Healthy Microbiome Tip #: Eat Fermented Foods And Lots Of Them
Pickles, sourdoughs, kimchi, kombucha, tempeh, sauerkraut, miso, yogurt. Drink it or chew it, make it a soup or star it as a stir fry. However you can get yourself to eat the wide range of fermented foods out there, this doctor gives a thumbs up.
Fermented foods get their unique flavor profile from enzymes that convert sugars into proteins and lactic acids. This process helps directly feed your own digestive systems micro-makeup, allowing efficient nutrient breakdown and absorption. So next time youre at the store, ask yourself if youre getting the most tang for your buck.
Healthy Microbiome Tip #: Dont Overly Sterilize Your Surroundings
Products like hand sanitizers, antibacterial soaps, scrubs, sprays, and household cleaning supplies are a whopping $60 billion-dollar industry in the U.S. And while this attention to cleanliness is very much rooted in modern medical and scientific breakthroughs, its not hard to see the pendulum swing too far.Over-sanitizing your house can actually have an opposite effect killing weak varieties of bad or harmless bacteria while strengthening the most series strains. This, in turn, dulls your immune systems response to foreign pathogens. This is especially common with kids and the elderly, and is one reason why you may want to rethink a religious use of hand sanitizer before snacktime. ;;;;;
Avoid Taking Antibiotics As Much As Possible
While antibiotics are indeed lifesaving, they are in fact nothing less than grenades for your body.
Just as they kill the harmful bacteria present in your body, they also kill the good ones. Which in turn lowers the effectiveness of your immune system and increases the risk of diseases, infections, and allergies.
While antibiotics are indeed necessary in some situations, you must try to avoid them whenever you can. Instead, you can try essential oils and anti-microbial herbs, such as tea tree, thyme, oregano, and clove, among others. Whenever you do take antibiotics, take a healthy supplement of probiotics so that the good bacteria can get restored in your gut.
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Gut Bacteria And Obesity
An unhealthy balance in your gut microbiome may cause crossed signals from your brain when it comes to feeling hungry or full. Researchers think there may be a link to the pituitary gland, which makes hormones that help set your appetite. That gland can affect the balance of bacteria in your gut, too. Some studies on treating obesity are exploring this link.
Ways To Strengthen Your Microbiome
Tags: Microbiome, Nutrition, Pre & Probiotics
The microbiome consists of TRILLIONS of living microbes inside your gut. These little;mood;elevators;work around the clock producing happy-chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine. Making sure that you have a diverse and thriving microbiome can help not only with your mental health, but can prevent things like the urge to over-eat, and can help regulate your digestive system.
Below, we have compiled a list of ways you can ensure that you have a happy and healthy microbiome!
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Limit Your Alcohol Intake
Drinking too much may negatively affect your microbiome, too. Repeated alcohol use is linked to gastritis, an irritation of the gut in which it becomes inflamed. Such inflammation can lead to heartburn, chronic discomfort, ulcers and bacterial infections.
Drinking too much is also associated with intestinal inflammation, which is a sign of an unhealthy gut. Research suggests that this kind of inflammation alters the microbiotaincluding how well it worksand can throw it off balance.
Ways To Improve Gut Health
You cant rely on expensive probiotic supplements to improve your gut health. As it turns out, you can get many of the good bacteria your gut needs to move things through properly .
For better digestion and increased metabolism, decreased inflammation and decreased risk of chronic disease, try our 6 easy ways to improve your gut health:
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The Benefits Of Healthy Gut Microbiome
A healthy lifestyle can make all the difference for your overall quality of life. Its important to take great care of both your body and your mind with a healthy diet that supports your digestive and immune systems. As the old saying goes, you are what you eat; and what you eat dictates how you feel.
The foods you eat also influence the organisms that live within your body. There are millions of cells, fungi, and bacteria that all help support your bodys immune system so that you can maintain an active lifestyle each and every day. You can help these organisms perform their jobs to support your body by understanding a little more about how your body works.
Restoring Gut Flora After Antibiotics
Antibiotics deplete many bacteria, not just the ones making you sick. Thats why they should only be used under the supervision of a doctor when you really need them.
Antibiotics are an essential means to target bacterial infections. The problem is, weve used them too much and antibiotic resistance is becoming a major problem. Your gut flora isnt keen on them either, and for good reason.
Studies show that antibiotics alter the composition of your gut biome in the long and short term. Thats why some doctors also prescribe a probiotic at the same time. If you do need them, make sure to top up your prebiotic fibre intake to nourish your good bugs, and get a microbiome test to see how you can help them recover.
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Avoid Blue Light Before Bed:
- Blue light suppresses melatonin production when we expose our bodies to it after sundownavoiding it altogether for 1-2 hours before bed is one of the best ways to ensure deep sleep.
