Studies show that your gut health is connected to your immune system, skin, mental health, and more. Hence, having an unhealthy gut system means compromising your entire health.
As such, you’ll have to take extra care of your gut health.
Unfortunately, the gut system is much more complicated than the other parts of your body. Simple steps such as eating more or working out won’t do your gut health any good.
You have to consult your doctor, or at least receive tips from experts—that’s why you’re here.
Below are five ways on how you can improve your gut health that medical practitioners prove.
1. Determine Your Intolerances
Intolerance to food, such as lactose or gluten, has a direct connection with your gut health.
More precisely, eating food that your body can’t tolerate will lead to an unhealthy gut. Hence, you have to identify your intolerances as soon as possible.
There are several ways to determine your intolerances to food or gut-type to make sure to that your gut is healthy. Below are few examples on how to test food intolerances:
- Blood Test: Usually, you can determine your intolerances by having a blood sample taken by a doctor, which they will send to a laboratory.
- Skin Test: This kind of test involves pricking your skin and inserting a small amount of food into the wound. Unfortunately, skin test isn’t very accurate.
- Food Test: One of the best ways to determine your intolerance is only by eating small amounts of different foods and checking if there’s a reaction.
- Saliva Test: Another way to check if you have any intolerances is to conduct a saliva test.
You can also try getting a microbiome test kit from My Psomagen to test the kind of bacteria that lives in your gut. The following test will determine the bacteria in your gut and will help you become healthier.
Beside from identifying your intolerances, you can also find out from the result which food you should eat. In other words, you can personalize your diet after the tests.
2. Watch What You Eat
If there are foods that are harmful to your gut, there are also foods that can improve it.
Examples of these foods include:
- Miso
- Yogurt
- Kimchi
- Olive Oil
- Almonds
Usually, if you want to improve your gut health, you need to look for foods that contain probiotics—live bacteria that restores any damage done to your guts.
Eating foods that contain fiber, fatty acids, and polyphenols also seem to have a positive effect.
Speaking of which, people know what probiotics are but tend to forget about prebiotics.
3. Take Prebiotics
Prebiotics are quite similar to probiotics, as is evident from the name alone.
This is mainly because most of the food you eat doesn’t reach the lower digestive tract, and prebiotics serves as food for the live bacteria that live within these areas.
Here are a few examples of prebiotics-rich foods:
- Garlic
- Onions
- Bananas
- Asparagus
- Leeks
Take note that merely adapting your diet won’t be enough. You should also try changing the way you eat, which leads us to the next section.
4. Chew Your Food Thoroughly
Most of the time, people eat quickly. Perhaps they’re busy with their work. Maybe they’re on a break which will end soon.
Either way, you should remind yourself that eating slowly has its perks.
After all, digestion has a lot to do with gut health, and if you chew your food more thoroughly, it’ll lead to better digestion, which in turn will improve your gut health.
Think of it as making your gut’s job easier by doing most of the job with your mouth.
However, your gut health doesn’t rely only on the food you eat. You should also consider other things, such as your sleep schedule.
5. Monitor Your Sleep
Stress is known to affect digestion.
For starters, there is a barrier found on your intestines, which protects your gut from harmful bacteria. The problem with stress is that it makes that barrier weaker, resulting in gut problems.
Although there is still no evidence that proves the connection between sleep and gut health, you can’t deny the fact that sleep deprivation can lead to stress, so it’s safe to assume that if you want to improve your gut health, sleep will be a crucial part of it.
Conclusion
Your gut health is essential to your overall health as it affects most of your body system. The bad news is that the food you eat directly affects your gut health. Thus, it’s essential to monitor your diet, but you shouldn’t forget about other things, such as sleep. Either way, this guide should be enough to get you started on your journey to a healthier gut.