Rest, cleanliness, and keto: a triptych for the good life - PART 2

A balanced pattern of nutrition, rest, and movement: it sounds so simple, yet it is a way of life that is very difficult to achieve and maintain consistently in our hectic society. And yet keeping these factors in order is incredibly valuable for staying as healthy as possible in a natural way. Which therapy forms use this advice as their basis, and what are some simple tips to get as close as possible to the ideal?

This week we discuss pillar 2: Cleanliness.

Keeping your mouth healthy

Strong, clean teeth and a healthy oral microbiome are an important aspect of our health. This matters because your teeth, saliva, and oral flora prepare your food for digestion in the stomach and intestines. But preventing tooth decay and its possible long-term effects on your body also starts in your mouth, and with what you put into it.

The higher the quality of your diet and the more finely it is tailored to your specific needs and goals, the better your foundation. Consider the following foods to nourish and support your oral flora:

• Eat enough fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K2. If you do not eat animal products, supplements can help; these vitamins occur much less frequently in plant-based foods.
• Eat mineral-rich foods: zinc, magnesium, and calcium, for example, are important for keeping your teeth and oral flora strong and healthy.
• Regularly choose foods rich in prebiotic and probiotic factors, such as fermented dairy and vegetables. In this way, you nourish your oral flora and help your digestion as well. Be as sparing as possible with refined sugar and flour products.
• The more often you eat, the more often your oral microbiome has to get to work. Give it a few breaks by limiting yourself to no more than three meals per day, so it can return to rest and balance.

Good oral hygiene also keeps your mouth clean. Of course, brushing your teeth and flossing when needed are important for strong teeth and healthy gums. An additional natural support is rinsing your mouth with a lukewarm salt solution. This can be soothing for sores or inflammation in the mouth and may help with bad breath.

Hydration also matters. Drinking enough water is important, but sleep affects this too: sleeping with your mouth open dries out your oral cavity, which promotes unwanted bacterial growth.

You can find more tips for a healthy mouth in our special blog about this!

Putting your inner self in order

Handwashing is of course the guardian of hygiene (read all about it in our blog about handwashing). However, when your body is dealing with a serious bacterial infection, antibiotics are often used as the solution. With the knowledge we have now, we know that antibiotic use has many drawbacks for the environment and for the microbiological balance in humans and animals, and more and more bacteria are becoming resistant to them. This could lead to the so-called post-antibiotic era: a future in which microbes can withstand antibiotics and have free rein in our bodies. The good news is that science is making promising progress in research into more natural alternatives to antibiotics.

Have you ever heard of the following developments?

• An alternative to or supplement for antibiotics for non-life-threatening persistent infections is bacteriophages. Every bacterium has its own bacteriophage nemesis, which also occurs naturally in the body. It attacks the bacterium by binding to it, injecting its DNA, and multiplying, thereby destroying the bacterium from within. The advantage is that if a bacterium is not very affected by its nemesis phage, a combination of multiple bacteriophages can be made as a different attack strategy. Outside the Netherlands, bacteriophages are already being used experimentally when antibiotics provide no relief.
• Another innovative development is the use of lysine (an essential amino acid) in the fight against bacterial infections. By slightly adapting lysine in the laboratory, it gets a more selective target area, so that lysine, just like bacteriophages, can specifically eliminate certain bacterial strains. So no more throwing the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to the microbiome and infections!

These are a number of interesting concepts that can broaden our perspective on dealing with bacterial infections. Scientific research is also being conducted into food extracts and their potential antibacterial properties, which we are following with interest.

Keeping your skin supple and clean

Your skin also benefits from your dietary choices. Clean, healthy skin is a combination of genetics and epigenetics, but your gut also plays an important role here. Central to this is the gut-skin axis: the connection between your gut and your skin.

Since 1930, the connection between the gut and the skin has already been described and studied. Your gut health is not only strongly connected to your immune system, sleep, stress resilience, and metabolism. If your gut is healthy, your skin will reflect that too.

For example, one study found that participants with rosacea, in which the skin is red and blemishes occur more often, were up to 10 times more likely to also have SIBO than participants without rosacea. When the bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine was addressed, the blemishes also cleared during the study.

It is also known that a gluten allergy or intolerance can manifest as dermatitis herpetiformis, a skin condition that causes bumps and blisters. Ten to 15 percent of all celiac patients have this condition, but even without a known gluten allergy, a gluten-free diet is the main and most effective treatment for dermatitis herpetiformis.

In addition to your gut and mouth, your skin also has its own microbiome. You influence this too, alongside your diet, stress level, and sleep, by how you care for and cleanse your skin. Especially now that we are exposed not only to sunlight but also to more and more blue light from screens, it is wise to care for your skin externally as well.

Have you ever thought about the following forms of skin care?

• Inner skin care: drink enough water, as this is very important for supple, healthy skin. And make sure that, in addition to foods that are good for your oral health, you also eat enough fiber, fats, and collagen-rich products.
• Move your body. It is good for your circulation, and sweating helps remove waste products. When you exercise outdoors, you also get your dose of sunlight – two birds with one stone.
• You can often replace cosmetics with natural products such as pure jojoba oil or rosehip oil to care for your skin, or natural sea salt and apple cider vinegar for exfoliation. And because of its soothing properties, you can buy aloe vera as a cosmetic product, but if you have an aloe vera plant at home, you can also apply it in its pure natural form to the skin by cutting off a piece of leaf.

As you have read, rest, mild hygiene, and nutrition are crucial components of a healthy body that is as clean and balanced as possible. But which diet has the properties to make the body’s self-cleansing and restorative capacity function as optimally as possible? We discuss that in the final blog in the trilogy on the good life: Keto.