Natural Ways to Improve Gut Health

Healthy guts are vital to overall well-being. Trillions of bacteria live in the gut, playing a crucial role in digestion, immunity, and even mental health. However, many people suffer from gut issues like bloating, constipation, and diarrhea. The good news is that there are several natural remedies that can improve gut health and promote a healthy microbiome.

Improving Your Diet

Avoid Junk Food: In order to maintain a healthy gut, the most important thing is to avoid processed foods, high-sugar foods, and high-fat foods, as they kill the healthy bacteria in the gut.

Fiber Up: Additionally, you may want to add some foods to your diet as you work toward better gut health. Start with foods high in fiber, such as beans, peas, legumes, oats, berries, bananas, leeks, and asparagus, as fiber has been shown to benefit gut health. Garlic and onion are also effective.

Be Pro Probiotics: Gut health can also be improved by fermented foods. Foods such as miso, kimchi, yogurt, sauerkraut, tempeh and kefir, all contain probiotics that are essential for gut health.

Get A Collagen Boost: Gut health can also be improved by collagen-rich foods. Consider adding bone broth, salmon, mushrooms, healthy dairy products and more meat to your diet.

Increase Your Grains: Adding more whole grains to your diet will also benefit you. These foods are high in fiber and beta-glucan, which is a non-digestible carb. When carbs aren’t absorbed by the small intestine, it makes its way into the large intestine, where it gets broken down by microbiota and promotes the growth of healthy bacteria. Not only do studies show that whole grains promote the growth of lactobacilli, Bacteroidetes and Bifidobacteria, but these foods also increase fullness and reduce inflammation.

Cut The Sugar: The more you learn about gut health, the more you realize how detrimental sugar is to your digestive system. Fibers and prebiotics are food sources for healthy bacteria, while sugar and refined carbohydrates feed dangerous bacteria.

Consuming a high sugar diet can cause your gut balance to be thrown off, allowing changes to occur quickly. Studies show that an increase in pathogenic bacteria leads to a condition called Dysbiosis.

As the pathogenic bacteria overgrow, any beneficial bacteria are pushed out. It also causes changes in the mucosal barrier of your intestine. When the barrier is not protected by good bacteria, permeability begins to change. Eventually, unwanted substances will be able to pass through freely. The condition is known as Leaky Gut Syndrome, which triggers an inflammatory immune response to try and kill substances that get into your digestive system through the intestinal wall.

Don’t Bother With Artificial Sweeteners: After learning how to improve your digestive system and avoid sugar, you may choose to use artificial sweeteners instead. However, these substances also pose a threat to the health of your digestive system. Despite its potential to reduce weight gain, aspartame may also impair insulin responses and increase blood sugar levels. A study also indicated that rats fed aspartame had higher levels of Enterobacteriaceae and Clostridium in their intestines.

Making Lifestyle Adjustments

Limit Alcohol: In addition to improving your gut health, there are some lifestyle changes you can make to improve your general health as well. Limiting your alcohol consumption is one of those changes. Studies show that heavy alcohol consumption encourages the overgrowth of dangerous bacteria. Furthermore, it decreases the population of beneficial bacteria, which leads to inflammation and makes it easier for toxins to enter the body.

Quit Smoking: The risks associated with smoking are generally well understood by most people. There are many health issues associated with smoking, including heart disease, lung disease, and breathing issues. However, many people don’t realize how harmful it is to gut health. Quitting smoking is the first step you should take if you want to improve your gut health.

Recent studies show that quitting smoking improves metabolism, inflammation levels, oxidative stress, and gut bacteria. Often, patients with digestive issues can benefit greatly by simply quitting smoking.

Skip The Fad Diets: You may turn to fad diets as you try to keep your gut healthy, under the impression that you are boosting your health. However, many fad diets do more harm than good, especially to your gut bacteria. It is possible for carbohydrates to be good or bad. Refined carbohydrates essentially add sugar and starch to your body. However, there are many non-digestible carbohydrates that your body uses as fiber. There may be some merit to limiting simple carbs in your diet, but you don’t want to eliminate non-digestible carbohydrates completely. It has been shown that low-fiber diets can reduce gut microbiota diversity and cause stomach ailments, such as constipation. If you want to make your gut healthy, instead of looking into fad diets, learn how to create a well-balanced diet that includes plenty of fiber from fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

Exercise Regularly: When it comes to achieving optimal gut health, getting more exercise may be the easiest, quickest and most cost-effective way to achieve it. A number of studies have shown that exercise has the potential to alter the bacteria in your gut.

Exercise promotes bacteria growth, which in turn leads to the production of butyrate, a fatty acid. Butyrate promotes gut lining repair and reduces inflammation. Exercise can also shift the gut microbiota to guard against obesity, while improving overall metabolic function.

You don’t have to exercise vigorously to notice changes as even moderate exercise can make a big difference. Compared with other sedentary women, women who exercised lightly – walking or swimming – three hours a week showed higher levels of Akkermansia muciniphila, Roseburia hominis and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii.These bacteria can help create a lean body mass index, improve metabolic health and reduce inflammation. 

Get A Good Night’s Sleep: Sleep quality and quantity are also important factors in gut health. There is a symbiotic relationship between microbiota and sleep: microbiota affect sleep quality, and sleep quality affects gut health.  As sleep decreases, beneficial bacteria in the body also decrease. Additionally, type 2 diabetes and obesity are more likely to occur as gut microorganisms change. 

Sleep and gut health are linked in the other direction as well, as healthy bacteria in your gut can affect your sleep quality. Moreover, the microbiome has a profound effect on your mental and cognitive health, which may explain why depression and anxiety are higher when the microbiome is out of balance. Medications for treating mental health problems often throw the microbial life into further imbalance, making it more difficult to sleep.

The key to breaking this dangerous cycle is to pay attention to how much sleep you get. To establish a healthy schedule, go to bed and get up at the same time each day. Exercise regularly, but not too late at night, and avoid caffeine and alcohol later in the day.

Be Aware of The Effects of Medications

Keep NSAIDs To A Minimum: Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are some of the most commonly prescribed drugs in America. These medicines are used for conditions such as arthritis and can be beneficial in some cases. Many people are familiar with over-the-counter NSAIDs such as ibuprofen, aspirin, and naproxen sodium.

There are benefits to these drugs, but if you take them too often, they cause your body to stop producing prostaglandins (fatty acids). This causes your body to experience less fever, pain and inflammation, but prostaglandins are needed to protect stomach lining cells and promote clotting. This throws your whole digestive system out of balance, potentially causing ulcers and bleeding.

It has even been shown in studies that NSAIDs can damage your healthy gut bacteria. So, reducing your NSAID intake is a crucial part of boosting gut health.

Ultimately, improving gut health is a process that requires time and consistency in order to achieve. By incorporating these natural gut health improvement tips into your daily routine, you can promote a healthy microbiome and improve your overall health.