100% natural ways to improve your gut health

If you're trying to improve your gut health, you've probably been told to take probiotics, fiber, digestive enzymes, or another supplement. But here's what I think we're missing. Gut health isn't just about what you put into your body. It's about what your body can actually do with it. Can your digestive system move food properly, break it down, absorb and utilize nutrients, eliminate waste, and can it do it all of that without stress constantly throwing it off? In this video, I'm gonna show you five completely natural ways to improve those functions using principles from Chinese medicine alongside modern physiology. And most importantly, none of them require buying another supplement. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Heim, board licensed doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine and author of the health book, Mastering the Day. Let's jump in. You know, one of the reasons why I'm so anti this philosophy of probiotics, of taking supplements, of taking enzymes. Number one, it's a very expensive approach that usually doesn't fix the root of a lot of digestive problems. But number two is a conversation I had with one of my mentors. He's a Chinese medicine doctor named Brian McMahon. And he said to me, you know, this culture of Californians and people now reading stuff online or watching a little Instagram reel, buying a supplement or putting all these tonics into their acai bowl every day. These expensive tonics just become expensive bowel movements, he said. Because if the body can't digest and process that food, and if the digestive system isn't working already in the first place, then basically what you just get from expensive tonics is one very expensive bowel movement. Now I want to introduce you to a five-step process based on five natural functions. And you basically want to score yourself, like which of these functions is my gut doing well on? Which is it having a problem with? So strategy number one is improving movement of the gut. So the first thing I want you to do is not to improve what you're eating, it's introduce movement. Because healthy digestion requires movement from beginning to end. In Chinese medicine, we describe this through the movement of qi or function. The stomach has a particularly important job. The goal is to move stomach qi downward. Move your food downward. So when movement becomes disrupted, you might notice bloating after meals, pressure and distension, burping, trapped gas, or a feeling of food that's sitting in your stomach, or your digestion that gets kind of dramatically worse when you get stressed. And that's why some of the simplest things I recommend, one of them is also completely free. Move after you eat, not like an intense workout, but just go take a 10 or 15 minute walk like a lot of people do in Europe. So if someone, let's say, overeats and has food accumulation, you're indigested, fullness, sourness, regurgitation, there's a classical formula called bao hou wan, regulate the middle pill, traditionally used to reduce food accumulation and restore your GI movement So, if someone's GI gets worse with stress, frustration, or tension, we think about formulas that traditionally regulate what we call constrained liver chi. Think about the stress response. And if someone has fullness and stagnation but underneath that they're actually weak, tired, bloated, and deficient, we might consider a different strategy. Such as a formula called Xiang Sha Liu Jun Zi Tang. Now that's an important distinction because Chinese medicine isn't thinking bloating, take the herb. It's why are you bloated. So whether we're talking about walking, qigong, breathing, or herbs, the first principle is the same. Before you add more things to your gut, make sure your gut can move. Because movement is only step one. Once food is moving through your GI properly, the body still has to do something incredibly important with it, transform it. So strategy number two is improving transformation. Once the food is moving properly, the next question becomes, Can your digestive system actually transform what you're eating? Because eating healthy food and being able to use that food are two different things. You can have the perfect diet, organic veggies, protein, fiber, all the supplements in the world, but your body still has to break that meal down, absorb it, And turn those raw materials into something useful. In Chinese medicine, we say this is the responsibility of the spleen and stomach. Now when that function is weak, we call it spleen qi deficiency. And these are the patients who come in and say, I eat, but afterwards I'm just bloated, exhausted, and just out of it. So one of the simplest ways to support this process is make digestion easier. Start with how you eat, slow down, chew your food thoroughly, and don't chronically eat until you're uncomfortably full. Give your GI some rhythm instead of grazing from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to sleep. Now, when we prescribe herbs and formulas, we're