Total Restore Reviews: Will it improve your gut health?
We tested Gundry MD's Total Restore to see if it could improve the strength of your gut lining and even heal a leaky gut
In this Review
Our Findings
Whether you suffer from an ailment that may cause a leaky gut or you think that increased intestinal permeability may be at the root of other issues, Total Restore is likely worth trying. Its main ingredients have enough research behind them to conclude they'd have a positive effect on your gut health, as well as other aspects of your life. But some of those ingredients — like the shellfish-based glucosamine — make the product unsafe for allergic individuals.
Pros
- May resolve issues with gas or bloating
- Features glucosamine for gut and joint health
- Made using Good Manufacturing Practices
- Can boost energy levels
- 90-day money-back guarantee
- Can be taken alongside other Gundry MD products
- Helpful live chat with real people
- Sign up for a subscription and save 10%
Cons
- Not designed to address your microbiome directly
- Contains shellfish (crab and shrimp)
- Some ingredients lack abundant studies for gut health
People often use the term 'leaky gut' to describe a condition called increased intestinal permeability, which is when your intestines fail to filter out toxic substances the way they usually would. That can result in all manner of unsavory actors making their way into your bloodstream, and it could have a direct influence on everything from your ability to maintain a healthy weight to the effectiveness of your immune system.
But as bad as either leaky gut or increased intestinal permeability sounds, there are safe and effective treatments that can help restore and even strengthen your intestines' all-important lining. Gundry MD's Total Restore aims to be just such a treatment for you. Is it safe and effective? Read what we found based on testing and research.
In this Review
Why you should trust us
At Innerbody Research, we extensively test each health service we review. Over the past two decades, we have helped tens of millions of readers like you make more informed decisions to live healthier lives. We try our best to give you, our readers, unbiased exploration of at-home health services, free of marketing jargon or gimmicks. We evaluate the service based on our adherence to quality, the latest medical evidence and health standards, and a simple question: would we buy the product or service ourselves if it weren't part of our job, and would we recommend it to family and friends?
Additionally, like all health-related content on this website, this review of Total Restore was thoroughly vetted by one or more members of our Medical Review Board for accuracy.
What is Total Restore?
Special Offer: Save $75 on the 3 bottle package
Total Restore is a supplement designed to improve the stability of your intestines' mucosal membrane and return full function to the tight junctions that control permeability. It contains L-glutamine and glucosamine, which bolster intestinal linings and improve overall gut health in studies. It's part of an extensive regimen of nutritional wellness products developed and sold by Dr. Steven Gundry.
Total Restore's complete list of ingredients is:
- Magnesium
- Zinc
- L-glutamine
- N-acetyl-D-glucosamine
- Magnesium beta-hydroxybutyrate
- Grape seed extract
- Licorice root and rhizomes powder
- Wormwood
- Cinnamon bark powder
- Maitake mushroom extract
- Organic berries (blueberry, raspberry, cherry, elderberry, and cranberry)
- Cloves
- Black pepper fruit powder
- Grapefruit seed extract
- Marshmallow root powder
- Zinc L-carnosine
- Berberine
- Microcrystalline cellulose
- Hydroxypropyl methylcellulose
- Silicon dioxide
- Magnesium stearate
How does Total Restore work?
To understand how Total Restore works, you have to know how your body absorbs nutrients. It might help to think of your bloodstream like a medieval castle and the mucosal lining of your intestines as a moat. If anything tries to get inside, it quickly gets trapped by the moat and devoured by your body's biochemical defenses — kind of like your moat's alligators.
But your body still needs to absorb nutrients into the bloodstream to maintain its good health. That's why there are pathways in your intestines where structures known as tight junctions act like gatekeepers, each in charge of their little drawbridge. When something healthy comes along, they allow the drawbridge to go up and the nutrient to pass into the blood. But if the guards don't do their jobs properly or there are cracks in the walls around the gateway, bad guys can get in, usually in the form of bacteria and endotoxins.
