326. Gut Healing Without Extremes: Ancestral Nutrition and Simple, Whole Foods | Heather Woodruff

When there's a health thing coming out where they're like, eggs are terrible for you, it's like, can you can pause with all that noise and be like, could I grow, raise, harvest, or hunt? Yes, I'm going to keep eating eggs. Those work for me. They're great. So I'm going to carry on. I'm not going to listen to the noise or the drama that's going on in the health world because there's a lot of it and it's loud. And so grounding into that, can I grow, raise, harvest, or hunt is kind of the foundation when it comes to ancestral eating. My name is Lisa, mother of nine and creator of the blog and YouTube channel Farmhouse on Boone. On this podcast, I like to talk about simplifying your life so you can live out your priorities. I help you learn how to cook from scratch and decorate on a budget through this podcast and my courses, Simple Sourdough and the Simple Sewing series. I will leave links to these resources in the show notes and description box below. Now let's get into the show. Welcome back to the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast. Today we are going to talk about gut health and practices we can do in our kitchen to help our guts and to heal. We're going to be chatting with Heather Woodruff. Now, Heather Woodruff is a gut health educator and ancestral nutrition practitioner who helps families nourish their homes with simple, time-tested foods and practices. She teaches families how to support digestion through slow cooking, fermentation, and whole food meals. Drawing on both professional training and personal experience, Heather's passionate about helping people reconnect with food as medicine and build sustainable rhythms that support long-term health. Her work empowers families to step away from modern diet confusion and embrace nourishing practices that honor the body's natural design. I think this is an important distinction because sometimes this world of health can be really confusing. We hear a lot of conflicting information, different opinions, and I think just going back to the basics is refreshing. So let's dive into this conversation. Well, Heather, welcome on. I am so looking forward to talking with you about gut health through ancestral eating. simple kitchen practices, inflammation, digestion, all of that kind of stuff. I think a lot of that is on our minds for so many reasons. So let's start with introductions. Tell us about yourself and your mission and what you do online. Yeah, what I do, and I've been doing this work for, I think, oh my goodness, I think it's like 13 plus years now. And I've been working with supporting women, supporting mothers, with really helping them to heal their ongoing digestive issues. And I do this from a place of deep groundedness of ancestral eating and really focusing on the food. I know the health noise out there is so loud right now with the latest shiny tool, biohacking anything. And so I really bring it back to the simplicity of our kitchens, how I think our digestive healing journeys and our healing journeys in general are deeply sacred. I think they're really important for us to move through. And I think our kitchens are sacred spaces where medicine can be created. I think they're the heart and the hearth of the home. and we've kind of forgotten that. We've forgotten that and we really look at food as like another thing on our to-do list. We're so busy. Our kitchens are cluttered and just, you know, they're not treated as these beautiful spaces they are. So I really work with women, with mothers who are looking to transform the way they're eating into medicine that is healing and just beautifully nourishing for their body. I find then with women, when mothers heal, that ripples out into our families. There's so many times that I've worked with women, the mother, and they're like, oh my gosh, my husband's digestion got better. My kid's digestion got better. And so I love seeing the ripples that that happens with working with the women, working with that then ripple into their families and even their communities and beyond from there. Yeah. Oh man. So much to unpack there. It's interesting you mentioned the kitchen because I hadn't really thought much about that, but creating a space that's clutter-free. Are there other places you like to start when it comes to the kitchen environment? Because that's been something I've been thinking about a lot lately because right now we're building a new house and I love the way the kitchen feels there. And I don't love the way the kitchen feels here. Not saying I'm not still cooking from scratch, but there are a few things about it that I'm I'm like, man, if we had time to change this, if we weren't moving into a new house, this is something that we'd have to change because it's a space that you're in a lot if you're cooking from scratch and it kind of feels like a little cave that I'm in. So how do you help people start with the kitchen? Yeah, because we can get into this cycle of like, what should I be eating? What should I be eating? What should I not be eating? I know a lot of women that when I start working with them, They've really gotten on this little hamster wheel of cutting out foods, cutting out foods, cutting out foods when it comes to chronic digestive issues and not thinking about the beautiful healing ancestral foods that we can add in in order to get off of that cycle. So being in our kitchen spaces, if you don't like being in your kitchen, if it is a place of like for you, I think that matters. You know, like it, you can get your diet perfect and do all of the right things. And if you are just like really in this space of when you're preparing food and doing it, I think that really matters with how we digest our food. You know, the gut brain connection is deeply a thing. And, you know, it's in ancestral wisdom as well as now finally, you know, science catching up with that ancestral wisdom and proving that case. So when it comes to the kitchen, I love recommending, you know, a declutter. Is there things in there that do not happen? Like, and you don't have to spend like weeks doing this. It could be a simple 15 minutes, look around, be like, what doesn't need to be here? I have a 10 year old daughter, things, artwork, you know, stuff just like gravitates over there, which is beautiful. and like, you know, other like wrappers of like things like just gravitate there. So doing a simple declutter and one, if you can take anything for your kitchen, light a candle. Like when you are about to just like, okay, I'm going to start preparing dinner. I love to just pause for a minute, take like three big breaths, like a motto