Gut health is often completely taken for granted. But the reality is that poor gut health can impact your overall health in a variety of ways.
An unhealthy gut is now scientifically associated with autoimmune disorders, persistent skin problems, hormonal disorders, and even mental health challenges. You should improve your gut health if you experience chronic bloating, acid reflux, irregular bowel movements, or unexplained fatigue.
Antacids or laxatives will only help you manage the symptoms temporarily. Your real healing needs a root-cause approach. If you want to understand how to improve gut health, you cannot just add a probiotic and hope for the best. You must re-establish the whole atmosphere of your digestive system.
What Does Gut Health Really Mean?
Gut health refers to how well your entire digestive system is functioning, especially the balance of microorganisms living inside it.
A healthy gut benefits several systems within your body, such as your digestion, immune system, brain health, and metabolism. If you have a healthy gut, you see:
- Frequent bowel movements
- Little bloating or pain
- Good energy levels
- Strong immunity
- Stable mood
Your gut is sometimes referred to as your second brain. Your entire body is likely to work very well when it is healthy. When it is not, it can touch upon it all. Your gut also makes 70% of your immune system cells and 90% of your serotonin, which are the happy hormones. Therefore, it is crucial to invest in improving gut health.
Step 1: Cut Off Ultra-Processed Food and Seed Oils
The first step is to eliminate all the foods that cause inflammation in your cells. Ultra-processed foods contain chemical emulsifiers like polysorbate 80 and carboxymethylcellulose. They destroy the mucus lining that lines your intestines, exposing your gut to bad bacteria, which directly enter your gut wall and cause inflammation.
You need to avoid packaged snacks, fast food, soda, and processed seed oils, exclusively using whole, single-ingredient foods. You should also eliminate artificial sweeteners in the meantime. It has been demonstrated that artificial sweeteners such as sucralose and aspartame may change your microbiome make-up and decrease beneficial bacteria by 50%.
Over the next 30 days, replace all your packaged salad dressings (which are full of seed oils and sugar) with a basic homemade salad dressing of extra virgin olive oil, apple cider vinegar, and herbs.
Step 2: Focus more on Prebiotics than Probiotics
Prebiotics are food substances that the body does not digest, but are consumed by microorganisms in your gut. When these prebiotics are broken down by the good bacteria, a short-chain fatty acid known as butyrate is produced. Butyrate is the main fuel that your gut cells require to live, reproduce, and maintain the gut barrier in a well-closed state.
You should focus on getting 25-30 grams of fiber daily from prebiotic-rich foods like garlic, onions, asparagus, and oats. You can easily create a powerful prebiotic like resistant starch by simply cooking potatoes, rice, or pasta, and then letting them cool in the fridge overnight.
Eat them straight off in a salad or re-heat them the following day! This directly feeds your good bacteria and heals your intestinal walls.
Step 3. Eat 30 Different Plants a Week
The biggest American Gut Project, which discovered that the most important indicator of a healthy gut is the number of different plants you consume. People who eat 30 or more different types of plants per week have a vastly more diverse microbiome than those who eat fewer than 10.
Different bacteria need different types of fiber to survive. When you just eat chicken and broccoli, you are just nourishing a small percentage of your gut bugs.
To put this into practice, start counting your plant varieties, including fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, herbs, and spices. You can also sprinkle mixed seeds on your salad, cook with fresh herbs, alternate types of berries, and purchase frozen mixed vegetable blends.
Step 4. Add Probiotics and Fermented Foods
Probiotics add healthy bacteria to your intestines. Taking targeted probiotics supplements implies selecting certain strains that suit you. In addition to supplements, one of the most natural methods of introducing probiotics into your system is by regularly eating fermented foods:
- Yogurt with live culture
- Kefir
- Sauerkraut
- Kimchi
- Fermented vegetables
You can also use probiotics with prebiotic foods (such as garlic, onions, and oats), which are foods that the good bacteria use as fuel to work best.
