Let's talk Gut Health!

Gut health is one of the most interesting areas of recent nutrition research. The gut is a place where food is digested, metabolized, and absorbed into the bloodstream, and provides the body with energy.

The Gut consists of the mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestines, and large intestines, and each organ has different bacterial strains. These different types of bacterial strains make up our gut micro-biome. We have billions of live bacteria in our gut with about 35000 types of species. For a visual, the surface area of our gut is a size of half a badminton court, and we are just a few human cells living in a symbiotic relationship with bacterial cells.

Many functions in our body like digestion, mood, immune system, brain function, menstrual cycle, etc are dependent on good gut health. If we have good bacteria, the quality of our life is better, and if the majority of bacteria in our gut is bad, we end up with many different diseases.

There are many factors affect our gut microbiome throughout our life.

Mode of delivery- Babies born vaginally are exposed to different strain of bacteria as compared to babies born via C-section.

Diet during infancy- Research has shown that breastfed infants are exposed to more beneficial bacteria from their mothers than formula-fed babies. Also, microbiota in breast milk can vary widely, depending on mother’s health and diet.

Diet during adulthood- Diet has tremendous impact on the types of bacteria thrive in our gut. Small change in diet has been shown to alter the gut microbiome. Including wide variety of plant based foods help beneficial flora to flourish, and eating junk food will help bad bacteria to grow.

Antibiotics- Antibiotics work by killing bacteria when we are sick, but unfortunately it kills good bacteria as well. Even one dose of antibiotics can wipe out microbiome diversity for up to one month. It is really important to take probiotics after taking antibiotics to give your gut a little extra love.

Age- Research has shown that it can take up to 3 years for toddler and adults to colonize their gut microbiome. So, it is ideal to add fermented foods more often and add variety to our diet.

Genetics- Even though much of our gut health has to do with environmental factors, but we inherit some gut microbiome from our parents. That’s why it is essential to add healthy foods to our diet that we grow up eating.

Stress- Stress is one of the main causes for imbalance in gut flora. Even short periods of stress have been shown to alter the gut microbiota.

To keep our gut healthy there are many things we can do diet wise.

1. Reduce the amount of processed food. Processed food often has inflammatory oils, additives, pesticides, etc. that do more harm to our gut than good. It feeds the bad bugs in our gut that cause indigestion, bloating, and digestive disorders.

2. Add more variety of fruits and veggies. Eating a variety and rotating veggies is a great way to not only get more nutrients, but it helps support a more diverse microbiome.

3. Keep yourself hydrated with water and include plenty of fiber to keep yourself regular.

4. Including bitters to your diet helps with digesting food properly. Bitters help with releasing digestive juices that breakdown and absorb food optimally.

5. Consuming fermented foods on a regular basis is a great way to add live probiotics to your diet.

6. It’s important to cut back on alcohol to reduce inflammation and to have healthy gut flora.

It’s essential to have good lifestyle habits to keep our gut happy, which will make us happy. Also, there is never too late, and we can start taking care of our gut now!