When you hear the word bacteria, you quickly think of diseases, but your body is full of bacteria, viruses, and fungi. All of this together forms your microbiome, and while some bacteria indeed cause diseases, others are very important for your immune system, heart, weight, and even your mental health.
Due to a Western lifestyle, our intestines are put under considerable strain. The average Dutch person eats a lot of fast carbohydrates. This includes, for example, bread, crackers, pasta, and cookies. Most people now think that this is good for the intestines because it contains fiber. Fiber is indeed good, but only the fiber from fruits and vegetables, with occasional grains like teff, oats, rice, quinoa, buckwheat, and millet.
What about whole grain products?
These fibers ensure that your blood sugar rises less quickly, which is positive. However, they can irritate the intestinal wall more easily; and especially people who already suffer from intestinal issues will aggravate their condition. Of course, every person is different, and so is every gut. Nevertheless, you can consider the above as a general orthomolecular advice. In consultations, we also see people improve when they stop consuming gluten-containing grains.
What else influences our intestines?
Of course, too many of the wrong fibers and too few of the good fibers is only one risk factor for intestinal problems. Alcohol consumption, smoking, and medication also have a negative effect on the intestines. At Charlotte Labee Supplements, we also regularly discuss the influence of toxins. All these factors together are stressful for the body.
Besides physical stress, psycho-emotional stress also has a strong influence on the condition of your intestines. Everyone has experienced getting a strange feeling in their stomach due to tension. For example, some people experience diarrhea with stress, while others are more prone to constipation.
Conversely, a disturbed gut flora can lead to mental problems such as brain fog, loss of concentration, and mood swings. The nerves between the brain and the gut are called the gut-brain axis. From gut to brain, this effect is 80%, and from brain to gut, it is 20%. So, gut quality is of great importance for the proper functioning of your cognitive abilities and your emotional state.
If this is only for a short time, it's not a problem at all. The gut temporarily becomes more permeable. This is not damage to the mucous membrane, but the tight junctions (a kind of sliding doors) open up. The purpose of this is that more glucose, water, and salt are absorbed from the gut into the bloodstream more quickly. This increases blood pressure, gives strength to the muscles to fight or flee, and provides the brain with quick energy to come up with an instant solution.
With chronic stress, however, there is a problem, because the sliding doors remain open for too long, causing too many bacteria from the gut to enter the bloodstream, as well as pieces of undigested food. This is also called leaky gut. The immune system then works hard to get rid of this, and this costs a lot of energy.
Perhaps you have had courses of antibiotics in your life, sometimes even as a child. This can have an enormous negative impact on the gut flora, causing a significant imbalance. A week-long course can result in your gut flora being out of balance for a year to a year and a half.
How can you improve your gut microbiome?
How can you restore the microbiome in your intestines? We have listed a number of tips for this:
- Vary your diet and nutrient intake: This ensures a diverse microbiome, which promotes good gut health. Especially legumes, beans, and fruits contain a lot of fiber and can promote the growth of healthy bacteria.
- Eat fermented foods: Fermented foods such as sauerkraut and kefir all contain healthy bacteria, which can reduce the number of pathogenic bacteria in the gut.
- Eat as little sugar or other artificial sweeteners as possible: There is evidence that artificial sweeteners such as aspartame increase blood sugar levels by stimulating the growth of unhealthy bacteria in the gut microbiome.
- Eat prebiotic food: Prebiotics are fibers that stimulate the growth of healthy bacteria. Prebiotic-rich foods include artichokes, bananas, asparagus, oats, and apples.
- Eat whole grains: Whole grains contain a lot of fiber and good carbohydrates like beta-glucan, which are digested by gut bacteria and are beneficial for weight management, diabetes, and other conditions.
- Eat foods rich in polyphenols: Polyphenols are plant compounds found in green tea, dark chocolate, olive oil, and whole grains. They are broken down by the microbiome to stimulate healthy bacterial growth.
- Take a pre- and probiotic supplement: Pre- and probiotics are living bacteria that can help bring the gut back into a healthy balance.
To measure is to know
Are you still struggling with your intestines or digestion, or would you like to know exactly what's going on inside? Then it's interesting to have a gut examination, after which our gut therapist can tell you exactly what the situation is. During your consultation, you will receive a comprehensive explanation and valuable advice on how to proceed.
