Why Gut Health Matters: 5 Ways Your Gut is Impacting Your Health
You may have heard the term “gut health” a lot recently and wonder why everyone is talking about it so much.
Whether you have heard it from a Registered Dietitian, your friends, or even social media, it is important to understand what gut health means.
Your gut, also known as Gastrointestinal tract (GI tract), is an organ in your body that's main function is to digest the food that you eat and absorb the nutrients from it. It is made up of your stomach, intestines, and esophagus.
The truth is, your gut impacts so many processes in your body.
If you are experiencing symptoms that you think may be related to your gut, you are in the right place!
In this post, we will dive into gut health and how it impacts your:
Hormones
Skin health
Immunity
Quality of sleep
Importance of digestive health
Most people know that your digestive system processes the foods you eat. But you may not know how or why it does this.
When you eat any food or drink any liquid, your body needs to break it up into tiny molecules that your body can use for energy, growth, or repair.
These molecules are broken down into carbohydrates, lipids (fats), proteins, and vitamins that each play extremely important roles in how your body functions.
So why should you prioritize your digestive health? As mentioned previously, many different processes in your body are impacted by your gut health. In other words, it all starts in the gut!
Your gut contains trillions of these complex bacteria, collectively known as your gut microbiota. These bacteria assist many processes.
Your gut microbiota (1):
Supplies essential nutrients
Synthesizes vitamins
Aids in cellulose digestion
Promotes formation of new blood vessels
Promotes enteric nerve function
Since your gut impacts many areas of your body, when these processes are not working correctly, problems can result and cause a variety of issues.
Hormones
It might be a surprise to learn that your gut impacts your hormones, but it’s true! Your gut health and hormones are intertwined with one another.
In fact, there is a whole microbiome specifically for the regulation of hormones. This microbiome, named the estrobolome, is responsible for metabolizing estrogen.
It impacts the body's estrogen levels by affecting how estrogen circulates between the gut and liver (2). This can alter the amount of estrogen in the blood.
Not only does the gut metabolize estrogen, it also produces 90% of the body’s serotonin (3). Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that acts as a hormone to control our mood.
It is important to understand that serotonin is produced in the gut because it carries messages between nerve cells in the body and brain.
If your gut cannot produce serotonin in adequate amounts, your body may not be able to receive these messages clearly.
This may impact your mood and even lead to consequences such as depression with depleted levels.
In addition to this, the gut helps detoxify hormones. This process can help eliminate unwanted excess amounts of hormones such as cortisol or estrogen.
This prevents these hormones from accumulating and creating hazardous issues.
Issues resulting from accumulation of hormones include (4):
Obesity
Metabolic syndrome
Cancer
Endometriosis
Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)
Fertility
Cardiovascular disease (CVD)
Cognitive function
2. Skin Health
Skin health is another factor that can be influenced by gut health.
It is important to understand how gut health affects skin as the skin and gut are very similar in purpose and function (5).
Since the gut microbiome maintains immunity and reduces systemic inflammation, this can benefit the health of your skin.
Dysbiosis is a term that refers to an imbalance of the gut microbiota.
When your gut is in dysbiosis, inflammation may be more likely to occur and can result in skin flare ups such as acne, eczema, psoriasis, and more.
3. Immunity
Immunity is largely influenced by the gut.
In fact, between 70%-80% of the immune system can be found in the gut (6). This is a result of good gut bacteria recruiting immune cells to fight off sickness and infections.
With a healthy gut microbiome, the bacteria and gut lining can prevent harmful pathogens from passing through the bloodstream.
This can promote immunity and reduce the risk of contracting infections.
When the gut lining is compromised however, this can lead toxins and unwanted bacteria to pass through.
When this occurs, this could trigger an immune response and inflammation, essentially putting your immune system in overdrive.
Therefore, the role of our gut is essential in our overall immunity.
4. Quality of sleep
Quality of sleep is influenced by gut health as the brain and gut are extensively connected.
Recent research has found this associations between sleep quality and the gut microbiome (7).
This research suggests that healthier sleep can be promoted by diversity of the gut microbiome (7).
In addition, as mentioned earlier, the gut produces the majority of the serotonin our body produces.
Since serotonin is a precursor for melatonin and plays a key role in our circadian rhythm, imbalanced serotonin levels in the gut can disrupt the regulation of our sleep cycle.
Tips for Mainitaing a Healthy Gut
There are many ways to maintain a healthy gut to support all these functions.
Tips for maintaining a healthy gut:
Eat a balanced diet
Regularly take probiotics and prebiotics
Regularly exercise
Stay hydrated
Prioritize stress management
Avoid antibiotics overuse
Limit processed foods and sugars
By focusing on your gut health, you can actively improve many symptoms that may be associated with dysbiosis of gut microbiota.
Do you think your gut may need to be healed but don’t know where to start? Working with a registered dietitian may be a great way to get the support you need.
Working with a Registered Dietitian will help you:
Build a positive relationship with food
Learn how to eat a balanced diet
Identify how to support your body through nutrition
Develop a sustainable lifestyle
To learn how to take proactive steps and improve your gut microbiome:
To conclude…
Gut health is a continuously growing area of research that allows us to understand the importance of our gut.
Our gut can contribute to a variety of functions including our hormones, skin health, immunity, and quality of sleep.
Without a healthy gut, many issues can result in our overall health.
However, there are proactive steps we can take to ensure we are supporting our gut optimally.
