I must be honest, I didn’t know I was this naive about what gut is all about 2 years ago. Ironic as the word “gut feeling” has been part of my usual vocabulary for so long. All along, I thought it was just one of those expressions people often use.

If you’re your age today and like me 2 years ago, then lucky you because you’ll know everything you need about the gut, gut health, and what can you do to make your gut a healthy one all in this blog post! I hope you’re ready, cause I am!

What is the gut?

When you hear someone say “gut”, they usually refer to your gastrointestinal system. This system determines all the types of bacteria in your digestive and intestinal tract. And I guess, this is where I’ll connect that “gut feeling” expression I’ve been using since I don’t even know when.

Believe it or not, your feelings affect the bacteria in your body which makes you feel something “weird” than your normal ones. That’s why when someone tells you, “listen to your gut”, they actually meant trust your feelings. Why? Because it is through that that you can’t really hide what you feel. Remember those times when you sit beside someone you like and you feel butterflies in your stomach? Or that funny feeling in your tummy whenever you need to present in front of a crowd. That’s it!

Why is gut important?

As mentioned, all types of bacteria are dealt with within your gut. And like everything else, there’s the good and bad of it. If your gut is filled with bad bacteria, it can do harm to you.

Since your gut system deals with your digestive and intestinal tract, your gut health can be more crucial than your think. Having an unhealthy gut would mean your body may struggle to absorb some nutrients, store fat, or sometimes regulate blood sugar.

This may cause weight gain or loss and skin irritations such as acne, eczema, and psoriasis. Yikes!

If you find this disturbing, I’m sure you’re curious to know what affects your gut health. You might unknowingly be doing it and not have the slightest idea.

Lifestyle factors that affect gut health

Too much stress. Well, I guess this isn’t something new anymore as when stress is around, your whole body is affected. You’re most probably walking around like a living zombie when you let stress control your life.

And as we know, when we let stress control over us, harmful effects happen to our body. This causes the same with our gut. When we get stressed, our gut gets more sensitive than usual which causes reduction of blood flow and alter the gut bacteria.

Not having enough sleep. Rest is very essential to a human’s body which we often ignore. Believe it or not, sleep deprivation not only makes us restless but also leads to much more complicated diseases such as obesity and heart disease.

And what does this have to do with your gut? Well, our gut tends to be a systematic fellow and once things gets distrupted causing harmful effects to your gut bacteria, hence, leading to an unhealthy gut.

Lack of physical activity. Being a couch potato has never had a good effect on any human being. It’ affects a’s not surprising to know that even our gut gets affected with our lack of movement so that our body could burn energy.

When it comes to having a fit body, we usually link doing some kind of physical activity to make that happen. This burning of energy results to having higher levels of Akkermansia, a bacteria that is shown to play an important role in metabolic health. This also helps from being obese.

Taking too much antibiotics. We all know how important antibiotics are when it comes to medication we need for infections and other diseases caused by bacteria, hence, this might be one of the most taken medicine next to paracetamol.

Like anything too much though, antibiotics, though intentionally taken to heal us could cause harm instead if taken irresponsibly. I’m not going to flood you too much with medical terms as I, myself, isn’t an expert on this. So here I am trying to attempt to explain to you in lay mans term.

Basically, everytime you take antibiotics, it declines some beneficial bacteria and temporarily increase a harmful one. This is why long-term use of antibiotics can cause trouble in our gut. If this doesn’t make you think twice, you must know that there’s one study, that says that it takes up to 2 years for the effects of a single dose of antibiotics to remain in our system. And oh, I thought you must know that the bacteria it affects diversity is one of the most important bacteria.

It’s a big deal! This only means that being mindful on our food choices instead of relying on medicine afterwards could really pay-off not only for the short term but long term as well.

Meal diversity. And since we’re talking about healthy eating, I guess it’s important as well to highlight that making sure to eat a diverse range of food is important. Yes, that pie chart you’ve been thought when you’re young still exist and is very much important no matter how old you get.

In case you forget already what I’m talking about, check out image below. You’re very much welcome!😃

How to take care your your gut health

Know you have a deeper understanding of what gut is all about, why is it important, and what affects gut health. As they say, “precaoution is better than cure”. Here’s some ways to take care of your gut health so you don’t need to go into trouble with your health.

Taking Probiotics. Probiotics are the live microorganisms (good bacteria) that reside in the gut. Probiotics support our immune system, aid digestion and assist with nutrient absorption into our bloodstream. While fresh fruits and vegetable is the best source of probiotics, we must all agree with the kind of lifestyle we are living nowadays, it’s difficult to commit to our food needs.

That’s why, taking probiotics instead is one of the most effective ways to make sure you get all the nutrients you need in a day. That’s exactly what Wellzyme does. With 6 key enzymes your body need specially designed into one, you’ll pretty much headed for a healthy gut in not time!

Drinking tea. Tea drinkers must attest to having good digestion because of their habit of drinking tea. This Tumeric Chamomile Vahdam Tea is one of my go-to to make sure my digestion is on tip-top!

I hope you find this article informative!