Episode 346: How to Balance Your Hormones Through Healing Your Gut

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify

Are you struggling with hormone imbalances despite "normal" test results? The secret to achieving hormone balance might lie in your gut health. In this comprehensive episode of The Funk'tional Nutritionist Podcast, functional medicine practitioner, Erin Holt, explains the crucial connection between gut health, hormone regulation, and overall wellness.

You’ll Uncover:

  • The Gut-Hormone Connection: Understanding How Your Microbiome Affects Hormone Balance

  • Signs Your Gut May Be Affecting Your Hormones

  • Understanding the Estrobolome: Your Gut's Role in Estrogen Balance

  • Natural Ways to Support Hormone Balance Through Gut Health

  • Testing for Gut-Hormone Issues

  • The Impact of Gut Health on Specific Hormones

  • Expert Tips for Improving Gut Health and Hormone Balance

In this episode:

Building Foundations for Functional Medicine [06:16]

Soy Phytoestrogens and Gut Bacteria [09:39]

Gut Health Impacts Hormone Balance [12:28]

Hormone Metabolites: Liver and Gut Pathways [15:36]

Estrogen Recirculation and Symptoms [21:07]

Gut Dysbiosis Impacts Hormonal Health [24:14]

Hormone Clearance Insight with GI Map [28:18]

Episode 129: Eating for Gut Health [34:22]

Resources mentioned:

Funk’tional Nutrition Academy™ (Next cohort starts in April of 2025)

Organifi supplement powder (save 20% on your order with code FUNK) 

LMNT Electrolyte Replenishing powder (Use code FUNK get a free sample pack with any purchase!) 

Qualia Senolytic (get up to 50% off and an extra 15% off your first purchase with link + code FUNKS)

Bon Charge (Use code FUNK to save 15%)

Kion Aminos (Get 20% off monthly orders and 10% off one time orders)

Related episodes:

Episode 129: How to Eat for True Gut Health

  • Erin Holt [00:00:00]:

    I'm Erin Holt and this is the Functional Nutrition Podcast where we lean into intuitive functional medicine. We look at how diet, our environment, our emotions and our beliefs all affect our physical health. This podcast is your full bodied, well rounded resource. I've got over a decade of clinical experience and because of that, I've got a major bone to pick with diet, culture and the conventional healthcare model. They're both failing so many of us. But functional medicine isn't the fantasy that it's made out to be either. We've got some work to do and that's why creating a new model is my life's work. I believe in the ripple effect, so I founded the Functional Nutrition Academy, a school in mentorship for practitioners who want to do the same.


    Erin Holt [00:00:45]:

    This show is for you. If you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health and you're ready to be an active participant in your own healing, please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. I would love for you to follow the show, rate, review and share because you never know whose life you might change. And of course, keep coming back for more.


    Erin Holt [00:01:12]:

    Hello my friends, Today we're going to talk about how to balance your hormones through healing your gut. So if you are someone who's looking for more hormone regulation, hormone balance, whatever you want to call it, and you are not considering your gut, it's a major oversight. So today I'm going to share some reasons why, because I love the fact that we're all talking about and thinking about our hormones. So I just want to make sure that if you're putting in steps for good hormone health, you're not overlooking a huge critical component to all of that, which is your gut. Now, when I say the gut, what I'm referring to is your GI tube, the gastrointestinal tract. That includes everything from your mouth to your butt, essentially, and that includes the small intestine. That's where a lot of food absorption takes place. It's the site of leaky gut intestinal permeability.


    Erin Holt [00:02:04]:

    We're not going to get into that too much today. I want to save that for another episode because it's kind of a big meaty topic and I don't want this to be like a two hour masterclass, you know, because nobody's gonna listen to that unless you're a practitioner. I know I have a lot of you here, so come back for more. Leaky gut hormone connection. Really what we're oing to focus on today primarily is the large intestine where your microbiome is housed, your gut microbiome, that is, that's the ecosystem of bacteria in organisms that reside in your large intestine for the most part. And that whole tract, the whole GI tract is so much more than just your digestive system. It has your probably aware of by now since you listened to the show. The gut influences just about every aspect of health.


    Erin Holt [00:02:49]:

    So yeah, of course your digestive health, but also your metabolism, your immune health, your brain health, mood, body compositions, and yeah, hormones as well. So the GI tract can actually be considered an endocrine gland in and of itself. Endocrine gland or endocrine tissue is anything that makes and releases hormones, hormones. So for example, your thyroid gland, your adrenal glands, they're making and releasing hormones. But the GI tract also produces hormones. And in addition to that, the gut can have a huge impact on how you process and utilize hormones as well. So just like with anything in the body, there is communication back and forth bidirectional. So the gut is influenced by the hormones and the hormones will also influence the gut.


