Maintaining perfect gut health is increasingly challenging in today’s society due to processed foods and stress, but promoting optimal gut health has so many positive benefits for your health and wellness. When I was in medical school, many of my professors advocated that all health starts in the gut and over the past couple of decades, I’ve seen that is true for many people. If you take good care of your gut, your gut will take good care of you.
The 3 Pillars Of Perfect Gut Health
Why is good gut health important?
Everything you eat has to be broken down, processed, and absorbed by your body. If your body is not able to extract and absorb the positive benefits of a healthy diet, you may not see the benefits from your diet that you should.
Without perfect gut health, you can experience physical symptoms like constipation, diarrhea, gastroesophageal reflux disease, abdominal pain, gas, bloating, belching, irritable bowel syndrome, and food sensitivities. To prevent these negative symptoms, we’re going to talk about three aspects to promote good gut health: probiotics, digestive enzymes, and fiber prebiotics.
Probiotics
Probiotics are the healthy bacteria that live both in and on us. There are trillions of healthy bacteria living in us and on us, outnumbering human cells by a long shot. Of course, we’re not walking around looking like alien bacteria because human cells are huge compared to tiny bacteria, but they do actually outnumber us. We’re more bacteria than we are human, which is astonishing.
Probiotics provide many benefits, not just for the GI tract, but also for our immune system, weight loss, brain health, and even depression and anxiety. There are more serotonin receptors in the gut than in the brain, and healthy bacteria have unique ways of communicating with the brain to promote good physical health.
So why do probiotics, healthy flora, and healthy bacteria start to die off? A poor diet that is high in processed foods and carbohydrates can affect the good bacteria. High levels of stress and some medications can negatively affect probiotics as well.
Food is medicine, so I encourage you to get your probiotics through food sources. Some of my favorite sources of probiotics include yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, tempeh, kimchi, miso, kombucha, pickles, and natto. Do the best you can to get probiotics through food sources, but you can always take a high-quality supplement if you need to.
Digestive Enzymes
Digestive enzymes released by the pancreas include amylase, protease, lipase, lactase, phytase, cellulase, invertase, and maltase. These digestive enzymes break down macronutrients like carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.
Again, a poor diet, stress, and certain medications can decrease your body’s ability to produce these enzymes. These enzymes are absolutely necessary for not just digesting macronutrients, but also for extracting important micronutrients like vitamins and minerals.
Fiber Prebiotics
For the most part, Americans are terrible at getting enough fiber. It’s estimated that Americans take in around 10 grams per day, but studies recommended getting 40-50 grams per day. Prebiotics are basically undigested fiber that these probiotics feed upon and promote more healthy bacteria.
The best sources of prebiotics include chicory root, dandelion greens, Jerusalem artichoke, garlic, onions, leeks, asparagus, bananas, oats, oatmeal, apples, cocoa, burdock root, flax seeds, chia seeds, jicama, sweet potatoes, and seaweed. Again, it’s better to get your probiotics and prebiotics from food, but there are supplements you can take if necessary.
Zenith Labs has created a highly-viable, highly-potent probiotic, called Probiotic T-50. It contains 11 strains of 50 billion organisms to help promote better gut health. We’ve also created an enzyme supplement called True Digestion to help with GERD symptoms and increase digestive enzymes, helping promote better overall health for you.
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I believe in the original meaning of the word doctor, ‘docere’, which means teacher. I’m here to help educate you on how to take care of yourself in ways that you may not have heard of before, but that are effective. I always want to hear your ideas and feedback so be sure to leave me comments below!
