Easy DIY At Home Gut Friendly Food!

After a few weeks of stress, takeaways and drifting from my usual routine… I’m back in the kitchen and cooking from scratch to dial my nutrition back to order. Here’s what I’ve been cooking up for my gut health:

1) Fermented red onions (easy, no equipment)

Ingredients (makes 1 medium jar)

• 2 medium red onions, thinly sliced
  

• 1 cup (240 ml) boiled then cooled water (important: room temp, not hot)
  

• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt (NOT table salt with iodine if possible)
  
  

Equipment

• 1 clean glass jar with lid (no need to sterilize… just washed and dried)
  

Instructions

1. Slice the onions thinly (half-moons work well).
   

2. Add onions to your jar and lightly press down so they sit snug but not crushed.
   

3. In a cup or bowl, mix the salt into the cooled water until fully dissolved.
    This is your brine.
   

4. Pour brine over the onions until they are fully submerged
   

5. Press onions down with a spoon… they need to stay under the liquid.
    (Exposure to air = mold. Under brine = safe.)
   

6. Loosely place the lid on (do NOT screw tight as gases need to escape).
   

7. Leave the jar at room temperature (ideally somewhere out of direct sunlight).
   

   • 24 hours = lightly tangy

   • 48–72 hours = more fermented, more sour
     

To finish

• Once you like the taste, tighten the lid and refrigerate.
  

• Keeps 3–4 weeks in the fridge.
  

Use it in: salads, tacos, rice bowls, sandwiches, eggs.

2) Homemade natural yogurt (no machine needed)

Ingredients (makes ~1 litre / 4 cups)

• 1 litre (4 cups) whole milk
  

• 2 tablespoons plain yogurt with live cultures (this is your “starter”)
  

Equipment

• A saucepan
  

• A clean jar or bowl with lid
  

• A warm place (oven with light on, airing cupboard, or wrapped in a towel)
  
  

Instructions

1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it reaches 180°F / 82°C (just before boiling).
    This step changes milk proteins so your yogurt thickens later.
   

2. Turn off heat and let it cool to 110°F / 43°C… warm but not hot.
    (If you can dip your finger in for 10 seconds comfortably, it's right.)
   

3. In a small bowl, mix 2 tbsp yogurt starter with a little warm milk to thin it.
   

4. Pour this mixture back into the saucepan and stir gently to combine.
   

5. Pour into your jar or bowl.
   

6. Cover and keep somewhere warm and still for 8–12 hours.
   

   • 8 hours = milder yogurt

   • 12 hours = tangier and firmer
     
     

7. Once set, refrigerate at least 4 hours before eating.
   It will thicken further as it cools.
   
   

Save 2 tbsp of this batch to use as the starter for your next one.

3) High-fiber seeded bread 

Ingredients (makes 1 loaf)

• 3 cups (360g) bread flour
  

• 1 cup plain yogurt
  

• 1 packet (7g / 2¼ tsp) dry yeast
  

• 1 tablespoon sugar (to help activate the yeast)
  

• 1 cup (240 ml) warm water (about 105°F / 40°C… warm, not hot)
  

• 1 teaspoon salt
  

• ½ cup pumpkin seeds
  

• ¼ cup black sesame seeds
  

• Olive oil (for greasing pan)

• LOAM prebiotic fiber (optional)
  
  

Instructions

1. In a bowl, mix warm water + sugar + yeast.
   Let stand 10 minutes until foamy.
    (If it doesn’t foam… water was too hot or yeast is expired.)
   

2. Add yogurt to the yeast mixture and stir.
   

3. In a large mixing bowl, combine bread flour + salt.
   

4. Pour the wet mixture into the flour and mix until a dough forms.
   

5. Knead for 5–7 minutes (or mix with a spoon until smooth).
   

6. Cover bowl with a towel and let rise 1–2 hours until doubled in size.
   

7. Grease a loaf tin with olive oil.
   

8. Transfer dough into the tin and smooth the top.
   

9. Let it rest 15 minutes.
   

10. Brush top lightly with a mix of flour + water (this helps seeds stick).
    

11. Sprinkle pumpkin + sesame seeds evenly on top.
    

Bake

• Preheat the oven to 200°C / 392°F.
  