    Erin Holt [00:03:40]:

    Now I have done an episode on how hormones impact your gut. So today what we're really going to zoom in on is how your gut influences your hormones. If you are a person listening to this, if you're a dog, hi. Also. But if you're a human being that's listening to this, I understand that it can feel really overwhelming. We start to talk about all the different systems in the body and how they overlap. So I will close out the show with specific strategies that can support you in your overall body and they can hit multiple systems of the body at once. These strategies are really effective and I've seen them work for a lot of clients.


    Erin Holt [00:04:17]:

    The good news about it is that these basic interventions, when you do them, when you actually implement them, can have a lot of far reaching effects. And also if what you're experiencing requires more than just basic interventions, that's what my team and I are here for. That's what we do. This is where we excel. Reach out to us, fill out an application, you can work with us, we can help you get to the bottom of this and make this feel less overwhelming. Especially if you're somebody who's like, I've listened to all the podcasts, I feel like I'm doing all the right things. I just need help. We can help.


    Erin Holt [00:04:54]:

    That's what we do. I like to say we do the deep dive on your health so you don't have to. So reach out now if you're a practitioner listening to this, because I know I have a lot of you guys out there. I recognize it can also feel overwhelming from a practitioner standpoint and I want to validate that for you. When you work with the complexity of human bodies, it's really complex work and I just encourage you to keep going. And honestly, that is why FNA exists. That's why the Functional Nutrition Academy, my 14 month practitioner training exists. It's to take something really complex and to break it down so you have a really good understanding of it.


    Erin Holt [00:05:34]:

    We will be opening up early enrollment mid February, so that's just in a couple short weeks. It's the only discount that we run for the whole academy. The only way to access it is to be on our practitioner list. So you can head to functionalnutritionacademy.com we'll link it up in the show notes and you can get on our email list and we will invite you in. But if you're a practitioner and you are trying to heal someone's gut, you should also be understanding what's happening with their hormones. And if you are trying to heal someone's hormones, you should also be understanding what's happening with their gut. And this is what people are looking for with a functional approach. This is what people are expecting from a functional approach and quite frankly, should be expecting from a functional approach.


    Erin Holt [00:06:16]:

    So that's what we help you do in the academy. A recent grad said it best that everything builds on each other. So this is how we take the overwhelm out of it, by teaching you the foundations and then month over month building on those foundations. So that's why we can take something really complex like the human body and give you the tools to actually help somebody even with complex health problems. I know there's no shortage of shorter, quicker, cheaper functional medicine trainings, but we cannot take these like, simplistic approaches to really complex conditions and expect good results. Like I've said in the past, piecemeal education leads to piecemeal results. And just unfortunately too many people are going to functional providers in getting this piecemeal results and not feeling better. So if you're interested in that FNA, we are opening soon.


    Erin Holt [00:07:11]:

    So get on our practitioner lesson. We will keep you informed. Okay, so let's talk about how the gut acts like an endocrine gland. It does so because it actually produces several key hormones, one of them being ghrelin, which activates appetite centers in your brain. It can produce a little Bit of leptin, which again regulates appetite. It can impact how you use energy. And then of course GLP1, which has had a lot of time in the sun over the past couple of years, that impacts the pancreas release of glucagon and modulates insulin. So the bacteria living in your gut can affect overall metabolism or management of your energy.


    Erin Holt [00:07:48]:

    I've spoken before about this relationship between bacteria and their production of short chain fatty acids, G coupled proteins, all of that are, is involved with insulin regulation. We're not really going to get into that side of things today. We're going to focus more on the gut's effect on sex hormones. But just understand insulin is a hormone and it is absolutely impacted by the gut. And this is just like a heads up, a clinical pearl, if you will, if you have high fasting insulin, if you have high blood sugar, which by the way are markers that you absolutely should be routinely testing with routine blood work. It's not just a carbs game. It's not just a I gotta eat less pasta game. It's also a gut game too.


    Erin Holt [00:08:26]:

    In addition to all of that, the bacteria in your microbiome can play big roles in converting hormones into different forms. So we'll talk about what that means today. It's like a huge, huge component to hormone health. They can convert hormones into other metabolites that can actually be used to bind to receptors. Uh, the gut can modulate activity of hormones to make them more or less reactive. It can metabolize hormones for elimination from the body. So it helps us clear out hormones from the body with hormones. We want to use them and then we want to lose them.