in our house is that everything feels better after three big breaths, light a candle and like start preparing your food. Like just that Pete, like I love candles for just like, okay, it's going to help me anchor me. I have a candle lit literally right now as a, as an anchor, as a way to like, it just, it does create this, the sacred space with it. So do like a five, 10 minute declutter before you start light a candle, take three breaths and go from there. Yeah. I was actually going to mention the lighting because when I said I have things about my kitchen, I would change that made it sound like, Oh, if you don't, if you can't renovate your whole kitchen, then you can't enjoy being in there. And that is not what I meant because we were talking to my daughter and I just the other day, cause we spend a ton of time together in the kitchen and we have these horrible lights, like just the ceiling lights. And I'm like, if we could just switch those out to candelabra bulbs, like it could just be from the thrift shop, the antique shop, whatever, but something that has like sort of like a chandelier with like candelabra bulbs right there, we would enjoy being in this kitchen more. And looking back since we've, we're building a house. So we thought, oh, this is temporary. But since we've been here over a year, I'm like, we should have done that from day one because when it's dark out, I hate being in here, but like you, I will just light a few candles and then try to turn on like as little overhead light as possible. And there might be people out there who are like, are you kidding me? But lighting affects me so much. I just love the look. And so there are even certain light fixtures that if you swap them out, it would give the whole kitchen a different feel. The lights we have in there right now cast is just awful. My husband can't tell. He can't tell at all. But to me, I'm like, do you not hate being in here when these lights are on? I'd rather work in the dark than this. Even cute little lamps. That's true. Yes. I have a girlfriend who has these cute little lamps all over her countertop. And I'm like, oh my gosh, so great. That is so true. Actually, there's been times where I take the kids out for whatever reason. And one of my daughters will be in the kitchen when I get home. She always has grabbed the lamp from the living room, brought it into the kitchen, plugged it in, turned off all the lights. And so then she can cook with the better lighting. So she totally agrees with me because she thinks it makes sense to go get a special light just to enjoy being in the kitchen. So yeah, I guess that I did want to say like, yeah, it doesn't have to be a renovation. It can literally just be different bulbs, lamps, candles. That changes everything for me. Absolutely. Open a window maybe if you can. Oh my gosh, yes. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Now you also mentioned that people want to right away cut food out. That's kind of been like baked in for so long for us where when you have any kind of digestive issue, it's like, okay, well, you need to get rid of gluten. You need to get rid of dairy. you were saying that a lot of times you're just going back to ancestral practices. What does that look like when someone has an intolerance or in what way are you directing them to figure that out? Yeah. And sometimes we do need to replace out foods, like especially if we're in, so I don't want to discredit that because like there's some people are starting from a place where they, it's what they've known in terms of having like a lot of processed food in the diet, things, you know, and pieces. So I don't want to discredit, you know, the power of replacing foods. I'm very careful about my words, though, about like, I don't say, you know, when I'm working with women in my sacred gut healing program, I'm not like, we're cutting this out, we're cutting this out, we're replacing, like when we do replace something. And what that looks like when it comes to ancestral eating, like, in a nutshell, like, if I were going to just like, explain it very, very simply is that the majority of food that we're putting in our body, putting in our family's body, we could grow, raise, harvest, or hunt it when it really comes down to it. That doesn't mean we all have to be doing that. It doesn't mean we all have to be planting garden, raising our own animals. If you live in a homestead and you can, yay. But what that means is that when we're making choices like in our grocery stores or out, you know, shopping, really having a looking at it, look at the ingredients, even so-called healthy ones, even if you bought it at Whole Foods or at like, you know, looking at the ingredients, like would my great grandmother recognize this as food? You know, could I make this in my own kitchen? And a great example that I love using for this is like the whole butter versus margarine thing. And butter was demonized for decades and decades, you know, this beautiful ancestral food and, um, margarine was really pushed. It's like, this is healthier for you. This is healthier for you. But when it comes down to it, like we can make butter in our own kitchens. We absolutely can. Does it mean you have to? Absolutely not. But when I'm in the grocery store, you know, in looking, I'm going to, I'm going to put butter in my grocery store, especially if you're getting like a beautiful grass fed, you know, something from a local farmer, if you can. Those are the pieces that we really look at. Margarine, I'd probably blow up my kitchen trying to make that. There's so much science in that. And this is important, like it just because it says all natural on the, you know, on the anything that comes in a package, a can or anything. I'm always like, I don't even read the, the, the health things about like how much, you know, sugar, protein, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, what's in the ingredients? You know, would my great grandmother recognize that as food? Could I make it in my own kitchen? So that's the grounded place that I love eating, being from when it comes to making those choices. And then when there's a health thing coming out where they're like, eggs are terrible for you. It's like, you can pause with all that noise and be like, could I grow, raise, harvest, or hunt? Yes. I'm going to keep eating eggs. Those work for me. They're great. So I'm going to carry on. I'm not going to listen to the noise or the drama that's going on in the health world because there's a lot of it and it's loud. And so grounding into that, can I grow, raise, harvest, or hunt is kind of the foundation when it comes to ancestral eating. That does make it pretty simplified. Now, what about