When your gut is in good shape, you are able to enjoy the foods you want and feel great. However, when it is not, you are unable to digest things the way you should and this can lead to many unfavourable and painful symptoms.
Luckily there are many ways to restore and maintain your gut health and below are 5 of them.
1. Probiotics
When people think of bacteria, they often think of something that is harmful to your body and can cause illness. However, the truth is the human body needs this bacteria to aid digestive processes and one way to ensure it is present is consuming probiotics.
Probiotics are live bacteria that when consumed enter the gastrointestinal tract. They are able to help in digestion and fend off disease. To ensure your body has enough probiotics, seek out foods high in them, such as yogurt, pickles, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, and dark chocolate. Supplements can also be taken orally to bring the probiotic levels in your body to where they should be.
2. Eat foods that aid digestion
Digestion is a complex and complicated process in the body. While it should occur naturally, some people may have issues digesting what they have consumed and end up experiencing unfavourable symptoms ranging from bloating to vomiting. As a result, sometimes foods need to be taken to help the process along and in turn allow for the avoidance of these symptoms.
To aid digestion and help restore gut health, enzymes can be taken to facilitate the process. They also help with the digestion of fats. If you are having serious issues with your gastrointestinal tract, you may have to seek out foods that are easier to digest, such as soups, cooked fruits and vegetables, and rice.
Once your gut health is restored, you can then start factoring in other foods to determine which ones you can tolerate.
3. Cut out sugar & processed foods
Most people enjoy sugar and processed foods. However, when it comes to digestive processes it has been argued that they both negatively affect the healthy bacteria in your body, robbing the gastrointestinal tract of the components needed.
Sugar and processed foods disrupt the gut because they are too easily processed by the human body. Instead of remaining as bacteria for the gut to feed from, it flushes through, causing the human bodies to start eating the lining of the intestines. This leads to illness and inflammation.
4. Reduce antibiotics
When people are sick, doctors often prescribe antibiotics to kill microorganisms that are causing illness and infection. While these are effective, an overreliance on them can definitely disrupt the gut and lead to impairments in the digestive process.
Probiotics are able to kill all entities that cause a person to become ill, however when it comes to digestion, this is a problem. There are unable to differentiate the difference between good and bad bacteria, killing everything in its path. As a result, your body is rid of the good bacteria it needs in your gastrointestinal tract.
5. Less meat
If you have a poor gut, it may be as a result of a number of things. You could have a poor diet, been given a long course of antibiotics, or maybe you were just born with it. Either way, studies have shown that if you are struggling with indigestion, eating less meat can help.
It has been proven that meat produces an excess amount of bilophila, a bad bacteria that is the root of inflammation in the gut, heart complications, and intestinal disease. Therefore, replacing meat with foods rich in probiotics will reduce the presence of bilophila and lead to healthier digestive processes.
