Dude, Where’s My Magic Bullet?

A magic bullet is a quick fix to a difficult or complex problem. When our gut stops working and we feel like crap, it can seem like an extremely complicated problem.

What caused this? What did I do wrong? How come everyone else can eat food and not have all these problems?

Then we go on the internet to look for solutions and are bombarded with information about a million hideous illnesses. We hunt for solutions but only find unclear or conflicting advice. We have no clue what to do.

Then we go to the doctor. Is there a pill, a special antibiotic for this? More likely we’ll be sent home with a vague diagnosis, no real understanding of why this is happening and no quick fix.

By this point we’re desperate for anything that looks like a quick, clean solution: a magic bullet. We jump on the latest diet or we spend a fortune on the latest supplements, only to find that nothing happens. There’s no improvement. We get totally bummed out.

Very easily we can spiral into gut-wrenching despair as we imagine the rest of our days filled with diarrhea, constipation, bad skin, weight gain, depression, autoimmune conditions and whatever else is in our own personal combination of gut-related symptoms.

Here’s the thing: for most of us there is no magic bullet to our gut problems. Instead we need to make lots of changes to our diet and our lifestyle, and we need to make new habits and stick to them.

Every little change we make gives us an edge, and soon we turn it around, we’re getting better, little by little, and our lives are transformed. Take a look at Clean Eating: More Than Just A Fad

Probiotics can be a classic example of this. People say angrily, ‘I’ve been taking a probiotic for ages and I don’t feel any better! What’s going on?’

Probiotics can be very effective and are an important element of the gut-healing equation, no question. However for most of us they are not a magic bullet that will solve our issues overnight.

Depending on the state of our gut right now, probiotics can even make matters worse. When our microbiome is in ‘dysbiosis’ it can be extremely sensitive and almost anything can trigger a worsening of your symptoms.

Dysbiosis means that we’ve lost the normal healthy abundance of different species of bacteria, and the unfriendly ones have taken over.

Take a look at What Is My Microbiome and Why Your Gut Is Broken

So keep an eye on yourself. Are you bouncing from diet to diet, supplement to supplement, plan to plan in search of an easy solution?

Instead make sure you’re sticking with strategies long enough to genuinely see whether they’re working or not. Make a point of looking for lessons and reasons to be positive, however small, even when things don’t go according to your initial high hopes.

Each little bit of knowledge and each lesson learned through experience takes us a step closer to feeling great again.