the actual execution? What are some simple kitchen practices that you recommend people start with? When it comes to gut healing in particular, a lot of people are always like, oh, are we fermenting everything and things? And I love fermented foods. I love including them in the diet. But also when it comes to pieces like that, or when it comes to fermentation, sometimes if the gut is imbalanced in a way where their microbiome is imbalanced fermented foods carry a lot of histamine and sometimes aren't always the best first thing to add if they're brand spanking new to you if you're doing them and they feel good yay keep going i love like getting getting women in my in my programs into a place where they're having like three to four fermented foods in the refrigerator at any one given time, so that they getting like a variety of microbiomes or different microbes in our beautiful bellies But when it comes to like first step it sometimes can be too much And I like to name that because sometimes people are like, I'm trying to do this healthy thing, this piece around fermented foods, and I flare up like my symptoms get worse with it. And I've just worked with many women over the years where that is the case for them. So my first go-to isn't always fermented foods, which is what people usually do, but in terms of a food implementation, it's doing lots of meat stocks and soups and the diet, making sure that our veggies are cooked when it comes to digestive healing. Raw veggies aren't evil, but if you have a temperamental tummy, we do digest cooked things a lot better. And our belly loves cooked things during the wintertime. We're in the season of, this is such a great season actually for deeply nourishing your body and your belly. So I love using meat stocks, not bone broth for digestive healing. So I love teaching how to create those. It's one of the first modules in my sacred gut healing program is how to make a proper like meat stock for deep digestive healing. And then from there you can make soups and stews and sauces and gravies and many things from that piece alone. Now, why do you say that over bone broth? Yeah, I know many are surprised by that one because it's like, bone broth, digestive health, let's do it. And I want to say clearly too, I'm not poo-pooing bone broth because bone broth is deeply nourishing, lots of vitamins and minerals, lots of nourishment in there. and it's a great gut tonifier. But for a digestive tract, if your digestive tract is inflamed and really temperamental, what can happen is that bone broth is really high in glycemic acids. It's really high in histamines. So this can actually be aggravating for a gut that's inflamed. It's something that I love transitioning people to later. So if anyone is listening and they don't have gut issues, go to town with your bone broth. It is so good. We have it every single week in our home. It is so great. But the meat stock piece is what's important for if you have a temperamental tummy or it's inflamed. And that's typically what I teach. And they're different. They are different. Yeah. Okay. So you said symptoms. What are some of the most common digestive symptoms you see in women and what are they often asking for as far as help goes? Yeah. Well, I find that women, when it comes to our guts, we always definitely look at bowel movements. And women are typically either in the more constipated side of things or they are quicker digestions where they have more softer stools. So ideally we're having this like one bowel movement per day. It's well-formed. It's easy to pass. One to three is totally fine. But when we are slower, like when we have more of a constipated belly, what happens with that is that different toxins and excess hormones and anything that our body has worked really hard to release and detoxify from us gets reabsorbed back into the body. And we can see a lot of one bloating. Bloating is probably one of the biggest symptoms of women that we experience. And I can dive into that because I know it's a big one for women in particular, but we see lots of bloating, but we can see with that constipated piece, we can see lots of hormone imbalances that start rising. We can see cholesterol levels start rising, even though you're like, my diet is great. And cholesterol can actually just be a sign of the body healing. It can be a sign of the body healing, or it can be a sign of that constipation. And then if you're a quicker digester, what happens is you're getting depleted in vitamins and minerals. Your body isn't digesting and absorbing all of the good nutrients that you're putting into the body. So I love getting to a place where you're usually moving into a more ancestral way of eating and starting to incorporate healing foods helps both those women like balance out the slow down if they need to with their digestion, like calm that inflammation that's causing them to their body to expel. But then also like speeding up for the women, women that do that slow down. So it brings them both to that even place where they're digesting and moving through everything at a really, really beautiful level. And when it comes to bloating, typically when a woman is bloated, there's, I kind of go with like two really, when you're really simplifying things down within those two, there's like many other aspects that play into it. But when it comes to bloating, one piece being is that if the microbiome is imbalanced in our gut, if there's more pathogenic microbes in there than health promoting ones, they off gas, those microbes will off gas. And that creates a lot of bloating. And then the other piece of bloating that can happen is if things are not being digested properly, if your stomach acid isn't acidic enough, we're always hating on our stomach acid, but we actually need an acidic acid. Or if, you know, if digestive enzymes aren't there, and our food can actually ferment inside our body and belly. We like to eat fermented foods, but not have them fermented in there. Yeah. And our bellies, which then, you know, if you think about your sauerkraut, you know, fermenting and there's little bubbles, like that's happening inside of you and it's, and it's storing up and then creating this, this bloated belly, especially like a lot of women will wake up with a flat belly in the morning. And then by the end of the day, looking like they're, you know, five months pregnant by the end. That was my journey for sure. My, my digestive healing journey. Yeah. Yeah. So it ends up being the same protocol really, no matter what the symptoms are going back to just the ancestral eating. So where do you usually have people start? Is it the same place or does it depend on symptoms? I love to start with a