The 7 Gut-Healing Strategies That Make A Healthy Gut Simple

People who have dysbiosis suffer from issues like recurrent diarrhea, constipation, gas, bloating, and that "stuffed" feeling after meals. Others get skin conditions like rashes, hives, or numbness in your hands and feet or joint pain are also dysbiosis symptoms.

Luckily, there are a few easy strategies that make healing your gut simple:

Those include sugar in all its forms (including junk foods, but also "healthy" processed foods and high-fructose fruit) and food sensitivities like dairy and gluten. Studies show3 gluten sensitivity triggers dysbiosis, brain inflammation, gut-brain dysfunction, and even paves the path for dementia. 3

We’re talking real, whole, nutrient-rich foods, of course, but also fermented and cultured foods. They support the growth and proliferation of your "good" bacteria. These include cultured foods like yogurt or kefir, fermented foods including sauerkraut and kimchi, and cultured beverages containing favorable live bacteria like kombucha and coconut water kefir.

The symptoms of digestive enzyme deficiency are extensive when you take into account all of their downstream effects. If you cannot digest your food properly, you’ll suffer dysbiosis and even depression. Try a professional-quality digestive enzyme. If your symptoms improve, you’re more than likely deficient in digestive enzymes.

Along with antibiotics and a bad diet, researchers link4 psychological and physical stress with dysbiosis. You can’t eliminate stress, but you can certainly manage it with strategies like deep breathing, meditation, yoga, or even walking your dog around the park. Schedule them into your life if you have to, but do them regularly. Your gut and your overall health will thank you.

Studies show5 disrupted sleep patterns can adversely affect your microbiome. That’s why I recommend patients keep a consistent sleep schedule and get at least seven (but more like eight or nine) hours of solid, uninterrupted sleep every night. Sleep hygiene can help you meet those numbers, as can supplements like melatonin, L-theanine, and inositol powder.

Emerging research6 shows exercise can enhance the number of beneficial microbial species, enrich the microflora diversity, and improve the development of commensal bacteria. The message is clear: Get out there and move your body. Look for ways to make movement (exercise) exciting and enjoyable. Try to mix it up—find variety in the ways that you move.

One supplement that is always helpful is a quality probiotic. Even if you eat plenty of fermented and prebiotic-rich foods (most people don’t), a probiotic supplement can help deliver billions of these healthy bugs to where they’re needed in order to maintain good gut balance. "Probiotics may restore the composition of the gut microbiome and introduce beneficial functions to gut microbial communities, resulting in amelioration or prevention of gut inflammation and other intestinal or systemic disease phenotypes," researchers in one review7 noted.