Gut Health: How to Improve It in 5 Simple Steps
- Vicky Glisson
- Jan 19
- 4 min read
Updated: Feb 22
Julie Anne Lee, DCH RCSHom | Jun 16, 2021 |
I’ve long (and I mean looong) been fascinated by the gut. For years, people dismissed it as a simple system where food went in, was digested, and then exited. I honestly couldn’t follow that logic—there were just too many connections. I saw it every day at my veterinary hospital.
Chronic diseases and cancer are at epidemic levels. In my 20 years of practice, it became clear that gut health is closely linked to these health issues. If an animal’s gut health is impaired, many systems throughout the body can be affected. There are myriad health issues that result from a damaged gut. Plus, many things in your dog’s environment can cause that damage.
Thankfully, I’m no longer the odd one out! We now understand how complex the relationship between gut health and overall health is. There’s a growing body of research focusing on gut health, and it’s not just about humans. Dog gut health is equally important, and the same goes for any animal.
Fortunately, there are many things you can do to start repairing and rebuilding gut health. But first, how can you tell if your pet’s gut health is suffering?
Signs of Dog Gut Health Problems
If your dog has vomiting, diarrhea, or a loss of appetite, those are pretty clear signs that something is wrong. However, dog gut health is about so much more than that. It makes sense, as about 80% of your pet’s immune system lives in the gut.
Sometimes, the signs can be much harder to detect. For example, leaky gut syndrome, though harder to spot, can lead to food allergies, digestive problems, ear infections, and many common health conditions stemming from inflammatory disorders. Leaky gut occurs when the junctions in the lining of the mucous membrane become larger than they should, allowing undigested food and other particles to "leak" into the bloodstream, leading to disease.
Many factors can damage the gut, causing dysbiosis (a decline of friendly, beneficial gut bacteria) and creating chronic diseases in our dogs today. These include:
Antibiotics
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatories and steroids
Over-vaccination
Processed food
Environmental toxins
Stress
Grains or beans (anything with lectins)
Yeast (candida)
So, what can we do to support dog gut health?
5 Simple Steps to Boost Gut Health
There are many different things you can do to help improve your dog’s overall health by enhancing gut health. Here are five simple steps you can implement right now!
1. Probiotics
The vast majority of microorganisms exist within the digestive tract. A normal digestive tract contains both “good” and “bad” (pathogenic) bacteria. However, when a gut is traumatized, pathogenic bacteria can take over, overwhelming the “good guys” and creating poor gut health.
Probiotics encourage those helpful communities to flourish in the gut, crowding out harmful bacteria and keeping the system balanced. Species-specific probiotics are even better. Each species of animal has its own specific microflora, so finding probiotics that have those host-specific traits means they’re at home in your animal’s gut, making them even more effective.
2. Prebiotics
Without prebiotics, those vital probiotics would just starve and die. Prebiotics feed the beneficial bacteria colonies in your animal’s gut. Chlorella is a good functional prebiotic, as is turkey tail mushroom. Here are more good prebiotic sources:
Berries
Apples
Bananas
Watermelon
Cabbage
Dandelion greens
Asparagus
Broccoli
Cauliflower
3. Digestive Enzymes
Digestive enzymes are paramount in the digestion process. They help break down food into absorbable nutrients and support the synergistic process of the digestive tract. Digestive enzymes can be found in supplements like Healthy Gut or naturally in foods like pineapples, papaya, kefir, kiwifruit, ox bile, and pancreas.
4. A Species-Appropriate Diet
Highly processed foods are particularly hard to digest, and those with a high starch content can be an even bigger problem. Carbs turn into sugar in the body, and yeast feeds on sugar, unbalancing the microbiome of the gut.
A species-appropriate diet consisting of fresh, whole foods, rather than processed high-carb foods, helps provide the gut (and the whole body) with everything it needs to thrive. Especially good additions for gut health include:
Fermented foods – sauerkraut, fermented vegetables, kefir, yogurt
Bone broth
Pumpkin (make sure you’re buying pure pumpkin, NOT pumpkin pie filling!)
5. Helpful Herbs
Several different herbs can help improve dog gut health:
Slippery Elm is a large, deciduous tree native to Eastern North America known for its mucilaginous, strengthening, and nutritive properties. It exerts a soothing effect on the mucous membranes of the digestive tract and can discourage stomach and duodenal ulcers, colitis, diverticulitis, GI inflammation, and acidity.
Aloe Vera is known for its healing effects on the skin and intestinal tract. Its primary internal use is for constipation or soothing the GI. In humans, research shows it can help with several digestion-related issues.
Licorice root is considered one of the world’s oldest herbal remedies. It benefits gastric mucosa by improving circulation, secretion of protective layers, and supporting the growth of new mucosal cells.
You can find all of these in Canine Gut Soothe!
For the last 30 years, I’ve been immersed in the study of the microbiome. What I’ve discovered is that gut health and bacterial organisms are the foundation of a healthy body. Helping to prevent and derail chronic conditions starts with a healthy diet, a diverse gut ecosystem, and love.
Julie Anne Lee, DCH, RcsHOM, has been the owner and practitioner of some of the busiest and longest-standing holistic veterinary hospitals and clinics in North America. This includes founding the first licensed strictly holistic veterinary clinic in Canada. She developed and taught a three-year post-graduate program for veterinarians at the College of Animal Homeopathic Medicine. She has also presented lectures for the American Homeopathic Veterinary Association on homeopathy and functional pathology, the British Homeopathic Veterinary Surgeons Association on treating chronic disease, the Canadian Society of Homeopaths on clinical comparisons of the treatment of humans to animals, P.E.I Veterinary University on the gut microbiome, and many more over the last 20 years.