foundation. So there is a foundation though. There is oftentimes there's different healing medicinal foods that we can add in. If you are really prone to heartburn or gassic reflex, or if you are very constipated, those are pieces that I'm like, okay, let's put a little bit of extra oomph into those areas to try and get you pooping every day and try to get it so you can sleep if you're someone who lays down and you're getting a ton of acid reflex or heartburn. So sometimes I'll recommend to add in different healing foods into there or different medicinal specific. But I love starting with the foundation of an ancestral way of eating. Replacing out gluten for a period of time is something that I do actually teach in that as well. It's not something that I think everyone needs to stay on long term. but um but typically gluten carries a or triggers the body to release release zonulin which ends up creating a bit of a leaky gut scenario so something we'll do we'll sometimes we'll do a gluten pause is what i say and i'm like and i'm always very clear i'm like it's not evil i think and beautiful i make sourdough in our home i feed it to my family and but a part of part of my healing journey and the healing journey i've witnessed with with women that i work with are just like pausing that, letting the gut lining like heal and seal up, and then we can reintroduce it in a way in that beautiful sourdough way is how I recommend it. So there's some foundational pieces that we start with, but like one is like really getting that ancestral diet started. And this doesn't have to be, sometimes women will join my program and they will be like, yes, like let's, you know, we're going to get started as a specific date and like completely, you know, really, really go, which is really beautiful because it's very intentional. Or you can start really simply with, you know, start for me, my digestive healing journey started with Saturday night dinners. It was when, you know, nobody had anything going on during the week. I, you know, we weren't working. I had time to just like create this beautiful ancestral meal, try new recipes. If it failed, we could pop out for dinner really quick. It never really happened in that capacity. But it was starting with Saturday night dinners was a beautiful way to just start getting my rhythm going with transitioning into that ancestral way of eating. and start to move through into that. So then, then what, what ended up happening was I had these recipes that were somewhere when, and those would start filtering in to the rest of the week. And it was within a couple of months that are like, I'd say like 95% of our, are the food that we we put on our bodies was, was from that deeply grounded place. And it made such a difference in how our health. when I know when I healed up my own digestive tract, I was working on gut and my naturopathic doctor at the time handed me the book Nourishing Traditions, which I think should be a staple in everyone's home. I just adore that book. And from transitioning into that, I was working on my gut, but then I noticed my periods, I had like way less cramping and pain. Like during my periods, my skin really cleared up. And, you know, all these like our digestive tract is very much our earth. And it is, you know, the center of our core and well being. And when we heal her, she does like ripple out into the rest of our body. And we see it showing up in our, in our skin and our hormones, in joint pain, in our sleep, you know, in our moods. That's another big one with our gut-brain connection. So it's such a beautiful ripple once we start going with that. It's nice to know that it doesn't have to be so all or nothing. I know when I first learned about gut health, well, first I did read nourishing traditions. And so I was familiar with all of the different types of things you can do in your kitchen. But then I read the GAPS diet, which was very all in. It was definitely not Saturday night type of thing. I'm sure you're familiar, but it was like, you either do this protocol for six straight months and we did it for a little while. We didn't really have any huge symptoms. It was just like, I don't know. I was introduced and I was like, this seems cool. Let's make sure that all of our guts are good to go. And that worked because I just had a couple of kids, maybe like three or four kids and little kids. It would never work now. It would just literally be impossible. If we have something we have to heal, it's going to be rough because I can't even imagine trying to get on board that many people, that many older people with perfect, 100%, no cheating whatsoever. That would be so difficult. Yeah. And I'm a certified gaps practitioner actually as well. Okay. But the amount of times that I actually am like, we are putting you on a full gaps for like two years, because that's what's recommended is very rare. Like I just, okay. Cause it seemed like it should like it almost when I read it, it felt like everybody should do it. And I was like, this is nuts. Like you can't go to a friend's house. Like you can't just, you know, 80, 20, roll it when it's the full gaps. And so I could see maybe in really extreme cases, but other than that, like, and that's what it initially or essentially is designed for. So, and I used it on myself for, it's why I got certified in it because it is powerful. It is so deeply powerful. Um, and I used it when, uh, uh, I think it was about five, five or six years ago, I did a whole amalgam filling removal with my silver amalgam. I did that too, about 10 years ago. It was probably around the same time. Maybe we were going through it together. Yeah, no, maybe. No, the same, like when I got rid of the gaps. Yeah. I did all the amalgam filling removals. I did the gaps and I don't even know why I just was reading all this stuff. I was getting chronic eczema and actually couldn't figure it out. And so I did gaps for a while and it got me to about 75% there. And then I finally just felt this intuitive nudge to, to get, get those finally out. And I did. And then right after I did, I had a bit of an eczema flare up from that. And so then I kept GAPS and that was what finally did. And along with some heavy metal detoxification and cleansing with it. So, so for in those circumstances where it's severe, like I've, I've helped there's there, you know, she, Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride, who is the creator of the GAPS diet, she particularly would use it for children. And if you have a nonverbal autistic child, getting it quite young, she has beautiful results from it. So it's a great, it's a powerful protocol. Do I think everyone needs to do it No I take a lot of the healing concepts