5 easy bio-hacks to improve gut health right away

The human gut is home to over 100 trillion bacteria, known as the “gut flora”. Having a healthy gut flora is incredibly important for your overall health. Most bacteria in the gut belong to one of four groups: Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria or Proteobacteria ). Each group plays a role in your health and requires different nutrients for growth.

Friendly gut bacteria are important for digestion. They destroy harmful bacteria and other microorganisms and produce vitamin K, folate and short-chain fatty acids. When the gut flora contains too many harmful bacteria and not enough friendly bacteria, an imbalance can occur. This is known as dysbiosis. Both dysbiosis and a reduction in gut flora diversity have been linked to insulin resistance, weight gain, inflammation, obesity, inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer.

Diet and lifestyle factors, including poor sleep quality, alcohol consumption, and inactivity, can harm your gut bacteria. Therefore, it’s important to keep your gut bacteria as friendly and abundant as possible. Without further ado, here are 5 small hacks that can improve your gut bacteria today.

Eat more prebiotic foods: Eat plenty of foods rich in prebiotic fibers, such as legumes, onions, asparagus, oats, bananas, and others. You may find more pre-biotics foods by clicking here

Consume more probiotics:

Probiotics may increase the abundance of healthy gut bacteria. Fermented foods, such as yogurt, kimchi, kefir, and tempeh, are all excellent sources. You could also start taking a probiotic supplement that is NSF certified. Ask one your assigned coordinator about the probiotics we offer.

Make time for quality sleep:

To improve sleep quality, cutting out caffeine late in the day, sleeping in complete darkness, disconnecting your wifi, placing your phone on airplane mode, and making a structured sleep routine so that you go to sleep and wake up at the same time each day.

Reduce stress:

Regular exercise, meditation, and deep breathing exercise significantly help reduce your stress levels. Today, you can go to youtube and look for 5-minute anti-stress, anxiety, depression, and anger meditations that can quickly restore your mental harmony and produce feelings of calmness and happiness without having to take any medications. Do some research and you will find that what we are saying is completely true. For example, here is one 5 minute meditation that I use in the mornings and change it up every week. Click here

Eat foods rich in polyphenols:

Good sources include blueberries, red wine, dark chocolate, and green tea. Polyphenols are not digested very efficiently and often make their way to the colon, where they are digested by bacteria. We also recommend supplementing with our polyphenol nutrient supplement to optimized your necessary intake of all the essential nutrients needed by your body and gut. Ask your assigned coordinator about our recommendation.

VIOME MICROBIOME GUT TESTING

Last but not least, if you are having serious gut issues, we strongly recommend that you get your microbiome tested with the Viome test. You can visit viome.com for more information. Hope this email was useful to get you on the right track.