How To Take Care Of Your Gut Health

How To Take Care of Your Gut Health? – If you’re reading this, then chances are you’ve been experiencing gut problems or suspect that your gut health is at risk. For starters, it’s good to be cautious when it comes to your health. To help you, this article will continue to highlight the most important tips in maintaining gut health.

Gut Health And Its Importance

Scientifically, gut is another word for the digestive tract and revolves around anything between your mouth and the rectum. Simply put, gut health is the general well-being of your digestive tract.

The digestive tract comprises of beneficial microorganisms or good bacteria that play a role in the following biological processes:

• Aiding digestion
• Regulating bile
• Regulating vitamin levels
• Absorbing nutrients

On one end, a proper balance in the gut flora is what contributes to better gut health. On the other end, an imbalance in the microbiome has been found to cause chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, and carcinoma, among many other severe illnesses.  If you notice symptoms such as fatigue, sleeping problems, stomach upsets, diarrhea, and unintentional weight loss, your gut health may be at risk. Keep reading to find out how to get your gut health back on the right track.

1. Reduce Stress

In the modern world, where everyone is working day and night to keep up with the fast-growing economy, stress has become too common. Unfortunately, most people ignore the symptoms until it’s too late.

Stress affects many aspects of health, including gut health. Not long ago, researchers at Bionu Health studied the link between gut health, mental health, and neuron connection. Their research shows that when you’re stressed, the brain allows certain toxins to pass into the intestines, disrupting the gut flora. This is why you should identify your stressors and look for ways to better manage them, particularly if you have signs of poor gut health.

2. Check Your Eating Habits

Dieticians will often tell you that you’re what you eat. Therefore, when it comes to promoting gut health, among the first things you should consider is a diet change. Which foods are the best? You may ask. Well, if you notice any symptoms of poor gut health, your first move should be to cut processed, high-fat, and high-sugar foods from your diet. This means doing away with all of the junk foods you may have been consuming regularly.

They’re best replaced with plant-based foods and lean protein, all of which are known to impact your gut health positively. Throw in high-fiber foods such as beans, peas, oats, bananas, berries, legumes, and leeks.

However, eating the proper meals will sound like a waste of time if you don’t take time to chew your food thoroughly. Dieticians say that adequate chewing of food plays a significant role in promoting complete digestion and proper absorption of nutrients. Therefore, if you’re looking to improve your gut health, it will be best if you avoid disrupted eating or eating too fast.

3. Consume Probiotics And Prebiotics

Probiotics are live microorganisms that help to maintain gut health. On the other hand, prebiotics is a type of non-digestible carbohydrate that helps produce more probiotics. In short, prebiotics is like food and fuel for probiotics. There are food sources that contain both, which are called synbiotics. The best examples are yogurt, kefir, kombucha, kimchi, and cheese.

Both probiotics and prebiotics can be used in microbiome-based therapies that are helpful in post-surgery recovery and treatment of bacterial infections and colorectal cancers. While all these sound promising, be careful not to consume too much as excessive intake will definitely throw off your microbiota’s balance too. Probiotic and prebiotic supplements are typically recommended by doctors, especially if you have other health disorders that should be taken into consideration. As for food sources, consuming them in moderate amounts will be the safest.

4. Exercise

How is working out related to gut health? This is one question that you’ll find many curious readers asking. When you’re working out, you promote healthy blood circulation, which is essential to a healthy digestive system. Isn’t that what you’re looking to achieve? Start with longer but light exercises. When you’re ready, you can move on to high-intensity aerobic training.

One fantastic thing about exercising is that while at it, you’ll be hitting two birds with a single stone—you’re promoting better gut health while staying fit at the same time.

5. Limit Your Alcohol Intake

A bottle a day is known to be a perfect way to kill time or catch up with your buddies. However, excessive alcohol intake negatively impacts your gut health. Drinking too much alcohol has been known to irritate the gut, causing it to inflame over time (gastritis). The inflammation often alters the microbiota, throwing it off balance while causing heartburn and increasing susceptibility to bacterial infections.

Therefore, if you’re looking forward to prolonged and better gut health, it will be best if you avoid alcohol in the first place. But if you can’t do without it, consider keeping your intake minimal.

6. Get Enough Sleep Time

According to health specialists, an average adult should get at least six to eight hours of sleep daily. Not only does getting sufficient sleep time allow your body to recover, but it also boosts gut health. Not getting enough sleep is known to negatively impact the gut flora and increase the risk of inflammatory conditions.

Therefore, if you’re looking forward to better gut health, among the essential things you should consider doing is getting to your bed on time and removing all the disruptions that may cut your sleep short.

7. Consult With Your Doctor 

If you’ve tried all the remedies mentioned above, but nothing seems to work, you should consider booking an appointment with your doctor. If needed, you may be referred to a gastroenterologist, a medical doctor that specializes in diagnosing and treating gut health problems.

If you have chronic gut health problems such as irritable bowel syndrome, you need professional intervention before things get worse.

Parting Shot

Maintaining a healthy gut contributes significantly to better overall health and immunity. Doing so doesn’t have to be as complicated as many people make it sound. If you make the proper lifestyle and dietary changes, as mentioned in this blog post, you can alter the diversity and number of microbes in your digestive tract for the better. You don’t necessarily have to take all these measures at a go. You can choose one at a time and proceed to the rest while observing the changes.

Remember, if you don’t notice any changes even after trying, consulting a gastroenterologist is your best option.