not asking, what's the best herb for digestion? That's the wrong question. We're asking, what is preventing this particular person's digestion from functioning properly? And that's why Chinese herbs shouldn't become another version of supplement culture, where everyone takes the same formula. Because the goal isn't to simply add more. It's to help restore the function that's struggling. If you want to understand what's actually driving your bloating, food reactions, and digestive symptoms, go to Instagram, DM me the word gut, and I'll send you a full video breaking down my process step-by-step to fix bloating and food allergies. Or you can take my free gut root cause quiz using the link right below the video. Or by scanning the QR code on screen, that will help you download the quiz, it's totally free. Now once your gut can actually move and transform food, there's another question. Are you actually nourishing your body with the right foods? Now, strategy number three is very, very East Asian medicine. Nourishing with the five flavors. Once food can move and your GI can actually transform it, the next question is your body being nourished by it. Because I have patients come in who eat incredibly clean, who are actually becoming like less nourished. And then they rotate through like the same five or six safe foods every day. And that's not where I want you to end up. So here's a much more practical way to think about this. And here's something Chinese medicine understood very differently. We don't only look at food in terms of proteins, fats, and carbs. We also look at flavor. So in five phases theory, there are five primary flavors. Sour, bitter, sweet, pungent, and salty. And each corresponds with a different functional system, and each has a different action on the body. And this doesn't mean, like, eat something sour and you heal your liver. It means that instead of eating the same handful of foods every day, we can use different flavors to create a more varied diet, and in Chinese medicine, flavors can influence certain internal organs. So let's start with sour, associated with wood, the liver, and gallbladder. Think of like lemon or lime, berries or tart plums, or vinegar, or some naturally fermented sour food. Traditionally, sour has like an astringing and gathering quality, so it helps conserve flavor rather than disperse it. But small amounts of sour foods can actually add acidity, freshness, and also add diversity to the diet. Now let's talk about bitter, which is associated with fire, the heart, and the small intestine. We have a flavor here that's almost disappearing from the modern diet, which is bitter. Think about arugula, dandelion greens, radicchio, or endive. Bitter plants also give us an interesting bridge into modern digestive physiology, right? Think of like digestive bitters. For example, artichoke is a bitter plant that's been studied in a small randomized double-blinded crossover trial. Researchers gave 20 people a standardized artichoke extract directly measured bile secretion. The extract produced a significant increase in bile secretion compared to placebo at later measurements. Now that's an extract, not the same as a bowl of arugula, but it's pretty neat and it gives us a physiological parallel for why bitter plants have such a long history around digestion. And bile matters because your liver produces it, your gallbladder stores and concentrates it, and it's released into the intestines where it helps with the digestion and absorptions of fats. Now let's move on to the sweet flavor. This is associated with earth and the spleen and stomach, mostly the pancreas. So sweet is misunderstood. Because in Chinese medicine, when we talk about sweet foods, we don't mean donuts and soda. We mean the natural sweetness of whole foods, like sweet potatoes or squash, oats or rice, carrots or other root vegetables. Traditionally, the sweet flavor is nourishing, harmonizing, and tonifying. Because excess refined sweetness is very different from using naturally sweet whole foods as part of a balanced diet. If you're severely underweight, sweet and sugar calories can be life-saving. But if you're diabetic, it can make things worse. Now let's go to pungent. This is associated with metal, the lung, and large intestine. If we think about pungent spices, think of like garlic, ginger, scallions, and radish. And when you think about pungent, think about what spices do to your sinuses, right? It makes perfect sense why a pungent spice would be associated with the lung. It opens up your nose, your ability to breathe. When you think about salt you think about someone who has low blood pressure, someone who has quote-unquote adrenal fatigue, someone who's very burned out, may have orthostatic hypotension where you stand up too quickly and you feel like you're going to fall over or faint. This is associated with the adrenals very often and the adrenals in Chinese medicine are associated with the kidney. So very commonly supplementing with salt can actually improve those symptoms. Of course too