Anyone who has dealt with chronic digestive issues and stomach pains understands how these disorders can affect the overall quality of life. Having to deal with constant issues and popping pills is quite exhausting and can take away from how you experience life. With age, natural cycles tend to slow down and work poorly. This can also happen due to some factors such as the lifestyle you are leading, unhealthy eating habits, hormones, sleep, and stress. To understand more about dealing with digestion problems and maintaining a healthy gut, here are some of the ways that might help reduce common problems. Of course if it’s a continuing problem, consider going to a professional that deals with digestive disorders as you want to address it the right way.
Good Bacteria Vs. Bad Bacteria
Our digestive systems have good bacteria and bad bacteria that live in harmony and balance. In the digestive tract, you can find trillions of microorganisms that vary between beneficial and harmful; these are often referred to as probiotics or good bacteria. They are responsible for bowel functions in addition to fighting infections and illnesses, eliminating excess toxins, regulating metabolism, and absorbing nutrients. When the balance between good bacteria and bad bacteria is thrown off, problems such as acid reflux, digestive discomfort, ulcers, and many others start snowballing. Women, specifically, often deal with problems such as irritable bowel syndrome and inflammation due to this imbalance that has been created because of the reduction in good bacteria. In this link, you can find different natural and synthetic probiotics specially made for women who deal with such problems. This goes back to the fact that probiotics for women must contain different strains to achieve gut microbiome diversity.
Prebiotics Come First
Healthy gut flora originally depends on a well-balanced gut diet that is loaded with lots of dietary fibers. These are called prebiotics. This why people who follow all-natural-plant-based diets begin to notice huge improvements in their bowel movements. Probiotics can only thrive on prebiotics such as non-digestible fruit carbs, veg, seeds, and so on. Those who follow western diets, on the other hand, are found to suffer at a much larger scale due to the lack of such foods that promote healthy gut flora.
On the contrary, these diets usually depend on fats, processed meats, and carbs that complicate bowel movement and make it harder for the gut to have a balanced ecosystem between its good and bad bacteria. This explains why the western part is more likely to suffer from obesity, metabolic issues, chronic inflammation, and other stomach diseases. However, these issues can be easily avoided through a heavy reliance on edible plants rather than foods with high carbs and fat percentages.
Workouts are a Part of the Equation
What goes into your body is not the only thing that counts when it comes to a healthy gut. Cardiovascular activities might not scream gut health, but scientists have found that getting the heart pumping is an important factor in maintaining a healthy diversity of the microbiome. Research has proven people who lead a sedentary lifestyle to suffer from the scarcity of microbiome diversion more than those who are more active.
While athletes have healthier and more diverse guts, still this does not mean that you have to get involved in Olympic contests just to be healthy. Walking, jogging, dancing, swimming, or any form of activity that gets your heart running will do as long as you make sure to aim for at least 150 minutes weekly. Adding some strength and endurance workouts to the equation will completely change your life, even more, when it comes to chronic gut problems.
Your Mental Health Matters
Mental health is also extremely important for your gut health and your overall health. Stress is one of the most influential factors that can make or break your digestive system since it triggers the hormone, cortisol, which causes the body to shut down any “noncritical” function. This includes digestion, absorbing food, and storing it. If you are feeling stressed, then your microbiome is probably feeling it too. While it’s much harder to relax than to control what goes into your body, still there are a few ways through which you can help your body keep cortisol at its minimum levels. It’s a trial and error process until you find something that calms you down, let it be drawing a beautiful heavenly-scented bath or a long-awaited vacation.
Understanding the reason behind the issues you are suffering from is one of the biggest parts in finding the right solution for them. The same applies to your body. When you learn more about how your body works, how it reacts to different foods, and what external factors might be causing such problems, you will begin to understand how to take care of your body.