    Erin Holt [00:08:58]:

    The gut is a critical component of the lose it part. Gut bacteria can convert dietary flavonoids into compounds that can actually bind to receptors. So this part is like pretty fascinating to me. Dietary flavonoids are compounds from plants that we eat when we eat plants. I'm sure you've heard the term phytoestrogen before. It's used to describe different compounds that can be found in different plant foods. Herbs, grains, fruits. Soy isoflavones would be an example of a phytoestrogen and they're called phytoestrogens because their structure is pretty similar to estrogen and because of that they can actually bind to estrogen receptors.


    Erin Holt [00:09:39]:

    I get asked like a fair amount about this because especially with soy, as it relates to soy in the research is like a little unclear. It's not as simple as if you have low estrogen, you should be eating more of these phytoestrogens, or if you have high estrogen, you should be eating less of these phytoestrogens. It's not really that clear. And a big part of why it's clear or unclear is because so much of what happens with these compounds is dependent upon what kind of bacteria you have in your gut. So what's going on with your microbiome? So, for example, if you want this is right from a research paper, it's PMID 35276910 if you happen to want to look at this paper. But they're looking specifically at equal, which is a metabolite of a soy isoflavin that has very strong estrogen activity and it is produced through intestinal bacterial metabolism. However, not everybody has the ability to produce equal based on their bacteria in their own GI tract. So it's a pretty individualized thing how we respond to these soy isoflavones according to what's going on in our bacteria.


    Erin Holt [00:10:54]:

    And so this isn't necessarily influencing our hormones per se, but it can influence these flavonoids that we're eating in our diets, hormone activity in our bodies, which again, pretty interesting.


    Erin Holt [00:12:28]:

    Okay, so when the balance of your gut bacteria is disrupted, which is often referred to as dysbiosis, an imbalance of good and bad. It can really interfere with these processes and contribute to hormone imbalance. That's like a huge takeaway of this. We need good, healthy bacteria in our guts to have good, healthy hormone balance because this bacteria can influence hormones so much. So what I really want to do is break down the journey of hormones for you a bit, because we have hormones that the endocrine gland themselves are making. So let's just stick with one hormone, estrogen, for this example. So we can follow estrogen all the way. The ovaries and even to some extent, the adrenal glands are both endocrine glands that can make estrogen, obviously the ovaries, to a much larger capacity.


    Erin Holt [00:13:19]:

    And we make different types of estrogen. We have estrone, which is E1, that's really the primary estrogen that we make post menopause. It's made in the adrenals and also a little bit of the fat tissue, which just as an aside, one of the reasons or one of the theories of why we can gain weight around our midsection and retain that weight post menopause is because that fat tissue is actually acting like an endocrine organ in and of itself, being able to produce estrogen during a where your body is making very, very, very little estrogen. So the body's like, hey, I'm doing a great thing. Don't get rid of me. I'm pumping out exactly more of what you need. And we're like, oh, my gosh, not like this. Not like this, though.


    Erin Holt [00:13:58]:

    Then of course, we have estradiol (E2), which is the primary estrogen during our reproductive years. And we have Estriol (E3), which is mainly produced during pregnancy. The placenta can actually produce that. And the ratio of these different estrogens of what your body produces can really shift based on multiple factors. So once the gland makes the hormones, we're not done there yet. It's not like, oh, the gland makes the hormones. And that's it. That's all she wrote, folks.


    Erin Holt [00:14:24]:

    There's a lot more that happens after that. So these hormones get converted and metabolized into other products that can impact your whole entire body. Estrogens get converted into 2-hydroxy estrone, 2-hydroxy estradiol, 4-hydroxy estradiol, 16-hydroxy metabolites. These are referred to as hormone metabolites. And what happens is a hydroxy group, it's a hydrogen oxygen group, get attached to the 2 carbon or the 4 carbon or the 16 carbon. So there's this little change in structure. I mean, this is going back to like chemistry class. Do you remember? Are you with me? You don't have to remember this stuff.


    Erin Holt [00:15:02]:

    It's okay. If you're a practitioner, you actually should be remembering this stuff. This is important stuff for you to know, especially if you're running a DUTCH Test. Because we are seeing all of this on the DUTCH Test. This is what we're looking at, these metabolites. And that's kind of the benefit of using dried urine to test hormones as opposed to serum is that you get to see these metabolites. So that's kind of like the benefit of doing the DUTCH Test is we get to see all these hormone metabolites. So when that happens, they become different versions of estrogen, slightly different versions of estrogen that have slightly different effects and impacts.


