5 Unique Ways to Improve Your Gut Health – EPISODE 13
If you want to improve your overall health, focusing on your gut health is essential.
When working properly, your gut helps to prevent toxins from building up, while also helping nutrients to enter the body. However, when it’s not working properly, toxins and substances can leak out into the bloodstream, causing a whole host of health issues.
Your gut is also known as your “second brain”, so improving your gut health also improves your mental and emotional state of being.
The question is, how can you ensure your gut is healthy?
Here, you’ll discover 5 ways to improve your gut health right now.
1.) Reduce Stress
It’s a long-known fact that stress impacts the entire system, but especially the gut. When the fight-or-flight system is enacted, your digestive systems shut down. The challenge with many people is that they’ve become so accustomed to the feeling of stress in their body that they don’t realize how stressed their system really is. This is huge. If you’re having digestive issues, take a look around your life to see if there are any areas of stress that are affecting you. If so, that can be a major component.
2.) Increase your Low-Intensity Movement
According to research, partaking in exercise can have awesome benefits on the gut. Researchers from the University of Illinois discovered that cardio has a positive impact on the guts composition, creating short-chain fatty acids which are known to boost colon health.
The paradox is that strenuous, high-impact exercises might induce GERD symptoms, so take care to increase exercise slowly and assess your body’s tolerance to this as you do.
Oftentimes, when people hear this, they engage in long bouts of intense cardio. Too much can actually send too much stress and cortisol to the system. So it’s encouraged to actually engage in LISS – Low Intensity Steady-State, yoga, strength training, or very short bouts of HIIT with enough time to truly recover afterwards.
A study carried out in 2015, discovered those who participated in yoga and meditation experienced genetic changes within the body which resulted in improved gut health.
3.) Consume Foods Rich in Probiotics
Probiotics can be found in whole foods and different types of them provide different health benefits for the gut. Some are better at improving mental health, while others can help clear up skin conditions.
So, if there’s a specific gut-related issue you’d like to target, be sure to research which type of probiotics you should be consuming.
Fermented foods may not sound overly appealing, but they can do wonders for the gut. They’re packed full of healthy bacteria and you should aim to eat around one portion per day.
It’s worth keeping in mind that if you’re new to fermented foods, you’ll want to start by consuming very small amounts. Aim for around one-quarter of a cup of fermented foods until your digestive system gets used to them.
4.) Increase Fiber-rich Foods
Fiber is a pre-biotic that helps populate the gut. Foods that are rich in fiber are also very rich in nutrients that balance and heal the gut (leafy greens, fruits, whole grains, legumes).
It’s worth keeping in mind that if you’re new to fiber-rich foods, you’ll want to start by consuming very small amounts at first in order to develop the enzymes and digestive lining. It will develop quickly, but many of us have experienced what happens when your body has too much fiber too soon (bloating and abdominal pain). That doesn’t mean you can’t have that much fiber. It just means that you need to gradually build it up.
5.) Slowing Down with Your Meals using Breathwork
Slow eating, breathwork and meditation have also been scientifically proven to be beneficial for the gut. The act of simply slowing down while eating can allow your body to fully digest the foods you’re eating. Many people have seen extreme gut issues dissolved by this one act. As an added bonus, you’ll also likely release excess weight!
Breathwork, or deep diaphragm breathing is an act that can help the body release stress. As we learned in #1, stress is a huge inhibitor of our ability to digest food. “Deep breathing before a meal is one of the best things you can do to help with digestion,” said Beth Chiodo, MS, RD, LDN, a registered dietitian and owner of Nutritional Living, told Verywell.
A simple breathwork routine would be to breathe in 6 seconds, hold it 6 seconds, breathe out 6 seconds, hold it 6 seconds and repeat this 4-6 times. This is called “box breathing” and can greatly reduce stress in the body and help you become present in the moment.
Summary
The above are just 5 ways to improve your gut health right now. As you can see, you don’t need to make drastic changes to boost the gut. Even just following one of the above tips will help you to see positive changes. However, if you truly want to improve your gut health, following all of the tips is highly recommended.
- Reduce Stress.
- Slow down exercise.
- Foods rich in probiotics.
- Add in fiber-rich foods.
- Slow down meals.
Research Stress and Your Gut:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405654516302402
https://badgut.org/information-centre/a-z-digestive-topics/stress-and-your-gut/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405654516302402
https://www.verywellhealth.com/diaphragmatic-breathing-stress-digestion-5209648
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7323259/
https://www.healthline.com/health/exercise-fitness/liss-cardio
https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/the-gut-brain-connection
