Worried About Your Gut Health? Here Are 7 Tips That Can Help Improve Your Gut Microbiome

Gut health has off lately gathered a lot of attention from both scientists and the common man. They now understand and have realised that the gut is the core of human health and its effective functioning is essential for the entire body to run properly. A healthy gut is important as it plays a vital role in nutrition absorption. The gut is also connected with various body functions. It also affects your immunity. Additionally, it is responsible for regulating your mood and controlling your sleep patterns. Storing approximately 40 trillion bacteria, offering multiple usages, and extending various benefits, maintaining and improving gut health is essential.

Ways to boost gut health

1. Consume a well-balanced diet

Since there are a plethora of bacteria of different kinds present in the gut, all of them play specific roles and require distinct nutrients for their growth. Hence, you should consume a well-balanced diet with foods ranging from fruits to vegetables, dry fruits to seeds, salty to spicy, so that the growth of the microbes in the gut can be taken care of.

It is often advised to chew the food properly as it is essential for better digestion as well as optimal gut health.

Also read: Importance Of Prebiotics For A Healthy Gut: Know Best Prebiotic Foods You Should Consume

2. Lower the stress levels

High-stress levels directly and adversely affect your gut. Hence, you must keep yourself calm, happy and composed. Eat a healthy diet, indulge in physical exercises like brisk walking, meditate more often or do activities you like including dancing, painting, etc.

3. Fix your sleep cycle

A healthy gut controls your sleep pattern and in turn, having a proper sleep regime helps promote the growth of good microbes. When you have a regular sleep pattern and once your body gets enough sleep, it will eventually pave way for a healthy gut. Whereas, in the absence of a good 7-8 hours of sleep, the gut's performance is interrupted thereby contributing to several health ailments.

Also read: Factors That Can Affect Your Gut Health: Diet, Stress, Dental Health And More

4. Avoid intolerant foods

Various studies suggest and even medical experts point out the fact that food intolerance is the consequence of an unhealthy gut. The quality of the bacteria decreases in the gut and this leads to difficulty in digesting certain foods which eventually you become allergic to.

It is advised that the individual should avoid consuming allergic foods as this could impact the working of the gut and would eventually lead to weakened immune systems. One should focus on healing the gut and resuming the ratio of healthy bacteria and then focus on dealing with the food intolerant aspect.

5. Stay hydrated

It is advised that one should drink adequate amount of water for a healthy gut. Keeping yourself hydrated helps keep your gastrointestinal system in a healthy and fully functional state. This will lead to the growth and maintenance of the beneficial microbes in the gut.

6. Minor modifications in diet

The food you consume directly affects your gut and also has an impact on its functioning. It is suggested that minor diet modifications can help you ensure a healthy count of beneficial microbes.

Hence, having foods like berries, peas, apples, almonds, chickpeas, lentils and beans is important as they are rich in fiber.

Fermented and probiotic foods like yogurt, kimchi, etc. should be preferred as they boost the production of healthy microbes. They also boost the development of disease-fighting bacteria thereby strengthening immunity levels.

Intake of a plant-based diet and consumption of foods rich in polyphenols like cocoa, red wine, green tea, etc. will help in improving gut health.

Additionally, avoiding artificial sweeteners will also help in achieving a healthy gastrointestinal system as in case of their excess consumption, they negatively affect the gut bacteria and hence, impact the overall functioning of the gut.

7. Consume probiotics and prebiotics

While probiotics foods like yogurt, kimchi, etc. boost the growth of the good bacteria in the gut, prebiotics is responsible for feeding the good bacteria. They usually comprise of complex fibers that are non-digestible by the human body but can be broken down easily by the bacteria and used for their growth.

There are various fruits, vegetables and whole grains including onions, garlic, bananas, and apples, oats that are prebiotic.

Also read: Scientists Find Gut Microbiome Implicated In Healthy Aging, Longevity

Summing Up

Sustaining the gut's performance isn't tough. All one needs to do is to eat a balanced yet nutritious diet that offers variety so that the microbes can receive diverse nutrients to feed on and grow. Good gut health is directly linked to the functioning of your body and its immunity levels. Hence, gut health is given prime importance for optimal functioning of the human body.

(Dr. Dhanasekhar Kesavelu is a pediatric, Gastroenterologist and clinical advisor at MyDiagnostics)

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