The concept of gut health has captured the attention of many people in recent years due to the increasing importance placed on it by medical specialists. Simply put, your digestive system’s health can affect every element of your physical and emotional well-being in diverse ways. As a result, knowing how to heal your gut helps when improving gut health to make a stronger body.
What if we told you that there were several natural remedies for gut health that provide improved gut health, including simple dietary changes and tweaks to your lifestyle? This path towards gut health improvement can help you focus on a general healthcare plan and improve your life. Let’s dive deeply into this subject and highlight five foods you can use to transform and improve your gut’s health.
Understanding Gut Health
Gut health refers to the health and stability of your gut microbiome, which includes trillions of microorganisms that help digest your food properly. While your stomach acid does a lot of digestive work, these microorganisms also help break down food more effectively. In fact, your stomach is designed to use them and simply doesn’t digest properly if your gut health is imbalanced.
Amazingly, your gut health can affect your digestive health, overall well-being, immune system, heart health, cognitive abilities, and even your mood. Three common signs of a healthy and properly operating gut include:
- Regular, pain-free bowel movements
- Strong emotional health and energy levels
- Minimal gas and bloating issues
When your gut health is imbalanced, you may experience worsened symptoms of many common digestive issues, like GERD, gallstones, celiac disease, gluten intolerance, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and irritable bowel syndrome. While not all of these conditions improve when improving gut health with a gut health improvement plan, a stronger digestion system can minimize your issues. Seven signs of poor gut health include:
- Stomach discomfort when eating (bloating, diarrhea, constipation, pain)
- Fatigue that may pair with irritable bowel syndrome
- Food cravings, particularly for unhealthy things like excessive sugar
- Skin irritation, including acne, eczema, and psoriasis
- Allergic reactions that worsen or get more intense
- Unintentional weight changes, including gaining or losing weight
- Mood changes that may pair with severe migraines
If you know how to heal your gut, improved gut health shouldn’t be an issue. Thankfully, natural remedies for gut health can improve your digestive system and give you a stronger overall body and mind. In the next section, we’ll highlight five great foods that can improve your digestive health and enhance your gut biomes quickly and efficiently. Here’s how to heal your gut with food.
5 Natural Remedies for Gut Health
If you’re curious about how to heal your gut, start by changing your diet. Improving gut health focuses on a gut health improvement plan that integrates various healthy foods and ingredients into your everyday eating. If your ultimate goal for improved gut health doesn’t include these items, it’s going to be a lot harder to see results. With that said, here are the five best foods for your gut’s health.
1. High-Fiber Foods
High-fiber foods help to naturally balance the good bacteria in your stomach. Fiber provides a healthy food source for these microbiomes and is one of the healthiest things for your gut. Foods like nuts, grains, berries, chia seeds, dark chocolate, and cruciferous vegetables provide plenty of fiber for your gut’s needs. Try to slowly add these foods to your diet to avoid bloating and discomfort.
2. Foods With B12
Vitamin B12 helps support gut health by giving healthy biomes plenty of energy to grow and fight back against unhealthy biomes. B12 mostly comes in various types of meat, like animal liver, kidney, clams, sardines, beef, and tuna, so if you’re a vegetarian or vegan, it can be hard to keep your levels high. Thankfully, fortified foods like cereals and breads contain a high level of B12 that you can enjoy.
3. Probiotic Foods
When it comes to natural remedies for gut health, probiotic foods are some of the best available. They support gut health improvement and improved gut health strength. Improving gut health with these foods focuses on introducing healthy microbiomes to your stomach right in the food itself. These foods include Greek yogurt, kimchi, kefir, kombucha, and tempeh (all of which contain heavy cultures).
4. Prebiotic Foods
Though prebiotic foods don’t get as much talk as probiotics, they’re just as important for your gut health. They serve as food for your gut’s microorganism by going through your digestive system to your colon and metabolizing here to create better gut biomes and other benefits. Great sources of prebiotics include chicory root, dandelion greens, garlic, onion, leeks, asparagus, and bananas.
5. Fermented Foods
Fermented foods are often incredibly probiotic and can reduce disease-causing bacteria in the intestines to better balance your gut biomes. These foods also help healthy bacteria grow and minimize inflammation and other risks. Common fermented foods include kefir, kombucha, pickles, miso, natto, raw cheese, yogurt, apple cider vinegar, sourdough bread, and cottage cheese.
Dietary Changes for Gut Health
Now that you know how to heal your gut with various foods and natural remedies, let’s focus on creating an action plan for improving gut health. An improved gut health meal plan can focus on your gut health improvement and produce significant results. Using this plan introduces you to some of the healthiest things for your gut and is the quickest way to balance your gut biomes.