    Erin Holt [00:15:36]:

    So these metabolites go back into circulation and can bind to receptors. So they have far reaching effects. So again, it's not just what is the gland producing, it's also what happens after the glands produce the hormones. Where do they go? What do they turn into? What do they become? So why am I bringing all of this up on this particular episode? It's because where this happens is in two primary places. The liver and then the gut and the microbiome. These hormones, all of them, all the hormones and the metabolites that I just discussed, they all have to be cleared out of the body at some point. And the way this happens is through the liver, just like how toxins are cleared out of the body because hormones are fat soluble, meaning we cannot eliminate them through urine, through sweat, or through poop. They're fat soluble.


    Erin Holt [00:16:31]:

    So in order for us to get rid of them through our detox channels, we have to convert them into a water soluble compound. So we have to take something fat soluble and make it water soluble and then the body can eliminate it. So how the liver does this is by adding compounds to those hormones to make them water soluble. So this might be a sulfur compound, it might be a glucuronic acid. And with this compound attached, the hormones then can be safely and effectively cleared out of the body.


    Erin Holt [00:18:00]:

    So sticking with this estrogen journey. And again, you can actually see all of this on a DUTCH Test printout, which is pretty cool. Phase one, phase two. And if you have a DUTCH Test, your practitioner should be explaining all of this to you. It's like one of the things that I love to geek out on anytime we do a touch DUTCH Test with somebody is like going through every component of this and showing them, hey, this is how you're clearing estrogens out of the body. This is what they're doing. This is where they're going. So if you're looking at a DUTCH Test or if you're not.


    Erin Holt [00:18:29]:

    Phase two. So we have two different phases of detoxification, let's call it in the liver. Phase two pathway involves something called glucuronidation or glucuronidation is part of the phase two pathway of the liver. And it's really, really, really important for estrogens. So the liver detoxifies estrogens, remember, from a fat soluble state to a water soluble state. And how it does this is by attaching glucuronic acid. So glucuronic acid binds to estrogen and a new little package is formed. And that new little package can be eliminated out how, you ask? Great cue, let me tell you.


    Erin Holt [00:19:08]:

    It gets released into the bile and then it goes into the gut. So you bet your ass you're going to need good gallbladder health for this. If you've been listening to the podcast, you know we talk a lot about gallbladder health. This is part of the reason why. So you need gallbladder contraction for the bile to be released. You need good bile flow. And so the bile is grabbing these things and bringing it into the gut for elimination and for clearance. So gallbladder and bile, which are part of the gut, the digestive tract, are both critical components for normal estrogen circulation clearance for overall hormone balance.


    Erin Holt [00:19:47]:

    We've discussed the nitty gritties of that on the show before, but you know, it's Always good for a little refresher. And that takes us to the estrobolome, which is a key component for estrogen metabolism. The estrobolome is a name for the bacteria in your gut that metabolize estrogens. They modulate estrogen function. So there's this paper, so it's PMID 28778332 that refers to this as the estrogen gut microbiome axis. And I just love that term. I love it a lot. There is in our guts an enzyme called beta-glucuronidase.


    Erin Holt [00:20:29]:

    You might have heard me mention it on the show before. And what this enzyme does, this little rascal, is to deconjugate estrogens back into their active form. What the hell does that mean? So basically, beta-glucuronidase, this enzyme, can uncouple that package that we just talked about. So remember I said glucuronic acid comes along and it pops on to estrogen. It makes this little package so everybody's happy and we can clear it out. Beta-glucuronidase. This crazy guy, this crazy cat, this rascal, this maverick comes over and says, I don't think so. Pops it off.


    Erin Holt [00:21:07]:

    So it uncouples that package, it takes off the conjugated glucuronic acid, and then it converts estrogen into a form that cannot be eliminated from the body. So the hormone goes back into circulation and it can compete with other hormones. So not only is it not being effectively cleared out, the estrogen is like live. It's, it's a real live wire. It's having normal estrogen effects in the body. And this is where things get really interesting and where you should really pay attention, because someone might have signs and symptoms of high estrogen levels, like breast tenderness, breast swelling, irregular periods, heavy periods, painful periods, mood changes, irritability, depression, weight gain, fatigue, headaches. But, and so we might see this, this constellation of symptoms and think, oh, there's probably high estrogen levels. And you'd be right to assume that.


