Healthier gut, healthier you

If you’ve ever considered working on your health, you may have considered moving more, spending more time practising self-care or eating healthier foods. But what role does your gut play in keeping you feeling your best?

Kim Plaza from ADM Protexin, sat down with us to explain how small changes to your everyday routines can improve your gut health and have knock-on effects for your physical and mental wellbeing.

IBS-like symptoms are common in the UK. It is estimated that over a third of people in the UK experience digestive symptoms, which may be having a significant impact on their quality of life. Some of these symptoms might include bloating, indigestion and griping, as well as constipation and diarrhoea.

But gut health is about more than your digestive system. It is vitally important for a whole host of reasons. This is because there are many connections between your gut microbes (the bacteria and organisms that live in your digestive system) and other body systems, such as the health of your skin, bones, cardiovascular system and even your cognitive and mental health. Therefore, supporting your gut health is a way of supporting total body health.

There is so much research out there these days, showing how looking after your gut influences things like your mood, stress responses and sleep, or your weight, energy levels and even exercise performance.

The microbes help us in so many ways. For example, your gut microbiome (the ecosystem of organisms in your gut) influences your food choices and cravings using a few different signals:

• They produce compounds that influence your emotional processes, which can sometimes be a trigger for comfort eating.
• These same compounds also use hormone signalling and can influence your sensitivity to hormones that control feelings of hunger and fullness.
• They can also crowd out space for less helpful microbes that might lead to poorer food choices and cravings. Less beneficial microbes tend to prefer refined sugar, which might mean that you crave foods that are sugary or highly processed.

The gut communicates with your brain in three ways; via nerves, hormones and your immune system. Most of the communication is from the gut to the brain (roughly 80%), rather than the brain to the gut.

Using these three forms of communication, the gut microbiome can influence a range of brain-related health concerns. For example, migraine is a very complex condition that affects around 6 million people in the UK.

It has many possible causes, but interestingly, changing the balance of your gut microbes may influence how often you get them. It might also help with the severity of them when they do occur. This is important because there are so many people struggling with migraine pain every day.

Some simple tips for improving your gut health include:

• Moving away from refined carbohydrates and swapping them for high-fibre whole foods. Your beneficial microbes love fibre-rich foods, so when you’re choosing your meal, you’re essentially voting for which types of bugs you want to flourish!
• Try some traditionally fermented food and drinks. Kimchi, kombucha and sauerkraut are only some of the things you can try. These functional foods contain a vast array of microbes that carry out all of these amazing jobs, such as supporting our immune function and the gut-brain connection. You can choose to supplement with a live bacteria product if you don’t want to or aren’t ready to add new ingredients to your meals. Start on a low dose and gradually increase to suit your needs.
• Go for brightly coloured fruit and vegetables. Many of them contain polyphenols, that may help reduce your risk of heart disease and diabetes, but they also help to support your beneficial gut bugs too.
• Time and plan your meals when you can. When you eat in a calm environment, your digestive system gets ready to process the meal. This enables your appetite hormones to respond appropriately, and your blood sugar has a better chance of balancing out – avoiding those sugar rollercoasters. Good meal planning encourages us to consume a varied and nutritious diet, rather than leaving things last minute, and opting for convenience foods instead.

But there are lots of other ways you can take care of your gut.

Having regular sleeping and eating patterns allows your hormones to function optimally and because we know that your gut microbiome is influenced by your hormones, it may help with retaining a nice diverse mix of bugs in your gut.

Stress hormones may reduce the diversity of microbes in your gut, which can be a problem for some. For example, research has found that people experiencing chronic stress tend to have a different mix of gut microbes and it is thought that the stress hormone ‘cortisol’ may be responsible. Therefore, practising mindfulness is a good option. This might include a short 2-minute mental ‘body scan’ to assess how you’re feeling and taking some deep breaths. This is a form of vagal toning. It helps to relax your nervous system and regulate your heart rate.

Staying physically active can also support your gut health. This isn’t necessarily going to the gym, but moving (not sitting for too long, walking to the shops, pottering around the garden, or taking the stairs rather than lifts). You probably guessed it, but your gut microbes also respond to how physically active you are, and they talk to the rest of your body to reinforce your current activity levels.

Bio-Kult Everyday is a 14-strain live bacteria supplement. It is great for those wanting to get introduced to taking live bacteria and it doesn’t need to be refrigerated. The recommended dose of up to 4 capsules per day allows you to tailor it to your needs, start on a low dose and gradually increase it over time if needed.