What is ION Gut?

ION Gut is a unique and ground breaking product for healing the gut mucosa developed by Dr. Zach Bush. The gut lining is easily damaged, and ION Gut is unique in its ability to restore the tight junctions of the gut which maintain healthy regulatory function.

ION Gut has been shown both in the laboratory and clinically to help support the functioning of the gut barrier and improve gut health by strengthening tight junction cells. In experiments, toxins like herbicides and gluten have been shown to degrade the gut barrier. ION Gut has been shown to promote the strengthening of the tight junction gut barrier in small and large gut membrane cells for an optimal gut environment.

Below is the suppliers explanation of how ION Gut is your body’s first line of defence. We have made some minor alterations to the text below to make it more understandable for lay people, and we hope you find it useful.

ION Gut has been shown both in the laboratory and clinically to help support the functioning of the gut barrier and improve gut health by strengthening tight junction cells. In experiments, toxins like herbicides and gluten have been shown to degrade the gut barrier. ION Gut has been shown to promote the strengthening of the tight junction gut barrier in small and large gut membrane cells for an optimal gut environment. Tight junctions are the special protein strands that lace cells together into a continuous membrane, creating an intelligent barrier, a firewall that extends from the sinus cavities to the colon.  When tight junctions degrade, leaks in this barrier overwhelm immune system surveillance, which must generate an antibody for every category of intruder that leaks through the wall.  70% of the immune system is on the other side of that membrane.  If it is busy tracking intruders, the immune system never gets to other priorities. With ION Gut helping our gut lining, our immune system can return to regeneration and repair. Since your brain is listening to your gut, you’ll relax too!

The main element in ION Gut is the terrahydrite extract also known as lignite extract. Lignite comes from decomposed prehistoric matter. The lignite extract is composed of millions of what are nicknamed 'carbon snowflakes' derived from ancient soil ecosystems. As plants decompose, they first form peat, which then turns into humate, then lignite, then leonardite and finally to coal. All of these are rich in carbon. One of the differences between all of these elements is the amount of time and pressure have been applied to them. In the human body a small amount can be used to get your communication network running efficiently.   Bacteria communicate in the same way your cells do, through moving patterns of charges called redox signaling.  Think of ION Gut as a liquid switchboard, allowing millions of messages to simultaneously flow through the matrix, promoting regulation and balance throughout the body.

In summary, ION Gut works in the follow ways:

1. Supports membrane integrity and give your immune system a chance to rest!
2. Gives the bacteria the terrain they need to communicate, diversify, and deliver micronutrients, thereby promoting better hydration and nutrition.
3. Establishes a healthy spectrum of signals radiating from the gut microbiome (in other words, the bacterial balance in the gut) to every cell in your body.  Genetic expression, though epigenetics, is hugely influenced by the signals from the microbiome.

More detailed information

Please watch the following for more detailed information https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzyLxuiUz0U

Should I take probiotics at the same time as using ION Gut?

According to the product developer, Dr Zac Bush, it is better not to use probiotics when using ION Gut, except for a brief period if you need to take antibiotics for any reason.  That’s because Dr Bush states that no probiotics can mimic the body’s own microbiome, and using restore will gradually favour the proliferation of your own body’s microbial balance. However we sit on the fence on this question. If your gut instinct (excuse the pun) is that you should take probiotics at the same time, we would suggest using a wide spectrum probiotic such as Bio-Kult or Ultimate Probiotic in order to avoid a proliferation of one culture and / or rotating probiotics every few weeks.

Manufacturers Suggested Usage

The suppliers suggested dosage is to take 1 teaspoon 3 x per day. (Total of 1 tablespoon daily).

Suggested Usage - for sensitive people

There is a small subset of sensitve people that can experience symptoms of tiredness, headache, bloating/increased gas, or bowel changes when they first take Ion Gut. If you feel you may be sensitive, we suggest a slower approach. We recommend sensitive people to go out and buy a small dropper or small spray bottle from your pharmacy, and fill it up with the product.  Please note 1 drop usually = one spray if you use a spray bottle. Then follow a programme that looks approximately like this. 

First week. Take 1 drop per day. (Yes we really did say, 1 drop!).
Second week, 1 drop 3 x per day
Third week 2 drops 3 x per day
Fourth week 3 drops 3 x per day
Fifth week increase to 5-6 drops 3 x per day
Sixth week, take 1 teaspoon 3 x per day
Thereafter stay on this dosage. However If you are not improving after a month on this dosage, increase to 1 tablespoon 3 x per day.

INGREDIENTS:

Humic Extract (from Ancient Soil) and Purified Water.

Humic extract is sourced from ancient soil (roughly 60 million years old), and contains a blend of bacterial metabolites (aka, fulvate) as well as less than 1% of a variety of trace minerals and amino acids including chloride, sodium, lithium, calcium, phosphorus, sulfur, bromide, potassium, iron, antimony, zinc, copper, gold, magnesium, alanine, glycine, histidine, isoleucine, methionine, threonine, and valine.

No refrigeration necessary. 
Shake before use as sediment naturally occurs. 
To prevent contamination, please avoid drinking directly from bottle or cap

The ingredients above make no sense to me. How than can that do anything?

Before we answer this question, please note the ingredient referred to below as "lignite" extracted when it was marketed as "Restore For Gut Health" under the manufacturing name of  "Restore4Life", is the same as what they now call "Terrahydrite (Aqueous humic substances)".

We put this question to the manufacturers and developers, and this is what they said. "To focus on the ingredients would be misleading.  People are so trained to shop and think in terms of ingredients that they miss important distinctions regarding efficacy and safety.   This is why we emphasise the results of our product, the tight junction strengthening, rather than the ingredients. The raw ingredient, a lignite extract in the chemical family of fulvic molecules, has been available in the supplement industry for many years. However the carbon redox molecules in this family are incredibly diverse, with multiple charges and relationships. No raw lignite extract, including the raw material we use, has the biological effects of ION Gut or passes our safety studies."

If the raw ingredient has been around for so long, what's so special about ION Gut where it comes to gut healing?

This is what they said. "The best way to describe what is different about our end product is how it functions.  This is what makes ION Gut special.  There is not any lignite extract which we have tested, and we have tested many, including our raw material, before we take it through the process that turns it into Ion Gut, which has the biological effect of signaling on the tight junctions or has the ability to increase cell longevity in kidney cell cultures at concentrations of over 20% in the media.  Our proprietary process is the key to the results we see in the lab and the clinic". So basically, they put the raw ingredient through a special process known only to Dr Zac Bush and his team, which then enables ION Gut to have the desired effect.