But if you have Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO), fermented foods can actually make it worse because they introduce bacteria into the wrong part of your digestive tract. In case you experience severe bloating after consuming fermented foods, you might have to collaborate with a practitioner to treat SIBO first.
Alternatively, the best solution to improve gut health is a high-quality probiotic supplement that will not lead to such excessive reactions.
Step 5. Use Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern in which you alternate between eating and fasting. One of the popular methods is the 16:8 method, which involves eating in an 8-hour period and fasting in the next 16 hours. Your digestive system gets a rest during this fasting period, which is surprisingly very helpful to your gut.
Intermittent fasting has been shown to enhance gut health as it induces a physiological phenomenon known as the Migrating Motor Complex (MMC). This is a wave of muscle contractions that remove leftover food particles, dead cells, and harmful bacteria from your small intestine, preventing bacterial overgrowth.
You can start with a 12-hour fasting routine. Avoid eating 3 hours before bedtime. In case you eat dinner at 7:00 PM, do not eat your first meal until 9:00 AM the next morning. Only drink water or black coffee during this period.
Step 6: Chew Your Food Properly
Digestion actually starts in your mouth. Chewing food properly not only helps in breaking down your food into small particles, but it also combines your food with saliva. Saliva contains amylase. It is an enzyme that starts to decompose carbohydrates at once.
When you swallow huge pieces of food that are not well chewed, you make your stomach and intestines do the heavy work. This can cause undigested food to ferment in your lower intestines. which produces massive amounts of gas, bloating, and feeds bad bacteria.
A practical guideline is to chew 20-30 times each bite of food before swallowing it. This easy-to-adopt habit can help you significantly decrease your post-meal bloating and improve your gut health.
Step 6: Drink More Water
Water is an important part of your digestion and gut activity. By not drinking enough water, you cause the waste to travel too slowly through your colon and start fermenting, which nourishes bad bacteria and leads to uncomfortable constipation and bloating.
Water also keeps your protective mucus layer in your gut hydrated, so it can do its job.
You must drink at least half your body weight in ounces of water per day. Try to begin your morning with a full glass of water before you take any coffee.
To make sure that your hydration actually goes into your cells, add a pinch of sea salt or a squeeze of lemon into your water. This helps to avoid constipation and keeps your gut lining moist.
Step 7: Get Proper Sleep
The gut microbiome has a 24-hour circadian rhythm, which follows a strict program with your brain. Most of your body repair and replication is done during deep sleep by the good, beneficial bacteria. When you are sleep-deprived, this rhythm is disrupted, and your body secretes more stress hormones, which physically harm your gut lining in the long-term.
You are advised to end your meal at least 3 hours before you sleep. This allows the gut to have a total rest as you sleep. Make your bedroom cool and dark to encourage deep, healthy sleep.
Step 8: Manage Your Stress
Your gut directly responds to stress via the gut-brain connection. Constant day to day stress puts your body in a long-lasting fight or flight mode, and your system is constantly overloaded with cortisol (stress hormone).
Create a daily routine of 10-15 minutes of a daily, non-screen stress-reduction activity such as a morning walk in nature, journaling or meditation. The goal is to actively signal your body that you are safe, even outside of mealtimes.
Conclusion
The most important part of how to improve gut health is consistency. You need to focus on your daily small habits to build long-term wellness. The best daily tip that you can start now is to always drink a large glass of warm water with a squeeze of fresh lemon 20 minutes before your first meal. This is a natural way to get your digestive system going and your stomach to produce the acid it requires to digest food.
To achieve actual results, you must remain consistent with the above-mentioned habits. Your gut health will be restored, and you will probably experience clearer skin, a better mood, less joint pain, and better energy.
However, sometimes diet and lifestyle changes are not enough. Some silent diseases such as parasites, yeast overgrowth, or bacterial infections such as SIBO may silently prevent your gut from healing.
At Kairos Health and Wellness in Texas, Lola, one of our functional nurse practitioners, uses advanced functional medicine testing to find these hidden diseases and build a custom plan to fix it.
If you are tired of living with bloating and digestive problems, reach out to us today! Our specialists are here to help you.