Your Digestive system: 5 ways to support Gut health
Digestive health is the root cause of overall well-being; it impacts both physical and mental health. Following are the tips on how to improve gut health and digestion
- Start the day with a tall glass of warm water or any detox drink – Starting the day with at least 2glass of water. It detoxifies the system, eases bowel movement, helps in reducing symptoms like constipation and thereby maintains a healthy digestive system. Other detoxifying liquids like wheat grass juice, ash gourd juice, overnight soaked jeera water etc improve your overall digestive health. The alkaline nature of ash gourd acts as a coolant reduces acidity and reduces bad bacteria and improves gut health.
- Cut down on processed and Maida-based foods – Processed and Maida-based foods slow down the metabolism, cause gastric problems, lead to constipation, disrupts the balance in microbiota, lead to leaky gut and thus cause harm to your digestive health. Bad fat in these products not only adds to bad cholesterol but also to digestive health problems and weight gain.
- Include more prebiotics – Prebiotics are one of the best foods for digestive health. Gut microbiota is composed of good bacteria and bad bacteria. The balance of these bacteria influences digestive health, which impacts the entire body. Prebiotics work to restore and maintain this balance. Prebiotics are a certain type of carbohydrates made up of non-digestible fibers, present in whole grains, fruits and vegetables. These fibres travel through the digestive system to the large intestine where they go through a process of fermentation. Fermentation alters the pH in the gut to make the environment more favourable for healthy bacteria to flourish. This helps restore balance, improve gut health, and optimize probiotic function in the intestines.
- Maintain a healthy sleep routine- Sleep impacts our overall health including immunity, heart, brain and digestive health. Digestive problems can be caused by lack of sleep which increases stress levels causing an imbalance in the regulation of cortisol, serotonin and melatonin hormone. This may lead to bad food choices like sugary and fatty foods which only add to the digestive health problems. So 7-8 hours of sleep is recommended to maintain good digestion and gut health.
- Probiotics for gut health – Improve your digestive health by real foods like probiotics. Including fermented foods (idly, dosa, khameer or ganji) and curds, buttermilk, regularly adds to the good bacteria and reduces bad bacteria. They help improve your gut health by healing the gut lining and ameliorating the imbalance caused by antibiotics. They reduce the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel diseases, and skin problems, and even boost immunity.