Gut Health is Essential for Overall Health

Gut Health is Essential for Overall Health

Gut health is a buzzword right now as you have been witnessing lots of information pertaining to good gut and bad gut ever since people have started acknowledging the fact that an unhealthy gut can lead to an unhealthy body and mind.

In the first part of our discussion, we will talk about your GI health facts and why your gut health (better gut health) is essential, and what best you can do on your own to keep your gut healthy and take care of your intestinal health or intestinal bacteria (Healthy stomach bacteria). The next part of our discussion will be regarding the steps which you can take to manage if you already have an unhealthy gut due to a disturbed intestinal flora (gut biome).

The Gut

Gut refers to the digestive tract and stomach health refers to the overall health of your digestive tract. Understanding what constitutes a healthy gut is a bit complex affair as there are lots of scientific opinions on “Gut Health”.

Gut Microbiome (Gut Bacteria)

However, stomach health, in general, refers to a balance of microbiome that lives in the digestive tract. Both good and bad bacteria inside your gut [bad bacteria in the stomach (Bad gut bacteria)] are referred to as “Gut Microbiome” or Gut Flora.  Gut bacteria are mysteriously huge. They are trillions just like the milky Way.

A healthy balance of these microbes is important for the overall health of your gut. Gut imbalance refers to the unhealthy balance of these two types of bacteria.

Microbial flora or Microbiota or Microbiome (Gut Flora)

The natural microbial flora of your gut is essential in keeping your health and bodily functions intact.

Importance of Gut Health: An imbalance in your Gut microbiome (bacteria) may lead to irritable bowel syndrome, diarrhea, irritable bowel disease. According to a few studies your Digestive tract health has been found to contribute to your obesity, cholesterol levels, diabetes, and even mental health and well-being.

What are the functions of the gut microbiome (microbial flora of the gut)?

Your gut microbial flora performs the following functions:

• Help in the digestion.
• Help in the absorption of nutrients
• Offer protection against intestinal microbes that cause infections
• Help regulate vitamins, nutrients, and bile levels
• Produce vitamin K
• Support the immune system
• Keep your mind healthy (gut second brain)
• Boost the immune system (study published in 2015 in Science by University of Chicago Researchers)
• Metabolizes nutrients from food and certain medications
• Offer protective role against heart disease (Journal of applied Microbiology research 2016)
• Offers protective role against some cancers (2016 published study by Plos One)
• Offers protection against infectious diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome, and inflammatory bowel disease

The disturbance in the balance of both good and bad bacteria creates troubles. As long as the good ones keep check and control on the bad ones the synergy prevails. Once the bad ones overcome or overgrow the good ones, all the evil starts and your gut begins to experience the rot in the form of Gut inflammation.

How to Improve Gut Health Naturally?

Improving GI Tract Health: In the majority of cases, your lifestyle is responsible for the havoc inside your gut (gut inflammation). There are many ways in which you can bring back the balance and harmony between your good (healthy gut bacteria) and bad bacteria.

Gut Care – What is the Norm?

How to Restore Gut health? Though there are lots of products that claim to improve the health of your gut, I still recommend you to make lifestyle changes. Anyway, we will discuss prebiotics and probiotics in the concluding paragraphs of this article.

How to Increase Good Bacteria in Gut Naturally?

Gut Diet: Despite a huge buzz on the internet, there still is no confirmed digestive tract’s health diet – the microbiome diet, but there are good gut foods (best foods for your gut) or the foods to heal your gut.

Fiber-rich fruits and vegetables are good (whole grains, nuts, pulses, fruits, and vegetables). These are good bacteria foods.

Gut Cleansing Diet (Foods Good for Gut Health)

Good gut foods: Five to six small portions of fruits and vegetables are good (ideally colorful fruits and vegetables). These are natural gut cleansing foods.

Worst foods for Gut health: Avoid high salt foods, processed foods, sugar-rich foods, as they create an imbalance in the distribution of healthy and unhealthy microbiome. These foods can help promote unhealthy bacterial growth in the gut and may cause poor GI Tract health by creating an unfavorable environment for the good bacteria in the stomach.

The best diet for gut health: Include garlic and onion (Gut healing foods) in the diet as they have been scientifically proven to augment digestive tract health in several ways. They are natural Gut Health Foods. They have immunity-boosting and anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties. The foods that are good for your gut are also good for your overall health – heart, mind, and dental health.

Mindful Eating Can Make You Healthy – Is It Right?

