Maintaining perfect gut health is becoming an increasing challenge in today’s modern society due to processed foods and stress. But promoting optimal gut health has so many potential positive benefits for your overall health and wellness. If you take good care of your gut, your gut will take good care of you and it’s for a variety of reasons.
Two primary ones the first one obviously everything you eat has to be broken down, processed, and then absorbed from your diet. So even if you’re eating a very healthy diet, if you’re not able to extract and absorb the positive benefits of that healthy diet then it may not be providing the positive benefits that it should. And without perfect gut health you can experience physical symptoms like constipation, diarrhea, reflux or GERD abdominal pain, gas and bloating and belching, irritable bowel syndrome and you can develop food sensitivities. Not to mention that you might even experience coughing due to LPR.
In this article, we will talk about the three aspects to promote gut health that can impact your health in amazing ways, probiotics fiber, prebiotics, and digestive enzymes. First, let’s talk about probiotics.
Probiotics
Probiotics are the healthy bacteria that live in and on us. By number healthy bacteria outnumber human cells by a long shot. There are trillions of healthy bacteria living in and on us. Now the reason we’re not walking around looking like an alien bacteria is human cells are huge compared to the teeny-tiny bacteria, but they actually outnumber us. We’re more bacteria than we are human and that is astonishing and they provide so many benefits not just for the GI tract but increasing numbers of studies show that it helps the immune system and helps with weight loss and it can help with brain health. It may help with depression and anxiety. There are actually more serotonin receptors in the gut than in the brain and these healthy bacterias have unique ways they can communicate with the brain to promote good psychological health. Now the reasons probiotics, the healthy floor, the healthy bacteria, start to die off, a poor diet, a diet that’s high in processed foods, high in refined carbohydrates, stress, and then certainly some medications can affect the good flora or the good bacteria, particularly antibiotics but other medications as well. Now I believe food is medicine, so I always encourage to get your probiotics through food sources. Yes, there are supplements that you can take to supplement a healthy diet. But some of the sources of probiotics include yogurt kefir, sauerkraut, tempeh, kimchi, miso, kombucha, pickles, and natto so do the best you can to get those probiotics through food sources and if you’re not interested in those food sources obviously you can supplement with the high-quality probiotic supplement.
Digestive Enzymes
Digestive enzymes released by the pancreas include amylase, protease, lipase, slight lactase, phytates, cellulase, invertase and maltase. They break down macronutrients, carbohydrates, proteins and fats, but again a poor diet, stress and certain medications can decrease your body’s ability to produce these enzymes which are absolutely necessary for not just digesting the important macronutrients, the carbohydrates, the proteins, and the fats, but also for extracting important vitamins and minerals. The micronutrients.
Fiber Prebiotics
Lastly fiber prebiotics, so for the most part Americans are terribly deficient in getting adequate amounts of fiber. Estimates are around 10 grams per day and studies show that the recommendation should be closer to 40 to 50 grams a day. So, prebiotics is basically an undigested fiber that these probiotics feed upon and promote more healthy bacteria. Sources of prebiotics include chicory root, dandelion greens, Jerusalem artichoke, garlic, onions, leeks, asparagus, bananas, oats, oatmeal, apples, cocoa, burdock root, flax seeds, chia seeds, jicama, sweet potatoes, and seaweed. You can get your probiotics and prebiotics through food primarily, but there are certainly supplements that you can take if those foods aren’t any of your favorite.
A highly viable highly potent probiotic it’s called Probiotic T-50. It contains eleven strains of fifty billion organisms. An enzyme supplement to help with some GERD symptoms to help with the decrease in the number of digestive enzymes called True Digestion. Try to learn more about self-care about health and wellness so that you can achieve the health that you truly deserve.
Feature photo by Alicia Harper
