Do you ever get bloated after eating, have stomach aches, or get gassy for no reason? This has become common amongst our society today, but there are ways in which we can help our gut health. As you’ll learn, your gut health affects your overall health and can be the root of some of your unexplained symptoms.
What is Gut Health?
To start – what the heck is gut health? Gut health is what describes the many functions of the gastrointestinal tract. The gastrointestinal tract includes all the organs that play a role in breaking down the food we eat, digesting, absorbing, and eventually excreting it. So as you can imagine, this tract is quite long and complicated in our body. A healthy gut is able to break down food easily and allow nutrients in the food to enter our bloodstream. It contains healthy bacteria that helps ward away bad bacteria, fungi, and viruses. When our gut is not healthy, that’s when things get a bit tricky.
What Affects Gut Health?
Anything that you put in your diet can affect your gut health. Some foods can affect your gut health more than others, but there are also a ton of other reasons why your gut health may be failing. A lack of physical activity can decrease the health of your gut. High levels of physical activity have been shown to increase the healthy bacteria in your gut and make a more diverse gut flora. Having too much stress damages your gut health. It’s been shown that stress lowers the good bacteria in your gut including lactobacilli. Sometimes you find yourself getting sick at the worst times, such as having an important task that’s due. This is not a coincidence because the stress that you imposed on yourself lowered the good bacteria in your gut, which helps fight off the bad bacteria. There are so many other ways that your gut health can be affected, whether that be negative or positive, but it all boils down to what you can implement into your life to enhance your gut health.
How to Improve Gut Health
The best thing you can do for your gut is increase the level of healthy bacteria. Stress, sickness, or other daily occurrences that pop up are inevitable, but forming a plan to increase the level of healthy bacteria before they happen can help you get back to your healthy gut flora quickly. Start consuming prebiotics and probiotics. Prebiotics can be found in legumes, bananas, and onions. Probiotics can be found in fermented foods such as kimchi or kefir. Prebiotics and probiotics are the number one way to increase the population and diversity of good bacteria in your gut. Stress takes a major hit on your gut health, so forming a plan to reduce stress can not only calm your mind down, but also assist your gut. Try meditating, exercising, breathing techniques, or whatever calms your body and mind down. Another way you can improve your gut health is sticking to a sleep schedule. Your body is tuned to a circadian rhythm, and your gut is tuned to a similar clock. Staying on a generally similar sleep schedule can help your gut flora stay in check. Try not drinking coffee mid-day because it could be keeping you up later at night. Also try meditating before bed to calm your mind and body.
Your gut health is so important! It can affect almost every aspect of your body. Your gut creates 95% of your body’s serotonin! This shows that your gut health not only affects how your body physically feels, but also how you mentally feel. Keep your gut health in check so you can feel at your very best.
