Imagine you’re a plant out in the wild. You’re soaking up sunshine and getting taller and greener by the day. You’re full of nutrients. Life is pretty good. The only trouble is these damn herbivores. Insects, deer, small woodland animals - they keep strolling in and eating your neighbors. If you aren’t careful, you’ll end up as lunch. What’s a smart plant to do? Plants go to great lengths to avoid getting eaten. Some turn to poison, although that doesn’t always work out; caffeine is a poison that happens to be very beneficial to humans. The coffee plant screwed up. And...

Your gut bacteria do a lot. They influence energy, weight, digestion, aging, and more. Gut bacteria even change the way you think. That means building a stronger gut - and populating it with helpful bacteria - can improve your life a lot, even outside of your digestive system. You can change your gut bacteria a few different ways: Taking probiotics that introduce and grow beneficial species Removing stressors that harm gut bacteria Using food to encourage good bacteria and remove bad ones This article will focus on food. What you eat (and just as importantly, what you don’t eat) has a...

How many times have you made a resolution - a workout plan, a lifelong dream, a new diet that will help you burn more fat - only to abandon it a couple weeks later?  If you’ve tried to change, you know how the pattern goes. When you start something new there’s a honeymoon period. You’re really going to stick to it this time, and it’s exciting. It’s refreshing. It’s motivating. But, inevitably, the honeymoon period wears off. Maybe life gets busy, or you hit a sticking point, or you realize that your grand ideas demand a lot more effort than...

 We’ve talked a lot about your gut biome - the ecosystem of bacteria and microorganisms that lives in your GI tract (gut). We’ve covered how to balance your gut bacteria for better performance and probiotics for muscle gain, weight loss, allergies, and more. It turns out gut bacteria affect your thinking, too - so much so that researchers have begun to call the gut biome your second brain [1]. Let’s talk about how gut bacteria affect your brain, and how you can improve everything from mood to cognition by changing your gut biome. In this article, you’ll learn about: The...