- Switch to salt lamps, candles, or red light bulbs after the sun goes down.
- Avoid screens in the bedroom all together , but get blue light blocking glasses anytime you break the no-screens-after-dark rule!
- Invest in blackout blinds if there are street lamps are in sight of your bedroom.
Perform Comprehensive Microbiome Stool Testing To Evaluate The Health Stability And Diversity Of Your Gut Microbiome
A microbiome that is rich in diversity, that mirrors a range of strains known to be healthy, and that is a highly competitive and stable ecosystem will resist opportunistic overgrowth – just like a healthy rainforest does not allow the spread of weeds – your microbiome needs a healthy ecosystem. We can now measure with high accuracy and profound insights on the metabolic tendencies of your microbiome usingBiomeFx from Microbiome Labs. Testing can be performed without a prescription and a number of resources are available for help with interpretation. Personalized microbiome analysis is the latest way too customize a gut strategy and give you feedback ass to how your efforts are improving the diversity and stability of your microbiome.As a result of high competitive diversity in your gut, microbes introduced through the mouth and nose will be less likely to grab a foothold.Promoting the health of the oral microbiome can be an essential component of a gut-healing protocol as the mouth can be a source of recurrent dysbiosis and overgrowth in the gut.
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Keeping Your Gut Microbiome Healthy To Combat Covid
The human immune system is complex and is affected by numerous factors. The good news, however, is that our immune responses arent hard-wired; we can change them by changing lifestyle factors such as diet and stressors.
And one of the most effective ways to bolster the immune system is to maintain healthy gut bacteria.
Gut health = a strong immune system
Trillions of microbes live in the human gut; theyre known collectively as the microbiome. According to Tim Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at Kings College London, writing in;The Conversation,;A number of recent studies have shown that the gut microbiome plays an essential role in the bodys immune response to infection and in maintaining overall health.
As well as mounting a response to infectious pathogens like coronavirus, a healthy gut microbiome helps to prevent potentially dangerous immune overreactions that damage the lungs and other vital organs can cause respiratory failure and death.
Eating for a healthy gut microbiome
A diverse microbiome is a healthy microbiome, containing many different species that each play their part in immunity and health, The Conversation notes. Moreover, the food you eat has a big impact on the range and type of microbes in the gut.
Read the full article in The Conversation.
Eat To Feed Your Microbiome
The best way to increase microbiome diversity is by eating a wide range of plant-based foods, which are high in fibre, and limiting ultra-processed foods including junk food. Following a Mediterranean diet has also been shown to improve gut microbiome diversity and reduce inflammation: eating plenty of fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds and whole grains; healthy fats like high-quality extra virgin olive oil; and lean meat or fish. Avoid alcohol, salt, sweets and sugary drinks, and artificial sweeteners or other additives.
If you are concerned about getting hold of fresh produce while self-isolating or quarantined, frozen fruit, berries and vegetables are just as healthy as their fresh counterparts and will last much longer than the currently recommended two-week isolation period. Canned fruit, beans and pulses are another long-lasting option.
You can also support your microbiome by regularly eating natural yoghurt and artisan cheeses, which contain live microbes . Another source of natural probiotics are bacteria and yeast-rich drinks like kefir or kombucha . Fermented vegetable-based foods, such as Korean kimchi are another good option.
To find out more about the importance of the gut microbiome, listen to Medicine made for you, a series by The Anthill podcast on the future of healthcare and how it could soon get a lot more personal. Listen here or subscribe to The Anthill wherever you get your podcasts.
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Why Is It Important To Care About Your Microbiome
As mentioned before, the microbes present in your microbiome have a significant impact of the quality of almost every function of your body, from nutrient production, digestion, and detoxification, to immune system functioning, among so many others. With a healthy microbiome, all of these functions are ensured and your bodily systems run smoothly.
An unhealthy microbiome, however, leaves your body vulnerable to a plethora of illnesses. Believe it or not, almost every disease that affects the human body is in some way related to an unhealthy gut.
According to scientific research, an unhealthy and imbalanced gut brought about by an unhealthy microbiome can lead or at least contribute to the following conditions:
- Brain disorders, such as Dementia and Alzheimer’s
- Autoimmune diseases
- Infertility
- Mood disorders, such as anxiety and depression
- Deterioration of joints and connective tissues
- Learning disabilities, such as ADHD and autism
In most cases, the health of your microbiome and the above health issues are connected by inflammation. One of the major reasons behind most diseases, inflammation happens when your gut is in poor shape.
When a microbiome is healthy, inflammation levels in the body will remain low, which in turn significantly reduces the risk as well as the symptoms of most of the aforementioned health issues.
