10 Tips to Improve your Gut Microbiome
Nuturing your Microbiome is Key to Good Health!
Over the last couple of years, society has focused on eliminating bacteria and germs, but did you know that it’s actually GOOD that you have over 39 trillion microbes in your body right now? 39 trillion! The majority of these microbes live in your digestive tract and are a key part to healthy digestion and a strong immune system.
Your gut microbiome is a delicate balance of numerous kinds of microbes and when your microbiome gets thrown off, it can cause countless problems. In fact most diseases you know of can be narrowed down to a gut problem. The microbiome can become damaged in a variety of ways including poor diet (poor nutrition or poor diversity in your diet), stress, genetics, using antibiotics, not getting enough sleep, and alcohol or cigarette use. Chances are if you aren’t actively supporting a healthy gut microbiome, you are out of balance.
Instead of simmering on the problem and how we got here, let’s focus on what we can do to improve and support a healthy and diverse microbiome.
- Eat a variety of fruits and vegetables. When you eat a variety you expose your body to a variety of bacterial strains. This means you start to grow more variety in the good bacteria in your gut. The problem is that most Americans eat the same things every day or at least every week. Next time you are at the grocery store, buy a fruit or vegetable that you haven’t tried before or haven’t bought in a long time. Consider buying seasonally as well to support more diversity.
- Eat plenty of fiber. Fiber is sort of like food for your microbes and the plant fibers that your microbiome love are called prebiotics. Your gut ferments these and produces short-chain fatty acids that lower inflammation, help absorb minerals and increase your metabolism. A few foods that are high in fiber include garlic, leaks, oats, beans, asparagus and onion.
- Eat fermented foods. Fermented foods increase your microbiome diversity and help lower inflammation as well. You may have heard about taking a probiotic supplement, but no supplement can replace the benefit of just eating fermented foods. Try something like kombucha, kimchi, or sauerkraut. Homemade is best so you know there is not added sugar or preservatives.
- Avoid antibiotics. Antibiotics are often distributed like Halloween candy, especially during cold and flu season. It’s quite possible you’ve been prescribed an antibiotic and not even needed it! (For example, an antibiotic for a viral infection…this happens often.) Antibiotics are designed to kill bacteria which can be a good thing when it kills the bacteria making you sick, but it won’t know the difference between good and bad bacteria. When you take an antibiotic it can decrease your microbiome diversity by 30%! Before you take an antibiotic, make sure it is absolutely necessary.
- Live clean…not germ free. The last couple of years has taught us how to disinfect everything. This can be good because it keeps the germs that make us sick at bay, but too much use of disinfecting products can be as harmful as antibiotics. Wash your hands and keep a clean home, but don’t overuse the disinfecting products.
- Get in nature. Today we often don’t leave our climate-controlled buildings to get outside into nature. Air conditioning and other filters in our buildings filter out the bacterial diversity that contributes to maintaining a healthy microbiome. Studies have proven that those who live rural have a more diverse microbiome than those who live urban. Get outside. Take a walk. Do some gardening.
- Take a quality probiotic. Not all probiotics are created equal. In fact, some on the market are no more than fillers, especially if the probiotic is not treated correctly. Probiotics are live (good!) bacteria strains that support and contribute to a healthy microbiome, but most options on the shelf (at your local store or digitally) are often dead before you even get them home. There are many different bacteria strains in different probiotics, so it’s alway beneficial to have testing that indicates which strains your body needs. Never go cheap when you’re buying probiotics. If you are looking for a high-quality probiotic, consider this one. It provides some common strains of bacteria to support overall good gut health.
All health starts in the gut. Tending to your microbiome is one of the most important things you can do for your health. With a healthy gut, you will absorb nutrients, avoid autoimmunity, support the immune system, feel better, and have more energy.
If you think you have any sort of imbalance in your gut, known or unknown, it can lead to Leaky Gut! Bringing balance to the microbiome and healing the gut are a passion of mine as I've seen it change the life and health of many of my clients.
Watch your email this week because something BIG in the area of gut health and healing is coming at a fantastic price!
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Heidi Toy Functional Medicine Blog
Did you know most people didn’t have refrigerators in their homes until well into the 1900’s? It wasn’t even invented for large scale commercial use until the mid 1800’s [1]. So how did people keep their milk cold and make their food last longer? Fermentation. It sounds like a gross concept, because we often associate fermentation with a bad odor, but foods like cheese, yogurt, sauerkraut and pickles are all fermented foods. And those aren’t gross, are they? Well, some might disagree with me about sauerkraut, but that’s beside the point. Fermented foods are digestive aids. Microscopic living organisms in fermented foods help extend the food’s shelf life, enhance flavor, and help the body absorb minerals. These organisms pre-digest the food, getting rid of harmful components, and create more vitamins and enzymes than the food began with. Enzyme-rich foods have many benefits including [2]: Increase digestibility of food we eat Boost immune system Increase alkalinity; neutralizing pH levels Provide a healthy balance of friendly flora in the gut (Learn more about your microbiome in my other blog posts ) Tone the colon and help with elimination Control cravings for unhealthier foods Eliminate toxins and undigested wastes in the body In the “old days,” people use to ferment all kinds of foods through pickling, canning, pasteurization and added salt. Nowadays, however, large scale fermentation has lost many of its nutritious benefits due to the need for speed to get the product on the shelf as fast as possible and as cheap as possible. The only true fermented foods you will find are sauerkraut, kombucha, yogurt and kefir, beans, wine and beer, some meats (such as salami and pastrami), legumes and nuts (such as tofu, soy sauce and miso), sourdough bread, and various kinds of vegetables [3]. Fun facts about sauerkraut: The Germans “stole” it from the Chinese! Sauerkraut (probably not labeled as such for the Chinese, but the same recipe) was one of the main foods for those who built the Great Wall of China. Genghis Khan brought it to Eastern Europe during an invasion. It also contains high levels of vitamin C, and sailors often took it on long journeys to prevent scurvy.
How can we best keep blood sugar stable? Do what our body is designed to do – use fat for energy. Our species did not survive the Ice Age because of vanilla coffee lattes and cheesecake. Throughout most of our history, we ate a diet that was likely 50-70 percent fat. Look at the old family photo albums, specifically pictures of people in the first half of the 1900s, before we had so many processed foods. You won’t see many fat people--in fact, most look darn skinny. If they lived on the farm, they ate lots of eggs, meat, milk, and vegetables out of their own backyards. “Diet foods” were non-existent. Heart disease was almost non-existent. Our metabolism is designed to work much better with fats better than with sugar. Fats provide the slow and steady fuel our body likes to use for energy. Think of fats as a slow-burning log on the fire. One log (i.e. one meal containing fats) lasts for hours. Starchy carbs, on the flip side, are like kindling. You constantly have to throw more twigs (chips, pasta, bagels) to keep the fire burning. The first step is to know your sugars by reading the labels, and then avoid said sugars as much as possible.
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