The health of your intestinal tract is among one of the most important and overlooked factors when fighting any disease, and at Years Restored, it’s something we pay special attention to\.

Many people have a condition known as "leaky gut" which causes undigested food, toxins, or bacteria to "leak" through the intestinal wall. This can cause a variety of symptoms, like arthritis, fatigue, and brain fog. It can also contribute to the development of chronic conditions like autoimmune disorders.

To improve gut health, we emphasize soaking and sprouting seeds, grains, nuts, and legumes. This practice vastly 1) decreases lectins that may damage the intestinal lining and 2) improves the bio-availability of the food. Both are important when trying to heal a damaged or "leaky” gut.

Here Are Benefits of Soaking and Sprouting

• Decrease anti-nutrients (lectins)
• Higher nutritional and antioxidant value 
• Increases:
• The content of amino acids like tryptophan
• Enzyme content
• Vitamins and Mineral content
• Including Vitamin C, folate, Iron, Vitamin B 
• Fiber content

In the first stage of regaining your health, we use pseudo-grains (like quinoa, buckwheat, amaranth, and canahua) rather than grains, because they are much easier to digest then grains for many people.  Pseudo-grains should always be soaked 8-12 hours prior to use.  Even better is the practice of sprouting them for 2 days. Sprouting for longer than 2 days can cause the sprouted grains to taste sour or bitter and should be avoided.

We have noticed, that our clients have greatly improved their symptoms by avoiding grains and by soaking their seeds (pumpkin and sunflower), pseudo-grains, and legumes. Clients who struggle with significant weight loss due to malabsorption have regained their weight by adopting these principles. We believe that the speed of the improvement of symptoms is due to decreasing the level of anti-nutrients in the food by soaking and sprouting.