Often overlooked, good gut health is crucial if you want to feel energized, healthy, happy, and overall good. However, more and more people are suffering the consequences of poor lifestyle and diet habits, leading to poor health and inflammatory bowel diseases. Improving the health of this particular part of the body can lead to many improvements such as healthy glowy skin, weight loss, and even better mental health.
Reset, take your gut health seriously and reap the rewards by implementing these three simple habits, into your daily life.
Intermittent fasting
While it is currently trending in the health and fitness world, intermittent fasting isn’t just a fad, and it isn’t even a diet. Intermittent fasting is essentially an eating pattern that cycles between periods of eating and fasting, with the most people cycle being the 16:8, where you fast for 16 hours and eat for six.
By restricting your calories to a set time frame, you are giving your gut more time to heal and recover, therefore improving your digestion system. This can lead to weight loss and an overall improvement in your health, with many studies showing how fasting can extend your life and have a powerful effect on both your brain and body. Not only that, but it also has an effect on the bacteria inside your gut and colon, so if you are looking to improve your gut health, this is the perfect habit to start.
Probiotics
As you probably already know, not all bacteria are harmful. Probiotics are a friendly and good strain of bacteria that are essential for good gut health, creating a balance between the bad bacteria that also find their way in there. As we age, alongside our lifestyle and diets, the number of good bacteria can dwindle, which is when we start to experience stomach issues such as constipation, gas, and indigestion. Probiotics break down the food that we eat, helping us to digest them easier and therefore maintain our gut health while also helping our immune system. Probiotics can be found naturally in foods that are fermented or in sour dairy-based products such as Kefir, Kimchi, Sauerkraut, and unsweetened yogurts and can easily be added into your everyday diet. In fact, it is never too young to start! You can find some great gummy probiotic supplements so ensure excellent gut health for your children, which according to Tastyganics are tasty and will allow good bacteria to flourish.
Find ways to relax
You’ve probably heard of the brain-gut connection that states the gut is the second brain, so to heal your gut and stay healthy, it is essential to be as stress-free as you can. There have been studies that suggest that stress can affect the bacteria in your gut, which can then lead to other health issues, leading to a vicious circle that later is hard to break. Chronic stress is also known to lead to more severe health conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, Colitis, and other GI tract disorders. While it isn’t always possible to be stress-free and happy all the time, it’s good to find something that works for you on those days where everything feels like it’s going wrong – whether that’s going for a run, listening to some music, or practicing meditation.