Total Restore seeks to reinforce all of these defenses, bolstering the strength and efficiency of your gut's mucosal lining and protecting your tight junctions from attacks by lectins, which can destabilize those tight junctions and lower the drawbridge for bacteria and other toxins.
Total Restore can also influence aspects of your gut's microbiome without directly introducing good bacteria in the form of probiotics. Influence over this microbiome is where you start to see how Total Restore's effects can spread outside the digestive system and positively impact other parts of your health.
For example, zinc and magnesium are two prominent ingredients in Total Restore. Several studies link magnesium and zinc deficiencies with imbalances in gut microbiota that can significantly alter various other systems, not least of all a person's emotional state, potentially leading to depressive behavior.
Total Restore contains L-glucosamine, which bolsters the lining of the gut in several studies but also has a long history of treating joint pain and increasing flexibility and comfort in joints as you age.
Is Total Restore legit?
Total Restore is entirely legitimate. The company that makes it, Gundry MD, produces a wide range of effective nutritional supplements, health foods, and skin and hair care products. They focus on using natural ingredients to influence health from a proactive standpoint rather than a reactive one. That means their products aim to heal when necessary, but preferably to prevent disease in the first place.
Who is Dr. Gundry?
Dr. Gundry is a former cardiothoracic surgeon responsible for pioneering techniques in infant heart surgery. After spending three decades as a surgeon, Dr. Gundry transitioned to focus on nutrition's role in his patients' health. He's written several bestselling books on health and nutrition, and he runs a private clinic in Palm Springs, but it's prohibitively expensive for many and has a long waitlist. The next best thing for anyone interested in his methods is his line of Gundry MD products, including skin and hair care products, health foods, and supplements.
Is Total Restore safe?
Total Restore is generally very safe. Its ingredients come from natural sources, and the company produces it under Good Manufacturing Practices to ensure its purity and stability. But with any supplement, there are some risks that you should consider.
A few of the ingredients in Total Restore may prohibit its use by certain individuals with allergies or sensitivities. In some cases, these ingredients are indispensable to the product, while in others, it seems more about controlling the cost of production and passing those savings onto the consumer.
N-acetyl-D-glucosamine
N-acetyl-glucosamine is one of the primary drivers of gut health in Total Restore. It can bind to lectins and prevent them from causing damage to your gut's precious tight junctions. It also has the added benefit of helping joints feel looser and reducing some of the pain from wear and tear that comes with age.
The issue is that the N-acetyl-D-glucosamine in Total Restore comes from shellfish (crabs and shrimp), making this product unsuitable for vegans, vegetarians, and those with allergies. This decision is a somewhat frustrating aspect of the product since plant-based alternative sources of glucosamine do exist. Ultimately it seems to be a cost-control measure — plant-based glucosamine can be twice as expensive as its shellfish-derived cousin.
L-glutamine
L-glutamine is the most abundant ingredient in Total Restore and is also the most important one for the health of your mucosal lining. It's a non-essential amino acid, so our bodies make it on their own, but often we make too little for the demands we place on ourselves. Fortunately, we can derive glutamine from meats, dairy products, various vegetables, and other food sources.
Unfortunately, glutamine sensitivity is increasingly prevalent in the US, with the ability to trigger headaches, fatigue, joint inflammation, and even anaphylaxis. Some sufferers may not realize that glutamine is at the heart of specific chronic symptoms in their lives, and adding more of it through Total Restore may only exacerbate the problem.
If you notice any increase in symptoms you've already been experiencing or new adverse reactions, be sure to stop taking Total Restore and speak with your physician.
Pricing and payments
Total Restore comes in a bottle containing 90 pills, which is enough for 30 days of treatment. One bottle costs $69.95, but you can purchase three and six-month supplies that can save you up to $200/year on the program.
Gundry MD accepts major credit cards and Paypal, but there are no options for insurance coverage. That's not too surprising considering that few-to-no insurance providers would cover supplements, but you can certainly ask your provider if you're curious.