from the GAPS diet now and I have put it into my sacred gut healing program to creating more of like this is how you could eat in life You know like this isn like so rigid and so but it taking, you know, meat stock elements came from there. Using specific fermented foods for different, you know, digestive symptoms came from there. So there's, I pull elements from there, but it's been very rare. Like I can probably count, you know, this, you know, this I've worked with a lot of women, so there's a lot, but there it's, it's rare when I am like, you need to go on a full gaps and stay on it for two years. Like, I feel like those are very severe cases where, um, yeah, yeah. Well, and if you have something severe, I think you'd be more willing to do kind of whatever it takes, but, uh, it is, it's tough one. If you're doing full gaps, that's, uh, Yeah, that's yeah, it is. And you're right. Like, I remember when I was doing it, I did it over Christmas and showed up for Christmas dinner with like my own food. And I was like, I would love to be here, but this is what I'm eating. And it was just I was covered in eczema. And so it was a very, you know, for me, I was like, I will do this. I am so uncomfortable. And I'm so you know, And that's where usually the people that sign up to do that for, you know, six months to two years, they're in a state where they have tried everything. And usually I will, we will try other things first before I go there. Cause I don't like to see people on a restrictive protocol if they don't need to be. Yeah. It's, it seems like, oh, what's the big deal? It's just food, but it's so social, socially intertwined that there's so many things. And, you know, I think there's part of us. It's like, I wish it wasn't that way, but then food is celebratory too. So part of me is like, I, you know, I used to kind of demonize that and it's like, well, no, there's a reason why we enjoy food. And so to just think that everybody needs to do something that's so restrictive feels like way too much. no for sure yeah it depends on your body it depends on your belly it depends on your goals and your intention behind it like there's yeah of what you're what you're willing yeah of what's the best choice for you if somebody if like a health professional says like i have the thing that's gonna heal every single belly on the planet like turn around and walk away like i just like i don't i don't i i think everyone is so unique in that way i think there is like great foundations that everyone should follow. I think like an ancestral way of eating is honestly like a great foundation. And then from there we can tweak and nuance, you know, depending on what, what our goals are, what our values are, what our, what, what our body is asking us. Our bodies are always the smartest person in the room. With sourdough, are you doing the freshly milled grains? I know That's something a lot of people have become more interested in lately. Do you know, I don't freshly mill them myself, but I get them from, what is her name? I'm in Canada. So there is a little company called, I think it's Better Mills. Okay. I think is what it is. And they mill everything like very traditionally and ancestrally. I get it shipped. I store it in the freezer. to keep it like fresh. And that's how I'm doing it. But I do know a lot of people are doing that. And in Canada in particular, I think the US is very similar to this, is that we do a lot to our grains and our processing. We, you know, grains will be milled. We also hybridize the different wheat strands. So they are different than what our ancestors produced. So we have a higher amount of gluten actually in our grains, but they'll mill them. They'll pull out a lot of the vitamins and minerals that exist in it. And then they'll add synthetic ones. And I'm assuming that the quality of those synthetic vitamins and minerals is not awesome. Maybe not what our body recognizes. So the amount of times I've had clients over the years who have been like, I used to live in Ireland. I ate all the bread that I wanted. I came here and now it inflames my belly. So there's definitely a North American piece here as to what we do with it. So I think that's where people are realizing. And it's like, whoa, when I buy this from a store or mass produced, it inflames my belly. It does not feel good. But when I do it myself, when I mill it myself, or like I said, like found someone who is milling it and then like they're freshly milling it before shipping it. And then I'm like stuffing it in my freezer to like hold on to that. Um, then it's different. It feels, it feels different in the body. I know that like, I think it was 10 years ago, my husband and I went on a trip to Turkey and I ate all the bread and cheese that I wanted. My digestion was amazing. Like it was so good. And so, and I was not at a time where it was like at a, at a happy place. So, so yeah, it's, it's really, it's very interesting. So, so a lot of chatter too about, um, freshly milled grains, even outside of sourdough, there's mixed opinions on that. Um, what is your take on that? Like, even if it's prepared quickly, like, um, like in terms of like a rice flour or millet, sorry, just like a freshly milled wheat berry, but like in a waffle or something that hasn't been fermented, but it's just like you mill it and you make it. So when I first read some of the books that we were referencing, if it wasn't soaked or fermented in some way, it wasn't really a health food. But then now it's kind of, I think there's different opinions on whether or not it's a superfood, even outside of any kind of fermentation or soaking. Yeah. Yeah. Digestively speaking, I love a soaking and fermenting when it comes to grains in general, and it's due to the phytic acids and the anti-nutrients that are existing in there. Ancestrally speaking, that is how we have done it. Like that's how our great grandmothers and beyond would handle their grains. you know, a hundred years ago, there wasn't sourdough bread, how we call it. It's like a special category. That was just bread, you know, like it was, it was all bread was like a sourdough bread. And it wasn't until the introduction of like yeast where, you know, they started being able to mass produce bread more in this way. So I personally love, like, I love even like oatmeal. I love soaking it. I like, if I'm going to make an oatmeal, I, and it's, it's so simple. Like none of this stuff is hard. It's just requires a matter of like thinking ahead. So that's the piece of getting used to it. But I'll like the night before I'll put my oatmeal on, I'll put it to soak, put a scoop of yogurt in with it. So it like kind of just like helps to break it down a little