Our gut flora, that’s the bacteria living in our intestines, have a large part to play in our overall health and wellbeing. They can affect our digestion, our immune system, our hormone levels and it’s now becoming very clear that they play a large part in the state of our mental health. That’s right – our mood and behaviour are affected by the bacteria in our gut as well.
What are gut bacteria?
Gut bacteria are known as our microbiome, mostly live in our intestinal tract, or our gut. The research is still very new, but there are links to immune issues, health, hormones, brain function, disease. When it comes to our brain function – the state of our microbiome can affect our levels of depression, anxiety and stress. They’re really important to develop our immune system because they send messages to our body so that it can learn the difference between good and bad bacteria.
Did you know that microbiome represent over 57% of the cells in our body? Amazing! There are several thousand different types in our gut and in total they weigh about 6 pounds in total. Double amazing! Some are more common than others, the types inside of us change over time. They are affected by our diet, the lifestyle we live, who we live with, what we touch, and our genetics. For instance, research has shown that the way we were born – natural or caesarean birth – affects the types of microbes that first take up home in our body.
Major shifts in composition can occur with changes in diet or antibiotics, life stages (puberty and menopause) and general ageing. the number of species declines with age. This is why it’s so important to maintain a healthy gut if we want to ensure we have the right microbiome community in our gut.
Looking after our gut bacteria
We can’t survive without them. But what are we doing to look after them?
Its pretty simple, what we eat feeds our gut bacteria, and they can also be affected by sleep and stress. But in short, they need a lot of fibre. Sadly a lot of our diets consist of heaps of simple carbs and added sugars which are quickly digested and don’t make their way down to the large intestine where our gut bacteria live. This means that we’re starving our gut bacteria, because they don’t have anything to feed on, which allows the bad bacteria, which live off our intestine walls, to thrive. However non-digestible fibre can reach them easily, as it travels down to our large intestine without being digested. When the microbiota eat this fibre they produce vitamins which we can’t produce without them, such as B vitamins.
The key steps for looking after our gut bacteria are:
- Eating a diet high in prebiotics, probiotics and fibre is key to let the good guys thrive. You can find a list of foods high in each of these here.
- Maintaining a healthy diet with plenty of fibre from healthy fruit, veg, beans and legumes (for help on this topic read this article on fibre)
- Eating a varied diet, as restricted diets will only help some strains of good bacteria flourish. We want as many types as possible of good bacteria as they all have different jobs to do
- Reduce your reliance on antibiotics and anti inflammatory drugs, such as nurofen or asprin which can really wreck havoc on your healthy gut bacteria and stomach lining
- Reduce your added sugar intake and SALT. Salt is terrible for bad bacteria growth and inflammation of the gut.
- Drink plenty of water to help the fibre make its way through your intestines to your healthy gut bacteria
Read our article on the best foods for a healthy gut. and the importance of boosting your kids gut health