• Bake for 40 minutes, until the top is golden brown.
  

• Tap the bottom of the loaf…if it sounds hollow, it’s done.
  

Cool completely before slicing.

(Slicing hot bread makes it gummy. Trust the process.)

P.S Those three are my current go-to favourites. For an added fiber bonus you can actually add LOAM prebiotic fiber to the bread mixture. Since it’s designed to be heat resistant it actually works well in hot dishes like pasta sauces, soups and when baking for an extra boost of invisible fiber! (no grit, no odour, no taste or texture - ideally cooking material!).

P.P.S If you’re ordering from the USA feel free to use the code WAITLIST25 and if you’re ordering the quarterly bundle as an international customer use the code SHIP25… enjoy!

Endometriosis And Bloating….

There are thousands of videos online of women who say the same thing and usually sounds like this:

“I get bloated every day and by the evening, I look 6 months pregnant. I’ve been told it’s just IBS.”

If you’ve ever been told that or a version of the above, I want to say this clearly:

Bloating is not always a gut problem.
Sometimes, the gut is simply where the problem shows up.

Many chronic gynaecological conditions, especially endometriosis, adenomyosis and sometimes PCOS… can drive gut symptoms.

It’s not a case of… the gut is “broken” but its simply due to the fact the gut and reproductive system are physically, neurologically and immunologically connected.

Gut + hormones + pain signalling 

Endometriosis isn’t “just reproductive tissue in the wrong place.”
It’s a condition that involves:

• the immune system
  

• the nervous system
  

• inflammation
  

• hormone signalling
  
  

And the gut is tightly linked to all of those.

This is why:

• Bloating can feel cyclical
  

• Abdominal pain can feel like pelvic pain
  

• Certain foods suddenly trigger symptoms you never had before
  

Your gut is responding to what’s happening elsewhere.

This is also one reason women with endometriosis are so frequently misdiagnosed with IBS first.
The symptoms overlap but the underlying drivers are different.

A new study just confirmed this

A 2024 controlled feeding trial (which is one of the highest standards in nutrition research) looked at women with endometriosis who also had gut symptoms… things like bloating, cramping, unpredictable bowel habits.

Researchers had each participant try two diets, each for 4 weeks:

• One diet reduced rapidly-fermenting carbohydrates (a low-FODMAP approach)
  

• The other diet contained more fermentable carbohydrates, but was still balanced and nutritious
  

A washout period separated the two phases, so each woman acted as her own comparison, making the data stronger.

What happened?

About 60% of women felt noticeably better during the low-FODMAP phase, compared to around 25% in the control phase.

“Better” meant:

• Less bloating
  

• Less abdominal discomfort
  

• More predictable bowel habits
  

• Improved day-to-day quality of life
  

The diet did not treat endometriosis itself but it reduced the intensity of gut symptoms associated with it.

Why would reducing FODMAPs help?

Here’s the simplest way to explain it: some carbohydrates ferment quickly in the gut.
That fermentation produces gas and gas increases pressure inside the intestines.

If your nervous system is already sensitized (which happens in chronic inflammatory conditions like endometriosis), that pressure feels painful or distressing.

Reducing these fast-fermenting carbohydrates doesn’t cure anything but it just reduces the pressure on an already-sensitive system.

Practical, gentle ways for you to experiment

(These are options, not prescriptions.)

1. Swap apples, pears, mango for kiwi, blueberries, strawberries

2. Replace raw onion + garlic with garlic or onion-infused olive oil

3. Build meals around: oats, quinoa, rice, tofu, eggs, carrots, courgette, spinach

4. Keep meals simple for a couple weeks then reintroduce slowly

And this is key…don’t cut out fibre, don’t starve the gut microbiome and don’t live in restriction forever.