bit and I turn it on in the morning and cook it. And so for me personally, I, I, I, I prefer like, especially when it comes to temperamental tummies and bellies, I think they just do better when things are broken down. If you do a sourdough bread, like with, I think the exact time that has been tested is like you fermented and then do a cold ferment in the fridge for like 24 hours. I'm not sure if that's how, that's how I was, I was taught for like 12 hours, like the fermentation method that I was taught. If you do that at 90, I think it's like 90 to 95% of the gluten has been actually digested by all of the microbes and everything. So it kind of makes me think like, if we had always stayed that way with our breads and things of how we did it, would we have the gluten craziness that we have now of like so many people needing to, you know, like I'm saying, pause gluten, you know, for a little bit and just let it flush out of the system for a little bit and then reintroduce it in a way that's like more in that ancestral alignment. So that's kind of how I feel about it. I know it would be great to be like, no, just do whatever. But it is ancestrally. That is how we had our grains. We soaked our rices. They would soak and sprout their nuts and seeds and everything. So, yeah, I think you do your best, though. I think that's starting to get fine-tuned and nuanced a little bit. But yeah. Now, what are some top foods that you recommend almost everyone incorporate for better gut health? Is there something that's like, okay, across the board, this makes sense? Or is it kind of like, well, it depends on your symptoms. We'll start here and move through like a certain protocol or something that's like, okay, we should all be doing this. Well, I never should on anyone. is what I say is a, is a saying that I like to, to go by. I think it, I think it, you know, it's, it does matter a little bit in terms of like your, your, your body, your belly, your beliefs, even. Um, I know that something, and this is going to, this sometimes is like well received or not, but I, over the years of doing this digestive healing work, uh, a piece that I have really noticed and become aware of, of just like how much better we digest animal protein than we do plant-based proteins. And it's something I like to name because I, again, it's one of those things where people are like, oh my gosh, I tried to go full on vegan and my belly was bloated like crazy. And so incorporating and making sure that the animal proteins that you're like including like our bodies just do digest that better over the years of doing this work like I've tried with like plant-based clients to try and their healing is just so much slower like it's so much slower they get frustrated I get frustrated and the ones that would incorporate more animal proteins as their main source of protein just seem to heal better like they just really would heal faster more deeply more completely and you know when it comes to our ancestral eating habits and what our ancestors ate that was what they ate you know that is that is that is how their diets work so having this like you know just keeping it really simple our bodies and bellies love simple we don't need to be complicated we don't need to order this like super food from the amazon that's only grown on a like a whatever like i really don't believe that i believe that I believe if you are eating, you know, can you grow, raise or harvest or hunt it? If you make sure there is like a good solid source of protein, some beautiful nourishing fats like on your plate and, you know, some, some vegetables and like, you know, a really digestible starch on there in the form of maybe that's a sourdough, maybe that's squash, maybe that's, you know, potato. If you tolerate it, I know some women, they can't with it, with it. So it kind of depends on that, but setting your, your plate up very simply is always better. It's, you know, we don't need a ton of ingredients and things. Yeah. What about, there's a lot of, uh, the movement of, um, what do we call it? Like not, not necessarily a movement, but a lot of talk about pro metabolic and needing to eat often. So there's, there's emphasis on the bedtime snack on eating right away in the morning. Do you have any thoughts on timing of food when it comes to the gut? As far, you know what I'm talking about? Like with, yeah. Okay. We have a lot of thoughts. Oh, good. Do you know what's interesting about, so like what you're kind of describing is a bit more of like a grazer type like mentality. And I'm a huge fan of keeping your blood sugar stable. I think, especially for women, I think we do better with that. That being said, there is a system in the body that happens, and I'm drawing a blank of the technical term, but it doesn't really matter. But when our stomach is completely empty, our body will do a digestive flush. Essentially, it will actually move through and flush through and bring fresh vitamins and minerals into key areas and actually perform some like healing and rebuilding. Our digesting food is actually so much work for our body. Like it actually is like a lot of work for it. So when our body is digesting, it's not doing other key elements within the body. So I love like trying to encourage gaps if we can, in terms of like two to at least like two to three hours. So I even do this with my daughter, like I, we, people are shocked by this, but we don't typically do a lot of snacks when it comes to even my daughter. Um, and what I found is that when we don't do snacks, she eats like a more nourishing full meal. She'll eat like a really full breakfast and then like a full lunch. We do have an afternoon snack because there's a, there's a bigger gap there, but, and then we'll have dinner and we typically don't have a bedtime snack. So she, because she's hasn't become reliant on these snack bits. She has like, we have, and I'm the same way. I don't typically snack a lot. I have these gaps in between of two, you know, a good three hours actually, when it comes to like my breakfast and then my lunch and then lunch and then dinner. And that gives the digestive track time to rest and actually do that flushing system that I was just talking about, that it can actually move through. And the same thing happens at night. So that's kind of how I feel about it from a digestive standpoint. That being said, if you're someone that wakes up in the middle of the night hungry like if your blood sugar is dropping in the middle of the night that when I like yeah have a snack before bedtime Or if you nursing Oh my word I wake up a month I so hungry I ate more when I was nursing than I was pregnant I ate so much food. It was unbelievable. So when it