3 Surprising Things That Affect Your Gut Health, From The Father Of Functional Medicine

Your gut influences everything from your digestion to your mood to your immunity—it's the foundation of your health, many would say. But because your gut touches so many functions in your body, it can be difficult to know what exactly triggers any gut issues you may have. Is it inflammation? FODMAPs? A lack of sleep? Yes, your diet can play a huge role, but other less obvious factors can wreak havoc on your gut without you even knowing it. 

"Our function is dependent upon and intimately interwoven with the function of our environment," says Bland. Just like you have trillions of bacteria residing in your gut, the ecosystems around you have just as many bugs—if not more. Take soil, for instance: The dirt has tons of microbial life, filled with nutrients and healthy minerals that make the vegetables we love so nutritious. "Just like we have gut microbiomes, a healthy plant in healthy soil has its own unique microbiome," notes Bland.

But because conventional agriculture practices erode the organic matter and life in the soil, those farms aren't producing food that's as nutrient-rich as it could be. In turn, our gut microbiomes aren't receiving the diverse array of nutrients they love, which means your gut health might not be as optimal as it could be. 

We don't need to tell you how important managing stress is for your overall health. But when it comes to your gut, stress can significantly affect its function—and vice versa. In fact, there's a channel connecting the gut and the brain (also known as the gut-brain connection or gut-brain axis1) that allows them to communicate back and forth. Your gut even has its own nervous system, called the enteric nervous system, and when this nervous system absorbs stress hormones, it can affect the speed at which food moves through the digestive tract, resulting in either constipation or diarrhea. 

On the subject of social environments, Bland says that psychobehavioral aspects can actually send signals to your genes—a concept called socioepigenomics. "It describes why second-generation Holocaust victims can be sick, even though they were not subjected personally to Holocaust; their genes of their parents were marked by the trauma of Holocaust," Bland explains. (He references a study from the journal of Biological Psychiatry that discusses how trauma can be inherited, although more research is needed.) 

"Turmoil and challenges to your security can create a change in how your genes are expressed and put you into a state of alarm," Bland notes, which can have trickle-down effects on gut health (thanks to the aforementioned gut-brain axis).