The gut is such an important part of our bodies—it’s estimated to hold as much as 80% of the body’s immune system! That’s why it’s so crucial that we take care of our gut health. The following are just some ways in which your gut affects your overall wellness:
The gut is a powerful tool.
Your gut is a powerful tool. It’s the body’s second brain, largest immune organ, and largest endocrine organ—and it houses more than 70% of your immune cells.
That’s why we’re taking a closer look at what happens when you’re not treating your gut well and how to change that for good.
Gut health is connected to brain health.
A healthy gut is connected to brain health. This is because the gut-brain axis connects the digestive system and the central nervous system, which controls our behavior, moods, and emotions.
In addition to promoting good digestion, a healthy microflora can also help reduce inflammation in your body. This can help prevent disease-causing inflammation from getting out of control and damaging your brain—but only if you maintain a diet rich in fruits and vegetables as well as low in sugars/carbohydrates.
The gut is deeply connected to the immune system and regulates it.
The gut and immune system are closely connected. The gut is home to the vast majority of the body’s immune cells or white blood cells. When your gut isn’t working properly, it can affect your ability to fight off infections and even cancer. If you have an autoimmune disease such as celiac disease or irritable bowel syndrome, this connection becomes more significant as well—your poor digestion may be making it harder for your body to defend itself against these illnesses!
Gut health is extremely important for overall wellness—but don’t worry if yours isn’t quite where it should be yet: there are plenty of ways that you can improve your digestive health!
Gut health is important in managing stress and mental health.
Stress can cause the gut to become inflamed and irritated, which in turn can make you feel anxious. Anxiety may also lead to GI issues like diarrhea and constipation. On the other hand, GI issues are also associated with depression because they contribute to inflammation and inflammation makes your body more susceptible to other physical diseases as well as mental health problems.
Your gut is the gateway to your overall wellness.
Your gut is the gateway to your overall wellness. As you know, your digestive system is a complex system of checks and balances that helps you digest food, absorb nutrients and eliminate waste. The gut also contains more than 100 trillion bacteria—more than any other part of the body!
Every part affects another part: When one area of the body isn’t working as it should, it can affect other systems. For example, if you have a lot of stress in your life or an unhealthy lifestyle (like too much alcohol), this may cause inflammation in your digestive tract which can lead to things like irritable bowel syndrome or Crohn’s disease.
In addition to managing stress and mental health issues like depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), gut health plays an important role in brain health by affecting neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine—the feel-good chemicals we need for happiness and well-being
Our bodies are complex systems of checks and balances, meaning that every part affects another part, whether we realize it or not.
Our bodies are complex systems of checks and balances, meaning that every part affects another part, whether we realize it or not. Because of this, it’s important to take care of your gut health in order to support your overall wellness. Your gut is the gateway between what you eat and the rest of your body—it takes nutrients from food and absorbs them into circulation for use. At the same time, it’s also responsible for keeping out germs and bacteria that could make you sick by closing off after eating (otherwise known as peristalsis).
In addition to absorbing nutrients from food and helping with digestion, there are several other ways in which a healthy gut can affect all aspects of our being:
- Our guts contain 100 trillion microbes—the same number as cells in our entire bodies! These organisms help us digest our food while they live off of what we don’t need (like fiber).
- Our digestive system produces neurotransmitters like serotonin (which helps regulate mood) or dopamine (our reward hormone). These chemicals travel through our blood vessels and interact with receptors on cells throughout our body…
Taking care of your gut helps you take care of yourself.
The first step to taking care of your gut is to know that you have it. If you’re feeling sluggish or having trouble focusing, experiencing chronic pain or bloating, or suffering from frequent digestive issues like gas and constipation, then you may want to consider improving your gut health.
However, if you don’t have any noticeable symptoms yet but are concerned with preventing them in the future (and who isn’t?), there are still ways that you can take care of your gut now:
- Eat whole foods as often as possible and try not to eat too quickly or on the go; this helps slow down digestion so that nutrients will be absorbed better.
- Take probiotics regularly; these are live bacteria that help keep our guts healthy by creating an environment where good bacteria thrive. You can get these supplements at most pharmacies and grocery stores—just make sure whatever brand of probiotic supplement you choose has at least 10 billion CFUs per dose!
Conclusion
In the end, we can’t stress enough how important it is to take care of your gut. Your gut health is an integral part of your overall wellness, and it’s something that should be looked at regularly. If something feels off in your gut, get it checked out! You never know what could be going on that might affect other parts of your body or mind. And if you want to learn more about how to take care of yourself in general (and get some great tips from us here at The Gut Health Journal), check out our website where we share all kinds of tips on how you can improve not only your digestion but also mental health and physical well being by taking care of yourself from within!