We want to reduce the intensity of fermentation, not eliminate it entirely.

Women are so often treated as if symptoms exist in separate boxes:

Gut symptoms = “that’s gastro”
Pelvic pain = “that’s gynae”
Fatigue = “that’s lifestyle”

But the body does not operate in silos… your symptoms are connected because you are one connected system.

P.S If you want to learn more about endometriosis and other conditions we don’t have enough research for and society doesn’t talk about enough from the gut to women’s health, mental health and beyond…I go deeper into these in my upcoming book “This Is Vital Information” 

As a thank you for being part of this community and reading these long emails every week (don’t worry I’ve shortened them now!) I want to give you a pre-order bonus…

If you pre-order the hardcover, I want to give you a free ticket to an exclusive private online event where we can get together and chat!

To get the bonuses, simply pre-order This Is Vital Information and upload your receipt to this link:

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Things I Wish I Knew Before My 30s…

There’s a particular kind of tiredness that sleep doesn’t fix.

You can sleep eight hours, eat well, exercise, and still wake up feeling drained… like your brain is buffering in the background. I used to think this was just “life being busy”..the adult world being harder than we were told… the slow collapse into responsibility etc

But the truth is far simpler…

We are not exhausted because we do too much. We are exhausted because of the things we haven’t done.

The text we’re avoiding or the conversation we’re postponing or maybe it’s the apology we know we owe but can’t quite bring ourselves to say… even less emotional but the paperwork sitting in the drawer.

The decision we know we need to make but keep delaying.

These are called open loops… unfinished cognitive tasks that stay active in the brain even when we’re not consciously thinking about them.

The brain doesn’t like incompleteness. It tries to solve unfinished business in the background, constantly. Like an app running in the background draining battery life.

And that’s what so many of us misinterpret as fatigue.

The neuroscience of “why am I so tired?”

Your brain has limited working memory and attentional bandwidth.
Every unresolved task… even something as small as “reply to that message”... leaves a trace in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for planning and decision-making.

When something stays unresolved, your brain continues to re-check, re-surface, and re-activate that thought, looking for a moment to complete it.

This is called the Zeigarnik Effect: the psychological tendency for incomplete tasks to stick in our minds more than completed ones.

Your brain is trying to close the loop.

The weight of avoidance

Avoidance feels like protection in the moment but avoidance has a cost.

The cost is persistent, low-grade mental strain… it’s a pressure you can’t quite name because nothing is technically wrong, and yet nothing feels right either.

This is why mental clutter is often more exhausting than physical effort.

You can spend a whole day moving furniture and feel tired but satisfied but equally you can spend a whole day doing nothing but thinking and feel shattered.

The mind is not designed to hold open loops indefinitely.

Close your loops

Make the call or send the message/apology… make the appointment.

Not solving a problem is a form of stress and closing a loop is a form of relief.

A 5-minute loop closing ritual

Once a week, take five minutes and write down:

1. One message you’ve been avoiding
   

2. One decision you’ve been delaying
   

3. One task you’ve been putting off
   
   

Pick one and do it… only one. Momentum is built molecule by molecule.

You’re not trying to fix your life in one afternoon.

Before my 30s, I thought maturity was about doing more but I’ve realised it’s about carrying less… not emotionally or spiritually but practically… fewer open loops running in the background draining my biological iphone battery.

👋 Who are you again? I’m Karan Rajan - a doctor and curious explorer of all things health and wellness. I host the Dr Karan Explores Podcast and have written two books "This Book May Save Your Life" and "This Is Vital Information" (you can pre-order it now!) and have just founded a microbiome company, LOAM Science  to create the best fiber product in the world!

Every Sunday, I share 3 interesting things about health, life and science to make your life easier, healthier and happier. (Disclaimer: I’m more your friend with health benefits. None of this is medical advice.) 

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