7 Amazing Tips on How to Keep Your Digestive System Healthy

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The more scientists study it, the more we realize how important it is to keep a healthy gut. Your digestive system not only plays a huge role in your ability to get nutrients from food but also the health of many other systems in your body (we’ll look at how exactly in a second).

If you’re wondering how to keep your digestive system healthy, there’s a lot of information out there. Some of it’s good, and the other is cliche information that hasn’t been updated for years.

In this article, we’ll look at how to improve your digestive system healthy with 7 simple tips. But first, let’s look at why gut health is so important.

Why Gut Health Is Important

Your gut is where nutrients are absorbed from food, then transported to different areas of your body. Energy from calories, amino acids from proteins, and essential vitamins and minerals would not be used by the body if they weren’t broken down in the gut.

Your gut is also called your microbiome. Break this down into two words—micro, meaning small, and bio, meaning alive. Believe it or not, there are trillions of bacteria living in your gut, and if they aren’t healthy, you probably aren’t either.

Scientists have linked gut health to things like:

• Immune system function
• Brain cognition and memory (including certain diseases that affect the brain)
• Skin health
• Energy and metabolic function

As you can see, it’s not just about the organ in your midsection. Everything’s connected, and with so many bacteria to take care of, it should be a priority of yours to keep your microbiome healthy.

Here are 7 ways to do that.

1. Eat Wholesome Foods

Perhaps you’ve heard of leaky gut syndrome before.

If not, it’s an ailment scientists have attributed to poor diet, where your gut lining becomes so damaged from eating processed and sugary foods that acids from your gut begin leaking into your bloodstream.

It sounds bad and it is. The science is still out on whether a leaky gut is real or not, but that’s not the case for eating healthy foods. A diet rich in veggies, lean proteins, and healthy fats—and one that lacks in processed and sugary foods—is a proven way to improve gut health.

2. Eat More Fiber

Remember those trillions of bacteria? They feed off fiber, an insoluble starch found in green veggies, nuts, and other nutrient-dense foods.

If gut health is a priority for you, eating fiber should be on the top of your list.

3. Exercise

The benefits of exercise are immense, and daily movement also can help improve gut health. Even a daily walk can have positive effects on the bacteria in your gut, which leads to a stronger stomach and better overall health.

Surely you knew this would make the list, right?

4. Take Digestive Supplements

Probiotics and other digestive supplements keep those trillions of bacteria happy, too. You can take them as an over-the-counter supplement or eat foods that are rich in probiotics, like yogurt, kombucha, and kimchi.

If you’re experiencing digestive discomfort now, a supplement like Prevacid can also help.

5. Hydrate

Your body is primarily composed of water, so it stands to reason that proper hydration provides benefits for your gut health. Drinking enough water helps keep your body flourishing at the cellular level.

Specific to digestive health, though, your gut is more able to digest food when it is properly hydrated. On top of that, you’re more likely to be regular, as human stool is comprised mainly of, you guessed it, water.

6. Manage Stress

In the same way, it seems that a new study comes out on the importance of digestive health every few days. The same is true of managing stress—just in the opposite direction. Stress is a total body killer and has myriad negative health effects.

Namely, gut microbacteria don’t function as well in the presence of stress. So whatever’s affecting you could also be affecting all those systems, like your immune system, which we discussed above.

Science confirms there is a link between your brain and gut (called the gut-brain axis). The two are interlinked, and many believe that thirty years from now we’ll look back and how naive we were to this connection and how it relates to many of the diseases that currently plague humans.

7. Eat On A Schedule

Wondering what helps digest food? Eating your meals around the same time each day. Many of the items on this list you may have already known (or been able to guess), but eating on a schedule isn’t usually something that comes to mind.

The body gets into a rhythm with meals and comes to expect nutrients around the same time. When you deliver them, your body stays healthy and your gut bacteria stay healthy. So when you can, try eating all three meals around the same time.

How To Keep Your Digestive System Healthy: Wrap Up

Clearly, there are a lot of answers when it comes to how to keep your digestive system healthy.

A lot of the healthy items you’re used to seeing play a role—namely, exercising, eating well, eating lots of fiber, and staying hydrated. But less frequently mentioned things that are also important include eating on schedule, managing stress, and taking digestive supplements to aid your health.

As you’ve learned, digestive plays a huge role in overall health. Make it a priority and other systems in the body will function better, leading to you being a healthier version of you.

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