comes to those seasons of life, you eat when you are hungry. That's how I feel about pregnancy and nursing and everything. Like it's really important that your body stays like deeply, deeply nourished. That's when it's a great time to like get into your like soups and meat stocks and bone broths and stuff. Like I think that's like such a beautiful time to really dive into all of that because when it comes to gut health in your baby, like for supporting your baby's own gut health, like what you eat gets like put into your milk and put into baby's gut health. So that's a beautiful way of supporting both of you. So it's like nourishing mama nourishes baby at the same time. Yeah. Now, what are a few simple and you already mentioned a few, but ancestral foods or kitchen practices families can start with to gently support digestion, even if they're short on time or they feel overwhelmed with learning all these new things? Yeah, for sure. Creating a simple soup. Start doing like weekly soup. if you're not doing soup right now like do do a weekly soup is like so beautiful i uh meat stock already talked about actually i'll quickly explain the difference between meat stock and bone broth because that's always like one that everyone's like what the heck are you talking about like what is the difference and so when it comes to to meat stock versus bone broth bone broth is like you've roasted a chicken you have the chicken carcass and all of this And then you put all the bones and everything into a stock pot and it's usually simmered for like 12, 24 hours. Like it's a long simmer. And you get this like amazing bone broth, really high in vitamins and minerals. So great. But as I mentioned earlier, it's more of a gut tonifier, not a gut healer. So when it comes to gut healing, I love switching to a meat stock during digestive healing. and so what this looks like instead of just the bones you're taking a whole chicken and you're sticking it in your stock pot and you can still put in like I know with with chicken bone broth people will still put in like garlic and onions and carrots and celery like you can still put in all of those things you're using less water you're covering it by like a couple of inches and you're simmering it for like max four hours. And what you end up with is this like beautiful, it's usually quite gelatinous. Like it's very gelatinous. I love putting chicken's feet in there too. If you have them, I love putting a couple of chicken's feet in. It just helps increase the level of collagen. And so you have more collagen and gelatin in a meat stock, which is really beautiful for healing and sealing up that gut lining. I love that. now as far as the flavor of the chicken i know if you do it too long the actual chicken itself would taste maybe kind of dry is that why you say four hours no the four hours keeps the histamines low so it keeps like any histamines or glytomic acids like really low yeah so then what i do at the end of it is i'll pull it off and pull all of the meat off because you can use that meat for making like a chicken soup or whatever you want. And then, um, and then use the broth in order to, sometimes I'll like, if like, I'll, I'll typically like cook the chicken in there for like two, three hours, pull it out and then throw some of the, like, you can throw the skin back in for a little bit or throw like cartilage bits and things back in and like do it for just like maybe another hour. I find that like really beefs up the, the, the nutrient content as well. Um, I have actually a workshop that's on my website that's called deep digestive healing using like soups and meat stocks so it's like you can get that workshop and like it'll talk you through step by step how to how to make a meat stock and then like several soups from there that'll right that'll pull it through yeah and then you can use it literally in anything if you make rice you can put like use use the meat stock instead of like anywhere you use water and cooking you could essentially use that meat stock and start like including that in. My daughter and I have a like, love having a little cup of meat stock in the morning right now during the winter season. It's like part of our breakfast. She loves it. And it's just like, you know, I have a cup, like probably about a cup, like cup worth. And she has like maybe like half a cup and it's like, we love it. It's such a great nourishing piece of breakfast. Yeah. And it really is so simple. Now what other meats other than Like we're picturing, I think we're all picturing chicken, but, uh, what other meats and cuts would you typically do this with? Yeah. If you wanted to, you can do it with pretty much anything. Um, with a bone or I guess the bone doesn't matter. You, you want more of a, you, it's going to be more meat. So if you did it with like a beef or like a lamb or you can, I've never done it with, um, wild caught game if you wanted to, but I've heard of people doing it with like moose or deer or anything but what you want is like a moody uh a meat moody a meaty soup bone so it's more of a shank is what it's called like typically like if you go into a butcher and ask for like a beef shank that's typically what you're what you're looking for it's also called a meaty soup bone too so like kind of but you want more meat than than actual bone you're you're pulling out from like cartilage and things like that. But you can use it, do it, you can do it with fish. Like you can make a fish meat stock as well. So it's something depending on where you live and what you, I'm on the West coast. So I have access to a lot of, you know, wild caught fish and things. But if you're more inland, then you might be more doing, you know, the beef or the chicken and, and, and that. So yeah. Now, what do you get that you don't get from just eating the meat? Like what does the water draw out that you would, if you were to cook that same shank and eat all the, everything off of it? Yeah. What is, you're getting there? Yeah. Great question. A lot of times when you're pulling that out, it's, it's pulling out more of, you're getting a more concentrated version of different collagen and gelatin is what you're getting in that meat stock. It also like kind of sneaks into the different joints and little, like the marrow comes out of like, especially if you're using like a shank bone, like a beef or a lamb, you will get like the marrow that actually comes out of the bone, which is typically not something that people eat. We should. It's delicious. It's very nourishing, very nutrient dense. So it pulls out different elements in that way and makes a more concentrated version of it in that way. It's also a lot easier to digest. So if you're someone