much can also worsen things, but that's an example of how certain organs benefit from certain flavors in your diet. Now the fourth strategy is eliminate because healthy digestion doesn't just end when you absorb nutrients. You know one of the big mistakes I see with patients is they say I'm constipated so I need more fiber. Sometimes you do but constipation isn't just one problem. You can have slow transit, hard stools, pelvic floor problems where you're producing stool but having difficulty evacuating it. So start with a few fundamentals besides adding fiber. First use your body's natural timing. Your colon is more active after eating, especially your first meal. That's the gastrocolic reflex. So give yourself time after the first meal. The second thing is you can change your position. If you put your feet on a stool so your knees come up above the hips, it creates more of like a squat-like position that makes things easier. And then individualize your fiber and your fluids. If you're eating almost no plant foods and your stool is dry, try adding foods like kiwi, oats, soaked chia seeds or flax, cooked vegetables, that can really really help. Now the other thing you can do is abdominal massage. One 2025 meta-analysis involving more than 1400 participants found that abdominal massage was associated with more frequent bowels, shorter intestinal transit, and improved constipation symptoms. So just literally massaging your GI clockwise can make a difference. Now, we don't treat all cases of constipation the same. For example, one classic is an herb called huomaren, which is hemp seed, traditionally used to moisten intestinal dryness. But someone else constipated because everything is stuck, distension, gas, difficulty getting it going. In that case, we might think about using herbs that we say move qi, like zhi shi, which is immature orange peel. Then you have the cold, exhausted person who goes several days without a bowel movement because the system kind of lacks the strength to move. Rather than simply adding laxatives, which will deplete them more, we use herbs such as rou tong rong. which will help gently moisten the bowels and move them. The same symptom, constipation, but three different patterns and three different, completely different, treatment and herbal strategies. Now once you can move, transform, nourish and eliminate, there's one final piece which is regulation. So strategy number five is regulation because you can eat the perfect diet but if every meal happens while you're answering emails or rushing between meetings or mentally stressed, you're ignoring one of the biggest influences on digestion which is your nervous system. Your gut and brain are constantly communicating through the gut-brain axis, involving the autonomic and enteric nervous systems, hormones, immune signaling, and other pathways. And stress doesn't shut off your GI, it's more complex, but it can influence motility, secretion, sensation, and even how strongly you perceive bloating. Chinese medicine describes this a bit differently. We'll often talk about things like the liver maintaining the smooth flow of qi. And when liver qi is constrained, it interferes with the spleen-stomach, the pancreas. That's why some people tell me my GI is fine when I'm on vacation. The moment I get back to work, I'm bloated again. So, something incredibly simple you can do. Before you eat, take two minutes. Put the phone down. Take two slow diaphragmatic breaths. Let the abdomen expand as you inhale and soften as you exhale. Then eat. Not because breathing magically heals the gut, but because you're changing the physiological state in which you're asking your body to digest. And then create a rhythm. Try to eat at consistent meal times. This is one of those ancient pieces of dietetics advice that doctors used to mention a lot in GI manuals through Chinese medicine history. So my point here is that gut health isn't just about finding the right probiotic supplement or superfood. You have to restore the function. Can your digestive system move, transform, nourish, eliminate, and regulate? Because sometimes the question isn't what else should I put in my gut or in my smoothie, the better question is what does my gut need to function better overall. Now if you're recognizing some of those patterns in your own digestion, this is exactly what I look at with my patients. Going through a step-by-step process to fix their bloating, their food reactions, and food allergies and GI symptoms. If you want, DM me the word gut on Instagram. I'll send you a full video breaking down my process step by step in a video. Or below this video, I've linked up my free gut root cause quiz. It's the first link below this video. There's also a QR code here on screen. You can scan to download that. I put together a deeper step-by-step training on how I approach finding those root cause patterns and why some gut problems keep coming back. So click the link over here for a full training on step-by-step how to fix your bloating, constipation, and food allergies for good.