Got the guts? Why gut health is important and how to make your gut healthier

Many are writing about gut health these days, and I am going to jump on that train too. Let’s talk about what gut health really is and how you can make your gut healthier.

Remember that gut health is complicated, and I am not prescribing blanket solutions for all gut problems. Listen to your body, stay balanced, and take this advice (along with all other advice) as a suggestion.

Gut health refers to the state of your digestive system. This system is responsible for two things:

* Absorbing what your body needs
* Removing what your body doesn’t

While these two jobs seem simple, there is a lot that can go wrong, especially in the arena of bacteria. Your whole digestive tract contains a collection of bacteria, but that isn’t a bad thing. In fact, this bacteria is critically important, and your collection of bacteria is called your microbiome.

The key thing to know about your microbiome is that it needs to be balanced. There are many different kinds of bacteria (some good and some bad). You need lots of different strains of bacteria in the body.

Many things can contribute to what is happening in your microbiome, but there are two ways in particular that people try to control the balance: antibiotics (which are supposed to target/eliminate bad bacteria) and probiotics (which are supposed to replenish good bacteria).

Antibiotics do their job and have saved millions of lives, but often at the expense of eliminating good bacteria as well as bad bacteria, which creates an imbalance in the gut. The typical American diet does not help promote healthy bacteria either.

For these two reasons, probiotics are extremely popular. Probiotic capsules contain billions of good bacteria CFUs (colony forming units).

We sell probiotics of course, and the choices can be overwhelming. Check out this video from Greg where he discusses what you should be looking for when choosing a probiotic.

While probiotics can be very useful, bacteria is not the only gut health factor you should be concerned with. According to John Hopkins, when trying to improve your gut health, getting enough sleep, managing stress, and moving more are just as important as your diet.

That being said, your diet should have a healthy amount of fiber and good bacteria. Foods like Greek yogurt and kefir are chock full of natural probiotics. In general, fermented foods are rich sources of healthy bacteria.

But, if fermented foods aren’t your favorite, as this study shows, probiotics are a proven way to relieve gut issues and support a healthy change in microbiomes.

Photo by Jannis Brandt on Unsplash