What If Your Gut Isn’t Healthy?
When was the last time you stopped and thought about your gut health? How much do you know about your gut’s microbiome and how it’s affecting your overall health? Did you know if your gut isn’t healthy your immune system can’t operate to its fullest potential, it can be hard to rid your body of toxins, and you can suffer from joint pain, stomach issues, and even brain fog?
How to Fix an Unhealthy Gut
For many people, this can come as a surprise, and can also explain why they may not be feeling the best.
Being mindful of your gut health can help you to be healthier in general, so let’s take a look at four signs of an unhealthy gut and how to fix it.
You Suffer from Upset Stomach Often
This is perhaps one of the most common signs of an unhealthy gut. A frequent upset stomach can be caused by various things, but it’s well worth looking into your gut health.
Stomach issues can include diarrhea, constipation, gas, bloating, and heartburn. Each of these can be very uncomfortable and frustrating to deal with.
Is Your Weight Fluctuating?
Gut health can also have an impact on your weight, causing you to gain or lose weight without making any lifestyle changes. Your body may not be able to absorb nutrients properly, which can cause you to lose weight or store fat.
Your Gut Health Can Affect Your Skin
Did you know that your skin is also affected by your gut health? For those with dry skin or chronic skin issues such as psoriasis, this can be traced to high amounts of bacteria in the gut. Balancing your gut health can then help balance your skin issues.
Sleep Issues Can Be the Fault of Gut Health
Getting enough uninterrupted sleep each night is imperative to your overall health, but it’s something that many have a hard time achieving. If you are constantly waking up through the night, have a hard time falling asleep, and wake up tired regardless of how much sleep you got, it could be the fault of your gut.
Understand the Difference Between Probiotics and Prebiotics
The solution for an unhealthy gut is to change what you eat and drink, making sure it’s a balanced diet that provides the proper nutrients for your gut health. Often the terms probiotics and prebiotics are thrown out there as a way to balance the gut, with people often assuming they are the same thing.
Probiotics and prebiotics aren’t the same though and can be right or wrong for you; the linked blog post explores the main differences between the two.
Probiotics are live organisms that can deliver a variety of health benefits. They are found in fermented dairy products like yogurt, as well as kombucha, kefir, and kimchi. Probiotics can have a positive effect on people who have inflammatory bowel disease, diarrhea, and constipation but they aren’t right for everyone.
Those with small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, compromised immune systems, and other chronic diseases can experience a negative effect.
Those living organisms need food and that food is prebiotics. These are found in whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. Prebiotics can help balance blood sugar, decrease inflammation in the intestine, lower the risk of certain diseases, help reduce hunger, and even help with mineral and vitamin absorption.
However, some people such as those with IBS will notice prebiotics make their symptoms worse.
Making Your Gut Health a Priority
If you want to take steps to improve your overall health in 2023, taking your gut health seriously is a great place to start. A healthy gut positively affects your mind and body in so many ways, and shouldn’t be overlooked.
Photo by Pavel Danilyuk
Photo by Marcelo Chagas