Shipping is free for orders over $60, and it usually takes between two and seven days for your order to arrive.
Getting started with Total Restore
Purchasing
One of the best things about Total Restore is its ease of use, which starts with Dr. Gundry's website. When you click the "Shop" option at the top of the screen, you'll see the following categories:
- Supplements
- Skin & Hair Care
- Food
- Dog Food
- Books
- Magazine and
- Sale
After you select "Supplements," you'll find Total Restore on the following page. You can add it to your cart and have it shipped to your home free of charge.
Taking Total Restore
A daily dose of Total Restore is three capsules. Dr. Gundry recommends that you take all three capsules along with whatever is typically your biggest meal of the day. It is possible to spread them out, however, taking one pill with each meal.
Some users report feeling positive effects a few days after they begin their regimen, but the majority of users who experience increased energy or gastrointestinal comfort tend to feel it after a few weeks of treatment.
Is Total Restore a good value?
For anyone looking for a solution to their digestive issues, Total Restore has promise. For some, reinforcing their gut lining may be the thing that resolves other ailments caused by the toxins entering the bloodstream. For others whose permeability problems are symptoms of underlying conditions, Total Restore can still provide relief thanks to its effective ingredients. Still, it won't address the root cause of their distress.
If you find that Total Restore works for you, you can dramatically increase the bang for your buck by buying in larger quantities. A six-month supply gets you a discount of nearly 25%, so if you have the capital to invest, that can save you a lot of money.
What other products does Gundry MD offer?
Gundry MD has a whole host of products in addition to his Total Restore gut health supplement. You can safely take any of these in conjunction with one another:
Doctor Gundry's supplements include things like protein shake mixes, metabolism boosters, and pre- and probiotics. One of the most popular supplements is Vital Reds, a polyphenol blend with probiotics and fructo-oligosaccharides that you stir into water.
Gundry MD's skin and hair care products should work equally well for any gender. They include a probiotic cream designed to balance your skin's microbiome, as well as a pair of serums to help with skin elasticity, a botanical cleanser, a dark spot remover, and a nutrient complex in capsule form.
Dr. Gundry puts nutrition first, so it makes sense that he would offer food products. These include coffee, riced cauliflower, pancake mixes, chocolate bars, cooking oil, and more. His supplement bars are low in sugar, but we think the balance of macronutrients skews too heavily toward fats, even if those fats are from healthy sources.
Of course, people would want to extend the same ardent attention they pay to their gut health to that of their dogs. And if you have any idea what the average dog food contains, then you know how potentially hazardous it is to a dog's health. Gundry MD's dog food is a dry blend made with grass-fed beef and nutrient-rich organ meat. He rounds it out with several plant-based ingredients.
Dr. Gundry has written a handful of books that go into great detail about nutrition, food science, and human health. He brings his decades of surgical practice and medical knowledge to the forefront. He provides his readers with the kind of actionable information that might make a positive difference in their lives.
Filled with recipes, health advice, and weight loss tips, Dr. Gundry's 'Your Health' magazine is an inexpensive way to keep your journey toward better health a little more interesting. It's available on a subscription basis or by individual issue.
How we evaluate home health products and services
At Innerbody Research, we customize our evaluation criteria depending on the type and nature of the health-related service or product. For health products and services, we have five areas that we use for our evaluations, including:
Quality: How well does the company deliver its core service(s) to the customer? For testing services, does the company adhere to the latest and most advanced testing technologies and achieve a very high degree of accuracy? For non-testing telehealth services, is the quality of the service high enough that we would recommend it to loved ones without hesitation? If not, why not?
User-friendly: How intuitive and user-friendly is the service? Does the device, program, app, or website achieve a good degree of user-friendliness for its customers?
Value: Are you getting your money's worth? Are there any hidden costs or charges? Does the company offer discounts?
Privacy: If health data is stored, will your data be stored securely? Are payments secure?
Customer support: Particularly in situations where 'one size fits all' doesn't make sense, how well does the company help to make the service ideal for you?
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