Fad Diets Should Be Avoided
Science has shown repeatedly that dieters are doomed to failure, yet new fad diets always manage to find abundant followers.
Fad diets are often restrictive novelties that are not backed up by medical research. In many cases, they promise quick and easy weight-loss strategies without any information about the science, risks, and potential long-term consequences for your health, gut, and microbiome.
These nutritional regimes can mean cutting out whole food groups or eating a specific type of food. A major one is the no-carb craze, but we know that a healthy microbiome and happy gut flora need prebiotic fibres to produce beneficial metabolites. Just removing food can disturb this sensitive ecosystem and your bodys delicate metabolic balance.
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Gut Microbiome And Brain Function
One of the ways that the gut can influence your bodys response to stress is through a direct connection with the brain. Theres a link between the gut and the mind known as;the gut-brain axis, which can influence your brains health and functionality.
The gut-brain axis is built upon millions of nerves that flow between the two organs within your body. Those nerves send and process signals between the gut and the brain, influencing the nervous system and the immune system during, particularly stressful times.*
Exercise In Your Gut Health Diet
Who knew that getting the heart pumping and the sweat pouring was good for the diversity of your microbiome? Well it is, and heres why.
Research has shown that individuals who lead a sedentary lifestyle have a less diverse microbiome. Therefore, its not just what you put into your body that counts, there are so many other lifestyle aspects involved in improving gut health.
But dont despair, there are simple things you can do about it. Athletes, for example, have a more diverse gut than nonathletes. But you dont need to be an Olympian to make a difference. Walking, jogging, and dancing all count, just aim for 150 minutes each week alongside some strength exercises. Trust us, your gut bacteria will love you for it.
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Clean Air And Airflow:
- Open the windows: keeping fresh air in and dilutes toxicity in the home, which exists no matter how non-toxic your home is. Flowing air from the outside is always a good idea.
- Plants to purify the air: include the Madagascar dragon tree, peace lily, snake plant. They also help create a relaxing indoor environment in the bedroom.
- Air filters: that filter air pollutants like HEPA filters, ideally made without plastic, are a great way to keep inside air clean. This is especially important if you live in a big city where the air quality is low.
Fermented Foods Are Gut
Fermented foods are another great source of probiotics. The crowd favourite is yogurt, however, if youre going to be eating a lot of yogurt, make sure that it is sugar-free! There are several other options that are a great source of good bacteria. Kombucha is becoming a very popular source of probiotics. You can also eat things like pickles, kimchee, and kefir to ensure that youre getting enough live cultures to keep your gut healthy and happy.
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Ways To Improve Your Gut Bacteria Based On Science
There are around 40 trillion bacteria in your body, most of which are found in your gut.
Collectively, they are known as your gut microbiome, and theyre incredibly important for overall health. However, certain types of bacteria in your intestines can also contribute to many diseases.
Many factors, including the foods you eat, can impact the type of bacteria found in your digestive tract.
Here are 9 science-based ways to improve your gut bacteria.
Ways To Optimize Your Gut Bacteria For Optimal Weight Loss
When it comes to losing weight, most diets focus on calorie reduction and exercise. While eating less and exercising more will usually result in weight-loss, Dr. Kellman says that if you get your microbiome healthy, you will lose weight. Its all about correcting the overgrowth of unhealthy bacteria, which is making you crave the wrong foods and triggering inflammation. This makes sense because when you change your gut bacteria, you change how your body produces and metabolizes energy.
This also explains why so many people lose weight only to gain it right back because the bad bacteria are still present in your gut. The bad bacteria remember when you were fat, and they want to continue to live, so they trigger cravings for the foods that feed them. ;
In addition to the steps I outline above, here are 15 more ways to set up your gut for weight loss:
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Treat Your Gut To Some Chocolate
Cocoa which is the dry, non-fatty component of chocolate contains a host of molecules that are increasingly making health news headlines. Rich in antioxidants and fiber, cocoa has been linked to a string of health benefits, from lowering cholesterol to benefiting fetal development during pregnancy.
When it comes to our gut health, cocoa consumption has been shown to reduce inflammation, potentially alleviating the symptoms of inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohns and ulcerative colitis.
Earlier this year, we reported on research that showed that cocoa components can reduce bacteria in the Clostridium family, which are often found in the guts of those with IBD. When human study subjects drank high-cocoa chocolate milk over a period of 4 weeks, Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium species shot up in numbers in their guts.
However, it is also worth remembering that not all chocolate is created equal. Unsweetened cocoa powder and dark chocolate with a high cocoa content are the closest you can get to the cocoa formulations used in scientific research.
So, why not pick out a nice piece or two of dark chocolate when the boxes of festive treats are making the rounds.