How to Heal Your Gut the Ancestral Way

Modern gut health advice pushes supplements and powders — but our ancestors healed digestion naturally. Here’s how to rebuild your gut with real food, collagen-rich bone broth, sunlight, and simple ancestral habits that actually work.

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you choose to purchase through them — at no extra cost to you. I only share products I genuinely use and trust.

Why Gut Health Is Everything

If your gut’s off, you’re off.
You know that feeling — bloated, tired, anxious, maybe breaking out for no reason. Most people just call it “getting older” or “stress,” but it’s usually your gut screaming for help.

Modern life stripped away everything that used to protect our digestion — real food, sunlight, minerals, bacteria from the soil. Instead, we live on sterile food, seed oils, antibiotics, and “gut health” supplements that honestly just patch the problem instead of fixing it.

The truth? Our ancestors didn’t need powders or probiotics in capsules. They healed with real food, minerals, and time in nature. Healing your gut the ancestral way is about getting back to what built human health in the first place.

1. Eat Whole-Animal Foods, Not Just Muscle Meat

Our ancestors didn’t live on boneless, skinless chicken breasts. They used the whole animal — liver, heart, marrow, skin, tendons, cartilage.
That’s where the nutrients your gut actually needs live: collagen, zinc, vitamin A, and B12.

If you’ve been eating mostly lean meat and wondering why your digestion still feels weak — this is why.

Try this:

Add bone broth or slow-simmered soups into your week.
Eat grass-fed liver once a week (or start small with a grass-fed desiccated organ supplement if you can’t do the taste yet).
Go for collagen-rich cuts — oxtail, short ribs, shank, things with a little connective tissue.

– Your gut lining is made of collagen. Feed it what it’s made of.

DIY: How to Make Collagen-Rich Bone Broth at Home

Bone broth is one of those things that sounds fancy until you actually make it — and then you realize it’s dead simple.
It’s been around forever because it works. When done right, it’s full of collagen, glycine, glutamine, and minerals that literally rebuild your gut lining.

Forget the boxed stuff. The real magic happens when you make it yourself — using grass-fed bones that still have marrow, cartilage, and joints attached.

What You’ll Need

2–3 lbs grass-fed beef bones, knuckles, or oxtail (check your local butcher)
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar — helps pull out the minerals (Bragg’s Organic is a solid choice)
1 onion, 2–3 carrots, 2 celery stalks
Sea salt, pepper, herbs like thyme or bay leaf
Filtered or spring water — keep in glass bottles

How to Make It

Roast your bones at 400°F for 25–30 minutes. This step makes all the difference in flavor.
Add everything to a big pot or slow cooker. Pour in water and vinegar, and let it sit for 30 minutes before heating — that’s when minerals start to pull from the bones.
Simmer low and slow:
- Beef bones: 18–48 hours
- Chicken bones: 8–24 hours
  Keep it just barely bubbling — that’s how you get that rich, gelatinous texture.
Strain and store in glass jars (Mason jars always work great).
Chill it — once it cools, it should look like Jell-O. That’s how you know you nailed the collagen content.

How to Use It

Sip a mug in the morning before eating.
Use as a base for soups, sauces, or sautéed foods.
Add a splash to rice or mash for an easy mineral boost.

Pro tip: Toss in chicken feet or beef tendons next time. It might sound weird, but it’s the best collagen.

2. Embrace Fermentation — the Original Probiotic

Before refrigeration, everyone fermented something. Sauerkraut, kefir, kimchi, raw yogurt — that was the OG gut support.
Those bacteria kept our microbiome strong long before anyone invented probiotics in capsules.

If your gut feels “off,” start small and add something fermented every day.

Try:

A spoonful of raw sauerkraut with meals
Kefir — grab some kefir from your local co-op or grocery store
Fermented garlic or pickles (no vinegar — real brine only)

These foods give you billions of living microbes that actually make it to your gut — unlike most shelf probiotics.

3. Get Your Minerals Back

Soil used to be rich in magnesium, zinc, and trace minerals. Now? Not so much.
Our ancestors drank natural spring water full of minerals — not tap water stripped bare by filters and chlorine.

If you’ve ever had low energy or sluggish digestion, there’s a good chance your minerals are low.

Easy fixes:

Drink spring or mineral water (look for total dissolved solids above 200 ppm).
Use Redmond Real Salt or mineral-dense salt instead of iodized table salt.
Eat oysters, sardines, and grass-fed beef for natural zinc and selenium.
If you use filtered water, add trace mineral drops back in.

Minerals are the spark that fire up digestion. Without them, the gut just runs on empty.

4. Sunlight, Movement, and Circadian Rhythm

Your gut doesn’t just respond to food — it responds to light.
Sunlight sets your circadian rhythm, which controls digestion, hormones, and metabolism.
Getting sun first thing in the morning and moving after meals can completely change how your body digests food.

Try this:

Get 10–15 minutes of morning sunlight without sunglasses
Walk after meals (simple but huge)
Eat most of your food during the day — not late at night

If you’re stuck indoors a lot, I like using a red light therapy lamp in the mornings. It’s not the sun, but it helps keep your rhythm in check.

Our ancestors lived by the sun — their digestion did too.

5. Kill Stress Before It Kills Your Digestion

You can eat perfectly, but if your nervous system is fried, your gut won’t heal.
Cortisol literally shuts off your digestion — your body can’t be in “fight or flight” and “digest and repair” at the same time.

Do this:

Take 5 deep breaths before eating — every meal.
Sit outside for a few minutes during the day.
Don’t rush through food; chew slow.
If you’re always wired, adaptogens like ashwagandha can help calm things down naturally.

Sometimes gut healing starts with slowing your whole life down a notch.

6. Rethink What “Clean” Means

We’ve over-sanitized everything.
Your gut needs microbes — from soil, animals, and nature.
A little dirt exposure teaches your immune system how to behave.

Try:

Gardening with your hands (no gloves once in a while)
Getting outside every single day
Avoiding antibacterial soaps and harsh chemicals
Switching to a cleaner home products instead of chemical sprays

Clean living doesn’t mean sterile — it means balanced.

7. Support Your Gut With Real Foods (Not Lab Powders)

The supplement world made gut health complicated. It’s not.
Your body knows how to heal — it just needs the right materials.

Start with real ancestral foods:

Colostrum – nature’s gut repair formula.
Bone broth – collagen, amino acids, and minerals for repair.
Raw dairy – rich in enzymes and beneficial bacteria.
Fermented vegetables – your daily natural probiotic.

You don’t need to chase the next “gut protocol.” You just need to get back to what’s real.

The Bottom Line

Healing your gut the ancestral way is about subtraction, not addition.
Cut the fake stuff, reconnect with real food, sunlight, and time outdoors.

You don’t need powders or promises — you need patience, minerals, and nature.
That’s how our ancestors did it. And it still works.