Written by Menswear Style in Health & Fitness on the 16th August 2021

One of the keys to great health and a fantastic mood lies inside your intestines. Keeping your gut healthy and happy is a critical part of managing your health and wellbeing. The following will explore some of the things you can do to help support a diverse and ideal gut microbiome.

Why is Keeping Your Gut Healthy So Important? 

It turns out that your gut health can have serious implications, both in the short term (how you’re feeling right this second) and in the long term (increasing or decreasing your risks for obesity, eczema, diabetes, fibromyalgia, allergies, heart disease, autoimmunity, depression, cancer, and asthma. Every day new connections are being formed between illnesses and an imbalanced microbiome. Even autism has connections to the gut.

Eat Fermented Foods 

Fermented foods like sauerkraut (fermented cabbage) and other veggies have a ton of spectacular probiotic and prebiotic bacteria that can help support your gut. The folks at https://gutsyferments.com.au/ emphasise that fermented foods can come in all shapes and flavours and they make excellent snacks and additions to salads as well as toppings for meatier meals. 

Take Out Foods That Mess With Your Gut 

As with any other health regimen, it’s not just about what you add in; it’s also about what you take away. Luckily, most of the foods are those that we already know are bad for us, so if you’re on a healthy living quest, you’ll be striking two birds with one stone. You want to avoid any food with added sugar, foods with trans fats or hydrogenated fats, refined vegetable oils like canola, corn, and soybean oil, pasteurised dairy products (raw, organic dairy is alright unless you’ve got an intolerance for that), refined grain products (cereals, bread, muffins, pasta, etc.) and conventional meat, poultry and eggs.

Address Your Stress 

You’ve been told this one already in regards to any other difficulty you have in your life, and yes, at times, that can mean that you’re stressing extra because you’re all too aware of how your stress is negatively affecting your health. There’s a reason this keeps coming up: everyone is far too stressed for good health. You don’t have to start paying lots of money for yoga classes or master the art of meditation (although, in all seriousness, meditation is fantastic for you). You can tackle stress more gently. Slow down. Breathe. Sit quietly without a screen on or music in the background or a fan running and just be for a moment. Take a walk in nature. Have a long shower. Refuse more projects. Anything that is also benefiting you in the future (say reading that classic novel that you think will make you appear really smart) doesn’t count. You don’t need to be constantly improving. You can have twenty minutes a day where you just chill. 

The above steps should get you started on the road to a healthier gut microbiome. Of course, as with all health journeys, it doesn’t stop here. You can continue to learn and apply new research as time goes on.

Eat Fermented Foods, Address Your Stress, and Take Out Foods That Mess With Your Gut are some of the tips in this guide to Keeping Your Gut Healthy.