Your gut on fire? 5 reasons to take care of your digestive health
Many people don’t tend to pay too much attention to their digestive health or how to take care of it until something goes wrong with it and they’re symptomatic, or diagnosed with a gut-related disorder.
A registered nutritional therapist with a history of chronic digestive symptoms myself, I have an active appreciation and understanding of the bearing of gut health in overall health and wellbeing.
The research is evolving, but what do we know about gut heath to-date, and why we should care about it?
Here are five reasons:
A well-functioning gut is critical to making sure we breakdown and absorb adequate nutrients from the food that we eat - and that’s so important because those nutrients in turn literally support every single other system in the human body. Your daily diet could be amazing, but if your digestion is compromised or your gut is inflamed, you may not be able absorb adequate nutrition.
The mucosal lining of the digestive tract, and the population of 100 trillion gut bacteria which reside there, are the first line of defence the body has when it comes to protecting itself from various bacteria, viruses, toxins and antigens that can be ingested with food. When you imagine that the average person takes in more than 25 tons of food in their lifetime, you can see why we might need an efficient army of gut flora to help protect us.
Our gut bacteria is metabolically active. This means that enzymes produced by intestinal bacteria are important in the synthesis of several vitamins, including vitamin K, biotin, vitamin B12, folate, and B1. Our gut bacteria is also capable of fermenting fibre (indigestible carbs!) to short-chain fatty acids, and these acids are a little known but important energy source for us humans. Gut bacteria may even impact everything from our blood sugar levels to our tendency to store carbs as fat.
The main symptoms we associate with gastrointestinal disorders are localised in the gut (think bloating, acid reflux, constipation and diarrhoea amongst others). But did you know that gut dysfunction can underlie many apparently unrelated conditions too, which may affect other parts of the body? If the immune defences of the gut microbiome suffer too many challenges over time, they can eventually weaken which may results in certain molecules entering circulation and this may be linked to many systemic inflammatory and immune-related diseases and symptoms affecting everything from the gut to joints to skin health.
Mental health and wellbeing may be influenced by our gut bacteria and the 100 million nerve cells in our gut – hence why the gut is now touted as the second brain.The latest research in this area is revealing how gut bacteria can communicate with the brain, influencing how we behave, think and feel. Whilst the exact mechanisms are still yet to be fully understood, we’re learning all the time. Gut health has already been linked to ADHD, autism, CFS, OCD, Tourette syndrome, anxiety and depression, and the research continues.
If you would benefit from some help addressing your own challenges around your gut health, check out my Rebalance programme here. And please do come and listen to my next talk on Gut Health & Inflammation at Reboot Health Store in Sunningdale in October 2019.
