Five Tips for Better Gut Health

We have talked and talked about why gut health is important.  The good bacteria help to fight off the bad bacteria which can be the reason behind leaky-gut syndrome, IBS, food allergies and even Crohn’s disease. The composition of bacteria in your gut influences not only your digestive health but your weight, your skin, your mental health, immune function, inflammation levels and more. 

What can you do to better your gut health? I think, as a whole, Trim Healthy followers desire to do things in a more natural way; through whole foods, supplements and fewer over-the-counter medicines.  So, what are some tangible ways to do this through our diet?

1.      Eat more fiber-rich plant-based foods. You don’t have to be a vegan to enhance the diversity and composition of your gut microbiome, but you do want to up your intake of veggies, fruits, nuts, beans, whole grains and other minimally processed plant-based foods.  Plants are naturally rich in fiber and fiber is the fuel that your good gut bacteria need in order to proliferate. When the good gut bugs break down the fiber, they release beneficial compounds called short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). These healing compounds have been shown to repair damage to the intestinal lining (“leaky gut”). 

Below are some fiber-rich foods (and their fuel type according to THM), to add to your weekly menu rotation. What a variety! They fall into all fuel types!

Avocado-S

Raspberries-FP

Blueberries-FP

Pears-E

Apples-E

Peas, (Yes, KJ, even peas)-FP

Broccoli-FP

Brussels sprouts-FP

Sweet potatoes-E

Squash-E or FP

Oats-E

Quinoa-E

Almonds, walnuts, pistachios-S

Chia seeds, flax seeds, pumpkin seeds-S

Beans, lentils and chickpeas or garbanzo beans-E

2.      Eat a greater variety of plants, too. Greater variety of foods and not just the same can of green beans every night will increase the diversity of bacterial species. Research by the American Gut Project suggests that the main predictor of gut health is actually the variety of plant foods in someone’s diet.  Scientists found that people eating more than 30 types of plants per week had a healthier biome than those eating 10 or less.  The fiber in each type of plant foods seems to feed a unique species of bacteria in the gut—so eating a greater array of plants results in a greater diversity of gut bacteria. Eating fruits and vegetable in season can go a long way to improving good gut health diversity.

3.      Rid your diet of refined sugars and carbohydrates.  Eating loads of refined carbs can push your ratio of good to bad bacteria in the wrong direction and negatively affect gut health.  One “cheat-meal” can ruin your gut health and cause your body a significant gut-health setback of a week or more. “There’s no reason to go off-plan!” Your gut will thank you.

4.      Supplement foods with well-researched strains of probiotics. While eating more plant-based fiber-rich foods is important, probiotics can also be very beneficial to promoting a diverse microbiome in the gut. They seem to be especially important after a course of antibiotics or after an illness.  It’s good to obtain them from natural sources such as: yogurt, kefir, kimchi, naturally fermented sauerkraut, kombucha and miso.  Make your selection of fermented foods as broad as possible as well.  Each fermented food will contain different strains of gut-healing bacteria.

5.      Finally, spend as much time outside in nature as possible. There’s more to gut-health than just what you put in your mouth.  In fact, one of the biggest changes in day-to-day life over the last century has been the drastic decrease in our contact with nature—plants, animals, dirt, fresh air, etc. Many modern societies are literally walled off from it; traveling by car to an office, up an elevator, back out to the car and home to sit in front of a TV.  The need to get outside has never been so great! Taking steps to boost your contact with the outside world; going for a hike, playing with your dog, walking barefoot in the grass, digging in the garden soil, spending time with farm animals, can expose you to millions, if not billions, of beneficial microbes that benefit your overall health.  Being active while you are outdoors and getting in some intentional movement is always good too. It's going to be spring soon, so take a sketchbook outside and make plans for your garden, drag out your dog’s leash and head for the hills, go visit some baby chicks and dream of the chicken coop you might build. 

Gut health is so important to our well-being.  It shows how masterful our Creator is; everything in perfect balance. When we partake of a variety of God’s food choices, we see the beautiful array of colors, textures and diverse nutrition that can be gained from those foods and how healthy they can be to our bodies. Do these five things for your health—inside and out!

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