    Erin Holt [00:22:03]:

    But then you test their hormone levels and they might look absolutely fine. They might be a normal, healthy range, because this is all happening at the level of the gut in microbiome. This is not something that a blood test is going to pick up. This isn't even something that a hormone or a DUTCH hormone test is going to pick up, because it's happening at the level of, of the gut level of the microbiome. So what I really want you to understand, a key takeaway here is that DYSBIOSIS which is that word that we use to describe any imbalance in the microbiome, the gut bacteria, either too much bad guys, too little good guys, or a combination of both. Any amount of imbalance there can contribute to high amounts of this enzyme, beta-glucuronidase.


    Erin Holt [00:24:14]:

    So what we see is we have unhealthy gut bacteria, we have dysbiosis, which can lead to alterations in beta glucuronidase, which can lead to abnormal shifts of these metabolite ratios which can lead to hormone imbalance. And some of these metabolites are good, they're more protective and some of them are more proliferative. So especially with estrogen, estrogen, I think of it as like, it makes things grow. And there are certain forms, varieties, metabolites of estrogen that are more make things grow, they're more proliferative. And so when we see more of those metabolites we, it can contribute to more of the like estrogen load, but we can also see alteration in circulating estrogens. And this can contribute, and this is pretty well backed up in the literature, this can contribute to obesity, metabolic syndrome, certain cancers, endometriosis, infertility, PCOS Polycystic ovarian syndrome, cardiovascular disease, cognitive function, mood disorders, depression. It really can impact a lot of our health. Okay, so again, let me just retrace the steps.


    Erin Holt [00:25:26]:

    If we have dysbiosis imbalance in the gut, it can lead to a lot of this hormone imbalance. It's a very simplistic way to phrase it. So, of course, we need good gut function, good, healthy gut in order to have good, healthy hormones. Now, I know I was really, really focused on estrogen there. Before we move on, I do want to just shout out the thyroid here because obviously thyroid hormone is a hormone, and the gut microbiome plays a huge role here as well. So the thyroid gland is an endocrine gland, and the gland itself produces T4 that has. That's thyroid hormone. And it has some cellular activity, but really it needs to be converted into T3, which is its more metabolic form.


    Erin Holt [00:26:13]:

    T3 binds to receptors. It has more of the metabolic effects. It's like the most simplistic way to put it is like, it's like the more active hormone. T3 is more active than T4. And in order to make this conversion of T4 to T3, we need a certain enzyme, a certain type of enzyme, which is a deoidinase enzyme. I don't know why I'm having such trouble saying that. I've said this countless times in my life. But we're not going to.


    Erin Holt [00:26:39]:

    Again, I'm not going to do violence to myself. So you. You get what you get and you don't get upset. Basically, it's a certain. It's a certain enzyme, and we need that enzyme to convert T4 into T3. And now some of this happens in the liver, but the gut microbiome can play a role as well. So, you know, I just use estrogen as an example to keep things moving along and make things simple. But this impacts other hormones as well, too.


    Erin Holt [00:27:03]:

    Okay, we'll get more into thyroid issues in a few weeks. I've got a episode ready to talk about thyroid health. But just understand that when we are working with someone with thyroid dysfunction, we're almost always, yeah, just about always looking at the gut as well. Okay. So that is one way the gut influences your hormones. And none of this is even touching. It's not even addressing leaky gut. So I'm going to get into that in more detail in the next couple of weeks here, especially as it relates to pcos, menopause, testosterone levels, both male and female.


    Erin Holt [00:27:36]:

    So you'll want to tune back in to learn about the leaky Gut connection. But to stick with today's topic, this is why dysbiosis is a major concern when you have people with hormone issues. Okay. Or if you yourself has hormone issues. We need to always be considering the gut. And one way to support hormone balance through your gut is to address any dysbiosis in the gut. One way that we look at that is through a stool test called the GI-MAP. And one thing that I will say is that the GI-MAP stool test shows levels of that beta glucuronidase enzyme that I was talking about before.


    Erin Holt [00:28:18]:

    So when we're looking at a DUTCH test, sometimes what I will say is like, hey, we can see phase one and phase two clearance. Phase three is happening at the level of the gut though, and so we can't see that on a DUTCH test. So having hormone labs with a stool test really shows us a lot more data in terms of how you are clearing hormones out of your body. So just, just a heads up, word to the wise with that, but that is one thing that we pretty consistently see with on GI-MAP. We can see these elevated beta glucuronidase levels and we know that this person is struggling to effectively clear hormones out of their body. And that's something that needs to be addressed so we can address the dysbiosis and we can simultaneously be working toward an overall healthy microbiome and microbiome diversity.