What and how mindfully you are eating can impact your gut health.

Our hectic lifestyle, tight deadlines, stressful circumstances, and endless tasks keep us so alien with our food that we just grab and gulp on the go without even realizing what really is going inside. We neither have the time nor even bother to eat slowly with full concentration and engrossment on our plate. Rather, we often feel at ease sitting in front of the TV, laptop, or computer screen and wolf down meals.

We don’t even realize the fact that our mindless eating habits can seriously take a toll on our health. This sort of habit is slowly making us binge eaters. We don’t bother if we overeat, eat at irregular intervals, skip meals, eat too quickly and mindlessly – until our guts start hurting us.

The need of the hour is to change our habits. A simple trick can work – eat mindfully and regularly – that’s all.

Avoid reckless antibiotics use instead use gut supplements

Many people have a habit of popping antibiotics for mild viral infections like colds, which is just foolishness. Overuse of antibiotics can deplete good bacteria and make you vulnerable to recurrent infections. Furthermore, unwarranted use of antibiotics can make pathogenic bacteria antibiotics resistant – which is again very risky for your health.

Though antibiotics are lifesaving drugs, they need to be used judiciously.

Lower your Stress Levels for good Gut

Stress is one of the important factors for your unhealthy gut. Reduce stress by walking, exercise, socializing, meditation, yoga, body massage, and hypnosis to ensure a healthy gut.

Get Enough Sleep

Sleep deprivation, unsound sleep, or disturbed sleep can have a huge impact on your gut’s health. Set a proper sleep routine – bedtime and wake-up cycle and see the difference in your tummy.

Prebiotics for Gut health (healthy Gut zone)

Microbiome supplements: The microbiota of the gut (Stomach flora) degrades a group of nutrients known as prebiotics.

Gut Biome health: These nutrients feed the gut microbiome and the degraded products like short-chain fatty acids are beneficial for the health of human beings. Gut-friendly foods: The dietary food products that contain prebiotics include Asparagus, tomato, cow’s milk, barley, oats, spinach, banana, honey, leeks, whole wheat, onion, chicory, garlic, soybean, and sugar beet. These are in fact, nature’s own best supplements for digestion.

Without prebiotics, good bacteria in the gut suffer and find it difficult to thrive. When Good gut bacteria suffer to thrive then bad ones take over and cause gut flora imbalance.

Prebiotics also help in calcium absorption and keeps the cells that line the gut healthy. They can also help manage Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).

Probiotics (Stomach healing foods) for Stomach health

Certain foods or supplements (healthy Gut supplements) that contain live beneficial microorganisms whose purpose is to improve or maintain the good (beneficial bacteria) or normal microbial flora of the human body are called Probiotics.

Probiotics for digestion: Good bacteria in the gut (Beneficial microbial flora of the gut) are added to some foods and are commercially made available as dietary supplements.

Foods Good for Gut Health (Gut health Diet)

Foods containing Probiotics: Live yogurt, Tempeh, Miso, Kimchi, Kefir, and Pickles are fermented foods for gut health. These contain the best probiotic for gut health.

Natural Probiotics for Gut Health

You can also prefer healthy gut supplements or the Best natural probiotics for digestive health or improved gut performance. There are some versions of natural gut supplements that are available commercially as “Leaky Gut Supplements” or Gut healing supplements. You can use them for healing leaky gut.

Good gut bacteria list: Lactobacillus – more than 50 different species of lactobacillus exist (lactobacillus acidophilus, L. rhamnoses, Lactobacillus salivarius, lactobacillus Plantarum; Bifidobacteria – more than 30 different species exist (Bifidobacteria bifidum, Bifidobacteria infantis, Bifidobacteria lactis, Streptococcus thermophilus, Saccharomyces boulardii).

Best Foods for Gut Health

Gut healthy food list: Yogurt, Kefir, Sauerkraut (Sauerkraut is finely shredded cabbage that has been fermented by lactic acid bacteria.); Tempeh (fermented soybean product); Kimchi, Meso, Kombucha (a fermented black or green tea drink); Pickles; Traditional buttermilk; Natto (fermented soybean product)

Bottom Line

Start taking care of your gut to ensure overall health. As the famous saying goes: “The face is the index of the mind;” your gut is the index of your overall health. Therefore, take care of your digestive tract health by indulging in a gut microbiome diet.

Learn More

Coming Soon…

• Best Gut Health Supplements
• Leaky Gut Supplements
• Leaky Gut Diet
• Gut Health Supplements