Importance of a Gut-Friendly Diet
A great gut-healthy diet can enhance your digestive system, promote better overall stomach health, and prevent symptoms like inflammation, bloating, discomfort, and trouble breaking down common foods. Furthermore, it can help balance your weight, minimize allergic reactions, enhance your cognitive skills, minimize heart problems, and give you a better overall life as a person.
Dietary Habits That Boost Gut Health
When learning how to heal your gut and balance your biomes, there are many steps you can take to ensure you get great results. Here are several dietary habits that improve your gut health:
- Buy diverse foods, such as various fruits and vegetables, when they’re seasonal
- Eat smaller portions to avoid overloading your gut’s biome
- Avoid salty, high-sodium foods that slow your digestion process
- Stay away from red meat because it increases dietary issues
- Stick to a plant-based diet whenever possible
- Don’t eat fried or heavily processed foods
Sample Meal Plans and Recipes for Gut Health
Abra’s Kitchen provides a seven-day meal plan with recipes that help support gut health. It focuses on fermented foods, healthy spices (like ginger and basil), green tea, legumes, beans, healthy fats from avocados and olive oil, and delicious salmon. Eating Well suggests simple meal prep ideas, like vegan freezer breakfast burritos, chickpea grain bowls, and spicy weight-loss cabbage soup.
Lifestyle Modifications
Learning how to heal your gut requires more than just changing your diet. Natural remedies for gut health also include lifestyle changes focused on improving gut health and enhancing your gut health improvement plan. They focus on improving bacteria levels and minimizing adverse reactions like inflammation, bloating, and allergy-based issues. The following steps should result in improved gut health and are things you need to master whenever you’re learning how to heal your gut.
Stay Hydrated
Poor hydration can heavily affect your digestive system by making it harder to absorb nutrients and break down waste matter. Most cases of constipation occur because people simply don’t drink enough water. If you struggle to stay hydrated, try to carry a reusable water bottle and drink eight glasses of water every day. Set a timer on your phone that alerts you every hour to drink some water.
Manage Stress
Stress is one of the greatest health problems in the world today and can severely disrupt your gut health balance. For example, it can cause your stomach to churn and may kill healthy bacteria and trigger biome dysfunction. Try to relax using deep breathing exercises, yoga, meditation, or even reading. Turn off your computers at least an hour or two before bed to reduce this issue further.
Get Some Exercise
Listen: regular exercise is basically the most important way to keep yourself healthy. Its benefits go beyond improved heart and brain health and include supporting your gut biome. We strongly suggest at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise every day, with no more than one or two rest days. Walking, cycling, dancing, jogging, and even swimming can help boost gut health.
Rest Properly
Digestion and sleep quality are tightly connected, and sleeping well can improve your gut balance by resting your digestion and giving your bacteria time to recover. Try to sleep at least eight hours every night to avoid this problem. You might quickly realize that sleep also boosts mental health levels and can further improve your digestion health: the two are highly related.
Supplements and Probiotics
Lastly, no article about natural remedies for gut health could be complete without showing you how to heal your gut with supplements. Supplements and probiotics create improved gut health by improving gut health balance, such as enhancing your microbes and ensuring you get nutrients you might miss in your diet. No gut health improvement plan should be without a few great supplements.
The Best Supplements for Gut Health
Gut health supplements introduce various healthy items into your diet, such as important macronutrients, critical micronutrients, and much more. We’ve broken down some of the best and most effective gut health supplements here to ensure your satisfaction. Read through these options to ensure that you choose one that fits easily into your overall needs:
- Onnit Total Gut Health – Designed to support immune system health and help your digestive system absorb macronutrients more effectively while balancing healthy gut flora levels.
- Gundry MD Total Restore – Helps reduce gas and bloating and can balance your body weight when paired with a great exercise routine. Also helps with exhaustion and fatigue.
- Colon Broom – Works to balance your mood and energy levels, manages your weight, protects your intestine, and supports lightness in your gut by improving bowel movement regularity.
- Digestion Gut Health Formula – An additive-free supplement with a strong shelf life, clean ingredients, vegetarian capsules, and no flow agents. Helps balance your gut health effectively.
Supplements are typically very safe to take for most people. Make sure that you get tested for any allergic reactions to their ingredients, as these might cause severe discomfort. Note that overdosing on supplements is also possible because too many vitamins can cause problems like reduced bone strength, liver damage, headaches, and nausea. Follow your doctor’s suggestions to stay safe.
