Grow Resilience from the Inside Out — Understanding the Gut-Soil Connection

There is a wild and wonderful truth not enough people are talking about…

Did you know your gut and your garden are in conversation with each other? Because they are!

Yes, you heard that right. The health of soil your food is grown in, and the soil your food’s food is grown in, correlates with your gut health and microbiome.

What does that mean?

Well… a plant (let’s say a carrot) is grown in soil amended with fertilizers and kept safe using pesticides and herbicides, totally unsupported by the mycorrhizal network below the soil due to over-tillage, would you imagine that carrot would do well if it’s controlled environment was disrupted? And if you ate that carrot, pulling it from the compacted soil, how would it impact you physically? What about emotionally?

It’s hard to be in awe of the world around us when standing in the middle of a monoculture field - for the sake of visualizing this carrot scenario.

Now, imagine this carrot is being grown in a garden where you need to move away the lettuce leaves to grab the carrot top? The garden has not been tilled, it’s only been amended by compost, and when you pull the carrot up it comes out rather easily, covered in a thin black layer of chocolate-cake-like soil. How does this impact you emotionally?

As an aside - did you know 90% of our seratonin is produced in the gut? You’ll want to support that environment with healthy food, that comes from healthy soil.

You’re more resilient when 1. you’re happy and 2. your internal environment reflects the natural world.

The planet is a diverse landscape - 10s of millions of insect species, over 400k plant species and over 7 million species of animals.

And you think when you eat a carrot you should only be eating a carrot? Washed and sterilized from soil to supermarket?

There are more and more ‘regeneratively grown’ products on the shelves, but frankly, it can be expensive and overwhelming to shop all organic, all regenerative, and avoid all the confusing additives health advoctes like Casey Means encourage you to avoid.

Shopping at a farmer’s market can help, but even on a small farm, the practices aren’t inherently better.

To create a resilient internal environment, incorporate soil-deep diversity into your diet.

Talk to your local farmer, understand their practices, find regenerative farms near you - Rattle Root Farm is ONE option in Princeton, MA, but ask at your farmers market, visit the farms. In my experience, regenerative farmers are proud of what they’re doing, and would LOVE to show how it works. It being the diverse, symbiotic relationship they are cultivating between the plants, insects, animals and soil on their property.

Finally, start a garden. I’m telling you, growing just ONE thing for yourself will provide a sense of purpose you may have never felt before. You can do it! Plants want to grow, and they want to be stewarded. It is the natural way, all you need to do is support the soil with diversity and in no time, your micro (and macro) biome with be thriving.