Ep.09 – Kristen Stavridis
Episode nine of Inside Matters
Gut health influencers, improving gut health through diet, and the power of social media
Kristen Stavridis is a nutritionist and speaker based in London who focuses on gut health and how we can improve this through healthy eating and lifestyle. She is also creator of The Gut Health Programme, a programme which has helped over 800 people improve their gut microbiome and overall well-being. Her main aim is to help educate people both on social media and in person about how important diet is and it’s importance in improving our gut and digestion.
Key takeaways from this episode:
For rapid improvements to gut health and the microbiome Kristen recommends her ‘gut reset diet’, in which gluten, alcohol, coffee, dairy and processed sugars are cut out completely for 30 days. Following this, her recommendation is to adopt a 70:30 and 80:20 approach in which 30% or 20% of the diet / lifestyle is relaxed and 70% or 80% is ‘on plan’. As part of the gut reset protocol Kristen also recommends that her clients take a symbiotic - a combination of a prebiotic and a probiotic.
Beyond the gut reset diet, the simplest and most effective change to make to support your microbiome and gut health is to convert to a predominantly plant based diet and eat a variety of plants everyday. Kristen recommends properly washing fruits and vegetables due to pesticides being present on the surface of food. To do this effectively, Kirsten has developed a in which vegetables and fruit are put into a clean sink filled with water that has been supplemented with a table spoon of baking soda and apple cider vinegar for 12-15 minutes.
Kristen recommends to avoid sugar free / artificially sweetened drinks as these have demonstrably negative impacts on the microbiome.
To lean more about Kristen, you can follow her on social media: @thatnextlevelgirl (Instagram)