imagine that, eating fries to heal leaky gut.

No Mo Micro

Microbes, especially non-beneficial bacteria and fungus, contribute to leaky gut.  If you think that couldn’t be you, think again.  I see it all the time.  Patients walking around with everything from Salmonella to E. Coli with no idea that this is related to their fatigue, pain and gut issues.  To keep these “bad guys” under control, I like to recommend onions.  This white vegetable has surprising features that leave you wondering why it is not recommended more often.

As part of the allium family of foods, onion possess compounds that inhibit the growth of the bad guys I referred to earlier.  Here is the great part though.  Onions in contrast also stimulate the growth of the good probiotics by supplying inulin, a prebiotic.  Prebiotics help probiotics grow and flourish.  If that wasn’t enough, onions also contain quercetin.  This anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, histamine reducing antioxidant might just be the star of the show.  Simply, if you eat onion, you will heal leaky gut.

Superfood Gut Rescue

Kale has been touted as a superfood.  Curly, Dinosaur, Lacinato and Red-Russian are just a few of kale species available.  One of the primary reasons it is a superfood, and why it has to be part of a protocol to heal leaky gut, is the stimulating effect it has on our body’s defense mechanisms.  Kale protects us by making our own antioxidant systems more efficient.  As a result of consuming kale, the damaging effects of toxins that are found in the gut are minimized.  Fewer toxins equals faster healing.

Try incorporating a few of these foods in.  I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how quickly you can turn around leaky gut.