How Your Gut Health Affects Your Entire Body
Your gut is responsible for so many functions that your body performs as well as your overall health. When something goes wrong inside your body, things may not be going so great in your gut. 😬
The Importance Of Gut Health
A healthy gut helps to maintain a strong immune system, 💪 heart health 🩺 , and brain health 🧠. It also improves your mood (and who wouldn’t want that? 😁), assists with healthy sleep patterns 😴, effective digestion, and can even help prevent some autoimmune diseases. Your gut health can also affect your kidneys, your weight, and your predisposition to diabetes.
Some bacteria 🦠 in your digestive system help break down the food that you eat and turn it into nutrients that your body can use, and some also help to keep bad bacteria in check. When you have a healthy balance of bacteria in your gut, it’s called equilibrium ⚖.
Essentially, as the title of this post suggests, your gut affects your overall health in a big way. And an unhealthy gut can be the root cause of numerous serious issues in your body.
Signs Of An Unhealthy Gut
Studies have found that if you have too much of a certain kind of bad bacteria in your gut you’re more likely to have Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), or ulcerative colitis (an inflammatory bowel disease that causes sores in your digestive system – uh-oh! 😲).
Other signs of bad gut health are an upset tummy, unintentional weight changes, sleep disturbances or constant fatigue, skin irritation, food intolerances, mood disturbances, and migraines.
How You Can Keep Your Gut Healthy
If you are experiencing any of the signs I mentioned above, there are a number of simple 🙌 lifestyle changes you can make to positively affect your gut health and your overall health as a result:
- Manage your stress levels. Stress changes gut chemistry and affects digestion 🧘♀️
- Get enough rest: Not getting enough sleep can seriously affect your gut. 💤
- Eat slowly: Thoroughly chewing your food can promote gut health. 🍴
- Stay hydrated: Water balances the good bacteria in your gut. 🥤
- Assess your diet: Foods that are processed and those high in sugar and fat can have a negative impact on your gut. Also, be sure to eat plenty of plant-based foods and lean protein to contribute to a healthy gut microbiome. 🍅
Other foods that encourage gut health are high fibre foods, garlic and onion, fermented foods and collagen boosting foods. If your gut could talk, it would thank you for keeping it nourished and healthy!
Cleanses Aren’t The Answer
As scientists 👨🔬👩🔬 are getting better at understanding the body and the digestive system, they are learning that doing cleanses to detoxify your gut is not helpful 👎. There is very little evidence that proves that cleansing your gut is the answer – it is rare that anything will ever be ‘stuck’ in your gut that needs to be cleansed by the latest, trendiest cleanse.
Instead, turn to things like probiotics and prebiotics to keep your gut healthy, rather than doing a cleanse. Many of the foods I mentioned above have all you need to keep your gut healthy.
