12 Jul My top 10 gut health tips

Discovering how you can maintain good gut health is a must for any health and wellness journey. Your gut health controls so much of you health and is the root cause for a lot of symptoms of ill health. Not all gut health is controlled by the food you eat. There are so many factors to your health that can contribute to your gut health. Things like stress, poor sleep, a sedentary lifestyle, bad diet, environmental factors like mould or chemicals etc.

So i have complied my top 10 tips for better gut health in this short video to give you the low down on a few tips and tricks that will help you welcome wellness into your life and your day and also be beneficial to your gut health.

My top 10 Tips for better Gut Health:

1. Eat Fermented Foods: fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, organic miso, kombucha, water kefir etc contain beneficial bacteria and additional nutrition to help promote good gut health.
2. Eat Colourful Food: colourful food is usually more nutrient dense. the rich colours mean you have higher antioxidants and usually contain polyphenols that are beneficial to your health. Plus including lots of colourful food will ensure you are eating lots of different vegetables which means diversity. Its important to eat a diverse range of vegetable to mix up the nutrition and fiber.
3. Eat Prebiotic Foods: Prebiotic foods are what feed the beneficial bacteria in your gut. Without these prebiotic fibers our gut bugs cannot thrive. Onion, garlic, asparagus, leeks, green bananas, oats etc.
4. Eat 3 meals a day: digestion is a very hard task for the body and requires alot of energy. When we are digesting we are not repairing. So allowing time to repair your gut lining is important. Make sure you have 3 large nutritionally balanced meals and quit snacking so your digestive system can heal.
5. Cut out the crap: Stop eating highly processed foods. These contain food additives, chemicals, artificial sweeteners, harmful vegetable oils and usually excess sugar and salt. Trying to eat a clean diet free from processed foods is a must on any wellness journey. Think meat + veg, herbs and spices… natural sweeteners and fruit.
6. Think twice about gluten: cutting out bread and gluten is difficult. Gluten is in so many processed and packaged foods. So when you go to eat gluten containing foods… just STOP. Think twice… think about the last time you ate gluten. Try to minimize your consumption.
7. Give more hugs: YES… connection and hugs are stress reducing. Stress is very harmful to our health and giving hugs is a simple stress release.
8. Exercise: Getting regular exercise is beneficial to your gut health because it promotes motility in the digestive system… it can also be a stress release if its a long walk in nature or a beach walk.
9. Laugh more: YES… laughter is medicine too. There have been lots of studies on laughter for healing and stress reduction.
10. Sleep Hygiene: Make sure you prioritize sleep. When we are sleeping well we heal. Our bodies have a cycadian rhythm and when thats disrupted it lowers our immune system and we become “run down” when we sleep well, we feel well. Our gut bugs also respond to our cycadiam rhythm so have a regular routine (wake and sleep times) is very important for healing and our overall health.
11. BONUS TIP: eliminate GMO foods… its not actually bee proven that GMO foods are bad for us. The problem lies in the farming practices with GMO seeds like corn, soy and wheat. These crops are sprayed with harmful carcinogenic chemicals like glyphosate (commonly known as round up). Glyphosate wreaks havoc on our environment and also decimates our microbiome (the beneficial bacteria living in your gut) so avoid GMO foods and grains as much as possible… that includes seed oils like canola, soy oil, corn oil, vegetable oil etc.

Hopefully not to overwhelming… but it really is easy to make small healthful changes to your lifestyle that are in favour of better gut health. Your gut health orchestrates your entire wellbeing… from your mood, mental health, weight, skin health, hormonal health you name it… its linked to your gut health.