who really like after every meal, you are bloated, you are uncomfortable. This is a way to help you get a boost of vitamins and minerals in a way that's very simple for your body to know what to do with and understand how to like absorb that and help settle things down without in an irritating kind of way. Typically meat isn't that irritating, though I have had people over the years where we've had to like go slow with it as well. But typically if people have a problem, like they will or are an extreme digestive issues, it's more of the vegetables actually in the grains that are harder to digest than the meat, which is I think where we're a bit of the carnivore diet can kind of stem from a little bit, um, but, or why, why some people gravitate towards it. Sometimes I think there's other reasons too, but yeah. Yeah. Well, that was actually one of the questions and you can touch on it if you want to with the carnivore diet. Like what are your thoughts on that? Yeah. And you know, in terms of what I have used it for, and I actually don't even really call it a carnivore diet. It's actually, um, Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride with the gaps protocol has called it, um, meat only GAPS diet. And I'd been talking about it for decades leading up to before it became like such a, such a thing, um, where I have, um, and actually I rarely put people on it. It's, or I don't put people on anything, but guide or, you know, I, I always like talk through things and really, really see what was going to work with them. But, um, where, whenever I've worked with people with it, they've put themselves on it. And essentially they've self-restricted down of the foods. These so many like grains were bugging them. They cut them out. Then like dairy was bugging them. So they literally just cut down all these foods until they're like, I can only digest meat right now. And because it really is like one of the simplest foods for our body to digest. It's why I kind of brought it up earlier about, you know, plant-based versus versus having animal protein. And so from a digestive speaking standpoint, it can be helpful short term, I would never recommend anyone, this is your life. Now you eat carnivore. Like, yeah, just, I don't know. I just I'm, I'm not I'm not there with that. I don't. And I think it's I think it's a short term thing that helps to like, you know, other foods are feeling like sandpaper on your belly. So it's like, let me still be getting some nourishment and vitamins and minerals while that is healing. And then we can slowly start adding foods back in. That is always my goal is that we're able to like add foods back in if someone has self-restricted themselves down to minimal foods. Yeah. Yeah. We're never trying to keep people in a, in a place where there's not freedom in just intuitively eating and eating things that were that, you know, our bodies were supposed to be able to digest. I think that's a good goal. And I think that's why the GAPS diet can be good sometimes too, to get people to that point. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And I always, whenever I'm leading my digestive support call in my program, I'm always like, when I'm talking about something, pay attention. Our bodies are really wise, especially women, because I primarily work with women, but you know, our bodies are really wise. Like when somebody says something that kind of ring, that rings true in your body, like you noticed yourself like lean in or like piques your interest even though it doesn't really make sense but like it's like oh like some of my best like decisions on my healing journey have been from just like following this nudge that didn't really seem to make sense at the time but like for whatever reason my body was asking for it so if there's a piece around that and not being so rigid about everything or like I'm on this protocol I have to do this you know like it's like you know what? This doesn't make sense, but I'm going to do it. It's just, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So much to think about and to continue to talk about. So where can people find you to hear more about what you have to say about this, to consult with you if they have an issue that they're wanting to figure out, tell us where we can find you. Yeah. A great place to, I'm more active with my email list. I actually have a free guide that's five morning rituals for gut health and healing. So that's a beautiful way to start getting into my world and getting some like really simple tips to kind of getting started. We talk about breakfast, we talk about just like different little healing foods to add in and different practices that you can get into with doing that. And nothing is you have to wake up at 4.30 a.m. and two hours before your kids, you know, like the whole like, yes, this is what you need to do to be successful in life. It's not that like they will literally add minutes maybe to to your to your day. So that is a great way to get started. And Lisa, I can send the link to you. I don't know if you include things in the show notes, but I can. Yes. Yes. Include that link so that everyone can can do that. Um, so from, from there, I'll have my next round of sacred gut healing program, probably starting towards the mid to late February. So that would be, if you're really when like, I want to actually dive into this in community. I think women healed better in community. Um, it's why I do this work in program because women just like do, they, they do so well, but I'll have my next round of my sacred gut healing program starting in February. So this will work out good for that. Awesome. Awesome. Okay, well, we will leave links to that, all of what you mentioned down in the description box or show notes below, depending on where you are listening to this. And Heather, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. Thank you. It was lovely talking to you and seeing a little baby. Yes. Thanks, as always, for listening to the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast. My husband, Luke, and I and our kids work together side by side on our farm in Missouri and use our blog, podcast and YouTube channel to reach other homemakers, home cooks and homesteaders with practical recipes in daily family life. For everyday sourdough recipes, make sure to check out our blog, farmhouseonboon.com. And to dig deeper, we do also offer a course called Simple Sourdough over at bit.ly forward slash farmhouse sourdough course, all one word. We also teach people how to ferment vegetables and mill their own grains through our courses, Fresh Ferments and Freshly Milled Grains. We will leave links for all of that down in the show notes below. you