    Erin Holt [00:30:23]:

    So let's talk about how to do that. I want to give you some big takeaways here because in order for the microbiome to have proper function, it needs to be diverse. Health depends on diversity. A diverse ecosystem is a healthy ecosystem. Lack of diversity can lead to a lot more than just hormone issues. It can lead to asthma, allergies, obesity, metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, body wide inflammation. Right? So we need a diverse microbiome for all of these things in the best way. The best way to create a diverse, robust, healthy microbiome is through diet.


    Erin Holt [00:31:07]:

    And you have so much control over this. Isn't that a beautiful thing? Is not great. Isn't that wonderful? Doesn't that just tickle you pink every time you eat? It's like a little love letter to yourself. Okay, so how do we eat for a diverse microbiome? Ideally, keep dysbiosis at bay to prevent it from happening in the first place. It is a whole foods diet with lots of fiber and lots of plant foods. The more plant foods we eat, the more diverse our plants are, the greater the chance we will have of feeding all the different types of microbes and the greater diversity we will have in our ecosystem. Because you have so many different types of bacteria and some of them are like little piggies. Show me how the piggies eat.


    Erin Holt [00:31:51]:

    They, they'll eat anything, but some of them are like more picky. They've got like a refined palate. They won't just eat anything. So the more types of plants you eat, the more likely that you will be feeding all of the good guys and creating that diversity. And you know, I talked about this recently on a show that we can really get stuck in a rut of eating like the same 5 to 10 veggies over and over and over and on paper. It might look like a really, really healthy diet. But most of us can really work on our diversity. And it does have to be plant fiber diversity, animal protein diversity is good for other reasons.


    Erin Holt [00:32:26]:

    It just doesn't affect the microbiome in the same way. So think about it like this. Plant food diversity, getting a lot of multicolored whole food, plant foods and fibers, veggies, fruits, herbs, spices. Eating all of that can lead to good microbiome diversity. And microbiome diversity leads to healthier body Healthier hormones. So one thing to do is to shoot for 30 to 40 species per week. I talked about it a couple of episodes when I broke down like a day in the life of my eating. I talked about how to kind of work different species, different plant species every week.


    Erin Holt [00:33:04]:

    One way you can do this, we've implemented this with our clients, is to make a microbiome mash. It sounds kind of yucky, but it's not as bad as it sounds. So basically what you would do is you take one diet and you take crap ton of veggies. Maybe you go to the farmer's market and you just ball out and you get like 10 to 15 to 20 different types of veggies and you blend them all up. So you need like a high speed blender for this. And you would just put a bunch of greens, beets, carrots, just a bunch of different stuff, all in a blender and you put them in. I have these silicone, they're like little silicone cube trays. You can use them for like ice cubes.


    Erin Holt [00:33:48]:

    And I just put them in those and then you can freeze them. And so you have these microbiome mash ice cubes and you can throw them into your daily smoothie. If you have a, if you're like adding fruit or you have a flavored protein powder, you don't even taste them. That's why it's like, it sounds gross in theory, but in practice it's not that gross. And this is giving you a ton of different diversity. And every time you make your mash, you can use different veggies. And so that you're just getting a big blast of diversity into your diet with that. Of course, different prebiotic fibers is always a really good beta to feed the bacteria.


    Erin Holt [00:34:22]:

    And rather than giving you a play by play on exactly how to do that, I'm going to give you episode 129 because I gave you the play by play already in 129, how to eat for True Gut health. And I break down all the different types of fibers, where to get them, different supplements you can take, how to get them through foods. It's a really, really comprehensive episode that will teach you how to eat for overall microbiome diversity. But if you do this, you are really feeding the good bacteria in your gut and that is going to help with your hormone health. So I hope this was a helpful episode for you. If it is just DM me, let me know. Show me some of your microbiome ash. Show me some of diversity that you're eating.


    Erin Holt [00:35:02]:

    I would love to see it over on Instagram. All right, friends, I will check you next week. Bye.


    Erin Holt [00:35:13]:

    Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Functional Nutrition Podcast. If you got something from today's show, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend and keep coming back for more. Take care of you.

Next
Next

Episode 345: The Microbiome Uncovered: Expert Insights on Gut Health, Testing, and Healing with Dr. Thomas Fabian