What Is Gut Health?

Besides getting adequate nutrition and reducing calories, eating healthy improves gut health. At Prime Fitness in Totowa, New Jersey, we focus on working out, which actually improves gut health, but also helps you boost your endurance, strength and flexibility. Gut health involves having the right balance of microbes with beneficial bacteria and microbes that aid in digestion and fight off those detrimental to the body.

Getting your microbiome—all the microbes in your body and gut—balanced is important.

When you stop and think about it, it’s a bit creepy to think you have trillions of living organisms inside you. These microorganisms are important, however. The right balance helps maintain bodily functions and can prevent an overtake of harmful organisms that are detrimental to your body. Estimates on the number of microbes are as high as 100 trillion with as many different types as 1000. There are between 30 and 40 more common types found. All these microbes only weigh a pound or two, but play a significant role in your health. If you didn’t have any microbes, you’d die of malnutrition, since they aid in digestion and absorption of nutrients.

The food you eat affects your microbiome.

You affect the balance of beneficial microbes and harmful ones. Too much sugar increases fungi, such as yeast and other pathogens. The bigger the colony, the more sugar you’ll crave and the more weight you’ll gain. You’d be amazed at how many diseases are linked to a bad mix of microbes in your gut. Besides malnutrition, an unhealthy gut can cause mood disorders, mental health issues, autoimmune diseases, skin conditions and some forms of cancer.

You can improve your gut health.

Eating probiotic foods, such as fermented food, can improve your gut health, which then improves your overall health. Kimchi, sauerkraut, kefir and live-culture yogurt are examples of these. Increasing the fiber in your diet helps by providing prebiotics. Prebiotics feed the good bacteria in the large intestines and can boost the number of healthy microbes. Food that are prebiotic are asparagus, garlic, onions, bananas, Jerusalem artichoke, and dandelion greens.

• If you take an antibiotic, you could be disrupting your gut health. Not only does frequent use create antibiotic-resistant germs, but they also kill off the good bacteria in your gut. Eat probiotic foods when you take antibiotics.
• Sleep is extremely important to gut health. Adequate hydration is also important. They both help improve the number of healthy bacteria while providing other benefits for the body.
• While friendly bacteria and microbes do help digest your food, so does chewing your food better. Chewing food longer increases the digestion taking place in your mouth, putting less burden on the digestive system.
• Processed food and even non-organic food that have pesticides can disrupt your microbiome. Both contain chemicals that can poison your healthy microbes and your body and omit the necessary fiber to keep healthy microbes alive.

For more information, contact us today at Prime Fitness