How To Improve Gut Health

Posted on Jan 26th, 2024

Nutrition

What is gut health?

Let’s talk about how to improve gut health. When we refer to gut health, we’re referring to the health of our entire digestive tract. Two significant parts of our gut health are how well nutrients are absorbed by our digestive tract, and the health of our gut microbiome. Our gut microbiome is the colony of bacteria that live throughout our digestive tract, however the majority hang out in the large intestine.

Why improve gut health?

Improving gut health can benefit many other processes in the body. After all the gut is responsible for the nutrients we need coming in and the pathogens we don’t need keeping out. When our gut health is not great, we’re not optimally absorbing the nutrients that every process in our body requires and we could be letting in harmful toxins and microbes. If our gut is letting in harmful toxins, our immune system has to fire up to fight them at the next line of defence using up our vital energy.

How does your gut health get damaged?

Taking medications such as antibiotics can wipe out our good bacterias that digest certain foods and keep the lining of the gut healthy. When the balance between good and bad bacterias are out of whack (dysbiosis). Dysbiosis can cause the onset of many diseases like inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, allergies, diabetes, cancer and can affect mental health too.

Being under stress and the stress hormone cortisol being too high in the body can also affect the composition of bacterias in our gut and increase gut permeability. Gut permeability is the loosening of the cells that line the gut, this is how unwanted pathogens leak into the bloodstream.

Poor sleep can disrupt the balance of our microbiome (gut bacteria) as our microbiome plays a role in our sleep-wake cycles. In reverse once the microbiome is disrupted so is our sleep, it can be a vicious cycle. This might explain the link between poor sleep and obesity.

Move from a western diet to a Mediterranean diet.

How can we heal naturally?

There are many things we can incorporate into our daily routines that will improve gut health over time and keep it as healthy as possible.

Avoid taking medications where possible

Reduce stress levels by practising breathing, relaxing the chest and stomach. Staying present and only taking on today’s worries. Meditation and taking a walk in nature.

Adopt a more plant based diet. Include as many fruit and vegetables as possible into your diet throughout the day. Fruit and vegetables are full of probiotics which feed the healthy gut bacterias, strengthening the microbiome. The increase of vitamins and minerals will also reduce inflammation and promote healing of the cells.

Exercising also helps to improve gut health by increasing the blood flow to the digestive system, positively altering the microbiome and helping the bowel to keep things moving along. Although, be careful not to burn out and create too much stress in the body. Yoga would be an amazing choice as it reduces stress and gets the blood flowing.

Improve your sleep by getting enough daylight to improve your natural sleep cycle. Being exposed to sufficient daylight triggers the release of the hormone serotonin which controls the sleep cycle. Avoid screens before bedtime as a dark environment triggers the release of melatonin which helps you to drift off to sleep.

Avoid caffeine. Caffeine isn’t great for the gut, it stimulates muscle contractions which could result in diarrhoea and urgency to go to the toilet. It also triggers the release of stress hormones which affect gut health and our sleep quality.

Try adding fermented foods to your meals. Fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, natural yoghurt, kombucha and pickles are probiotic, which means they contain helpful bacterias which can boost the diversity and health of your microbiome.

Take a course of probiotics. Taking a course of probiotics can again help to add diversity to your microbiome, adding many helpful bacterias and keeping your gut health in balance and optimised. My favourite probiotic course is from Symprove. It is a liquid probiotic that you drink every morning 10 minutes before eating. I find it tastes nice and fruity and it has helped improve my gut health significantly. The price is very reasonable for a 3 month course. It contains live bacteria in a water-based solution so it can survive the digestive process and reach the lower intestines where the live bacterias can thrive and feed existing good bacterias. I prefer this form of probiotic as opposed to tablet forms, which are often not live bacterias.

Take a prebiotic supplement. Okay I hope this isn’t getting confusing now but to keep our probiotics alive and strong the need to be fed prebiotics. As mentioned earlier fruit and vegetables are amazing sources of prebiotics that keep our bacterias strong and healthy. We can also take a prebiotic supplement to support our microbiome diversity. I like Invivos Bio.Me Prebio which is organic and is gentle in the gut, suitable for anyone following a low-FODMAP diet.

Switch your bread to sourdough. It’s often a misconception that bread is bad for you. Bread that is made with natural ingredients and naturally grown yeast like sourdough is actually good for your gut! Most bread in the supermarket is loaded with ingredients like preservatives that ar not great for your gut. Luckily most supermarkets now sell sourdough so you can enjoy the wonder that is bread without the worry. If you can make your own sourdough (admittedly requires much patience and tolerance for a flour covered kitchen) then that would be awesome!

Get your stool tested. One of the most pivotal moments on my gut healing journey was getting my microbiome assessed via a stool test. This is best done through a registered nutritionist. They went through the test results with me and explained what was going on in my gut. I had a couple of harmful bacterias that were too high. One which feeds off sulphur and was creating a lot of gas in my gut. Knowing this, I adjusted my diet, cutting out eggs (which I was eating a lot of) I noticed straight away my gas issue disappeared! Specific bacterias can be causing certain issues in the gut so I would highly recommend getting a stool test if your symptoms are being difficult to tackle. Also with this test you can find out which good bacterias you are lacking, then taking that specific bacteria as a supplement.

I hope this article gives you some knowledge and inspiration on how to improve gut health which in turn will improve your energy, mood, sleep and much more. Good luck on your journey and check out some of my gut healing and gut friendly recipes to get you started.

Try my Gut Healing Noodle Broth recipe or my gut healing smoothie recipe.