Breaking Down the Question: How Does Gut Health Impact Your Body?

Your gut health plays a huge role in keeping your body strong and healthy. Even though we can’t see what goes on in our gut, the bacteria within the gut microbiome are largely responsible for keeping our body functioning at a healthy level. This means that if your gut isn’t healthy, there’s a good chance that your body’s health is falling behind too. Let’s answer the question: how does gut health impact your body?

Taking Care of Your Gut Health = Taking Care of Your Body

Trillions of bacteria, viruses, and fungi live within our body and gut – collectively making up our microbiome. As bacteria is one of the most prevalently studied microbes, it is known that we have roughly 40 trillion bacteria cells and 30 trillion human cells, making our bodies technically more bacteria than human. What does this mean, you may wonder? In simplest terms, your gut is the center of our body’s wellbeing; a healthy gut = a healthy body.

That’s not to say that every ailment and sickness you have can be traced back to your gastrointestinal health, but there is a good chance that it plays a factor. Because of this, you never want to ignore your gut health, especially because it plays a role in supporting a strong immune system and digestive tract.

What Your Gut Health Impacts the Most

The bacteria in your gut is essential to maintaining a healthy life. With so many external environmental stressors impacting our overall wellbeing, it is even more important to take care of our internal gut health to promote a sustainable and functioning body. Below we will go through the two main areas of your body that are strongly impacted by your gut’s health.

Immune System

Seventy percent of your body’s immune system resides in your gut, which means there is a strong symbiotic relationship between the two. They evolve together and work together, so when your gut isn’t producing enough diverse microbiota (which is vital to a healthy gut), it decreases the strength and functionality of your immune system. Along with being more susceptible to illness, having a weakened immune system can also lead to poor sleep, which leads to decreased cognition and difficulty recovering from viruses and infections.

Often, poor gut health results from years of external and internal triggers. If you find that your immune system may be compromised and want to work on healing your gut, Supro Direct has excellent specialists who can provide you with the proper resources to get your microorganisms back working in full force.

Digestion

Digestion is one of the most prominent areas that your gut can impact. Many individuals find themselves afflicted by digestive health issues like Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome, and GERD. While various factors can play into those issues, there is also a good chance that they stem from poor intestinal health.

Stomach acid, bifidobacterium, and lactobacillus are all parts of the good bacteria in your gut and digestive tract. And while they do their best to keep your gastrointestinal tract in check, our bodies are very sensitive and reactive towards the types of food we put into them. Since food reaches your gut first, if something irritates your gut, it will, in turn, irritate your digestion, leading to bloating, weight gain or weight loss, cravings, and more.

If you are experiencing harmful inflammation, poor digestion, or any GI tract issue, you must take the time to heal your gut and regain a balanced microbiota.

How to Sustain a Healthy Gut

There are just as many good bacteria as bad bacteria living in the human gut. However, as long as you are mindful of what you are putting into your body and taking care of your gut health, there is no reason that the bad bacteria would negatively impact your overall health. One way to ensure that the good gut bacteria does their job is by preventing dysbiosis or an upset in the bacteria makeup of your gut. A diverse gut microbiota consists of various microorganisms, such as bacteria, fungi, and viruses. When all of these microorganisms work together, they balance the health of your gut, making it more effective and resilient.

We recommend using these tips to keep your microbes balanced:

• Introduce Probiotics and Prebiotics
• Avoid smoking
• Eat a balanced diet
• Increase your intake of whole-grain foods
• Add fermented foods like sauerkraut and kimchi to your meals
• Commit to weekly exercise

By no means is this an exhaustive list or a regimented one, but adding a Probiotic to your diet and eating a few more veggies with your dinner, definitely isn’t a bad thing.

As you can see, gut health affects your entire body. To help ensure that you are taking care of your gut, schedule an appointment with a physician at Supro Direct. Our staff in Greenwood, IN is here to keep you safe and healthy and provide you with all the tips and tricks necessary.