New Formula for Elemental Heal: Improved Taste with Less Carbs

Add MCT oil powder to stay full longer and increase ketones.

The elemental diet is a proven way to starve bacterial overgrowths and give your gut a chance to rest. It also likely starves fungal overgrowths. Our new Elemental Heal formula tastes better than ever and has fewer carbs per serving. In this video, learn why the elemental diet works and easy, flexible ways to get started with it. Also, get the details on a great addition to the Elemental Heal shake, MCT oil powder.

Dr. Michael Ruscio, DC: Hi everyone, this is Dr. Ruscio. I’m very excited to announce that we’ve improved the formula for our Elemental Heal elemental diet meal replacement shakes. The taste has improved, but we have reduced the carbohydrate content by roughly 10 grams per serving. It’s still the same gut-friendly, gluten-free, hypoallergenic, casein-free, lactose-free formula that can help to heal your gut. (Yes, if you’re lactose intolerant, you can use this.) But now, the taste is better and there are roughly 10 grams fewer carbs per serving.

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Also, one of the oils that can be added to your Elemental Heal shake is an MCT or medium-chain triglyceride oil. If you’ve ever used one of these oils, as I have, you notice that they’re greasy, they leak, and they kind of stick to everything and are really messy to clean up. I’m happy to announce that we’ve just released an MCT (medium-chain triglyceride) Oil Powder to make it much easier for you to add healthy fats to your Elemental Heal shake. What’s nice about MCT oil is that it can aid in bowel regularity. They are very easy fats for your GI to absorb. They also can aid in ketone production and in cognition. So there are a number of health benefits that can be garnered from using an MCT oil.

How the Elemental Diet Helps Your Gut

If nothing else has worked for your gut, I would highly recommend considering a trial on an elemental diet. What does the elemental diet do and why can it be helpful? In case you haven’t caught this before, elemental diets help to starve bacterial overgrowths, like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

It’s my opinion that they also help to starve fungal overgrowth. Remember, although there is a carbohydrate in these solutions, they become absorbed within roughly the first three or so feet of the small intestine. So there’s not anything that gets down the line to help feed a fungal overgrowth. While we don’t know for sure, it’s my view that even those who have fungal overgrowths likely could help to starve and reduce the fungal overgrowth by using an elemental diet.

Also, remember, because you’re taking some time off of foods—and for many people with impaired digestion, foods can act as antigens or inflammatory triggers—you actually give your gut a break, a rest, and a chance to heal. The analogy I often use is, if you sprained your ankle and you’re running three miles every day, it’d be hard to heal. Same thing with your gut. If your gut is inflamed and you’re eating three meals every day, it can be hard to heal. So the elemental diet can be used as a way to give your gut some rest.

Elemental Diets Can Be Flexible

Also, remember that elemental diets are not hard. Please don’t let internet reading mistakenly lead you to believe that elemental diets are difficult. In my opinion, ours tastes very good. Not all do. But the newer formulas tend to taste great, so don’t let taste fool you. Yes, the older formulas tasted bad. The newer formulas, especially including our revised formula of Elemental Heal chocolate and vanilla, I think are very, very palatable.

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If you’re not adding fat to your Elemental Heal shakes, consider adding some.  MCT oil powder is one option. This makes it creamier so it tastes better, but also makes it more satiating, helps keep you full for longer, and not feeling hungry.

Also, you don’t have to use these in an exclusive application. What does this mean? Well, in some of the research literature, these elemental diets have been used exclusively, (meaning no food) in some cases, for up to two weeks. Yikes.

But you don’t have to do that. You can actually do what’s known in the research literature as a hybrid diet. Meaning, perhaps you skip breakfast and you sip on an elemental shake, and you have a small lunch, and a normal dinner. Or perhaps you do one day off of food completely and do this liquid fast, and then have normal food the next day. You have flexibility. You can work this into your diet, to whatever aspect fits with your life.

So don’t think you have to do these things exclusively for weeks or for days. You can use these as a meal replacement. Even that one meal replacement period will give your gut some time off of food and help with that whole reset, rest, and starvation of some of the bad bugs.

If Nothing Else is Working for Your Gut…

And also remember that regardless of how you’re using Elemental Heal shakes, you can add an oil to them to help keep you full for longer. Consider adding our MCT Oil Powder to your shake as a way to not only help with cognition and ketone production but also to provide your body with healthy fats that will help you keep satiated longer as you’re trying to do this gut reparative Elemental Heal reset.

Again, don’t think you have to use these things at the “varsity level” for two weeks exclusively! There is some wiggle room. These things are pretty accessible if you are okay with just listening to your body and not needing to go to these extremes of two weeks. Helpful for some people, yes. But for some people, if they skip breakfast on most days and have an Elemental Heal shake, that is a nice win for them and moves them forward in terms of how their gut is feeling.

So if nothing else is working for your gut, I hope you’ll consider a trial on an elemental diet, namely our Elemental Heal, which now, thankfully, has an improved flavor profile and has 10 grams fewer carbs per serving. And if you’re looking to add a little fat into that to help with satiation, cognition, and also to use healthy fats to help support healing of your gut, consider adding in our MCT Oil Powder along with your Elemental Heal shake as part of your daily gut-healing routine.

What do you think? I would like to hear your thoughts or experience with this.

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