Each part of the body is important, but you don’t often realize how interconnected everything can be. For example, the food you eat is important, and it can help or hurt your gut health, influencing your entire body. The gut is how you absorb nutrients and fuel for your body, and without proper maintenance, your hormones and serotonin can suffer. Thankfully, you can make some simple diet changes that will improve your gut health and put you back on the road to healthy living.
Embrace Fermentation
Fermented food can sound unappealing at first, but instead of turning away from it, you should embrace food fermentation. Some of the best foods you can eat come from fermentation, including:
- Yogurt
- Kimchi
- Sourdough bread
- Kombucha
- Pickles
- Miso
These foods are wonderful, but on top of tasting great, they’ll do a lot to help with your gut health. Many of these fermented foods contain probiotics, living microorganisms that benefit your gut microbiome. Your gut is full of bacteria, and you want to cultivate the bacteria that help with digestion and the absorption of vitamins, not the ones that create digestion issues. Foods with probiotics help eliminate these bad bacteria and help support the cells and organs in your digestive system.
Find the Right Fruits and Veggies
In the world of produce, some fruits and veggies can get in the way of a healthy gut, and some can help. Bananas taste good, are healthy, and are full of good fiber, which helps with digestion and gut health. However, you’ll need to regularly go to the grocery store or farmer’s market to get fresh bananas.
Alternatively, there are some great fruits and veggies that you can easily grow at home, such as pomegranates. There are plenty of benefits to growing pomegranates at home, and one of the best is that you get to enjoy their digestive health benefits. Like bananas, they’re a great source of prebiotics and will help feed the healthy gut bacteria in your digestive tract.
Don’t Forget About Mushrooms
Many people lump mushrooms into the same category as fruits and veggies, but they’re their own category—fungi. There is so much diversity in the fungi world, and that’s even within the realm of edible fungi. There are the more traditional ones that people cook with, such as portabella, cremini, and button mushrooms, but there are also more medicinal mushrooms that can enhance your diet.
Mushrooms such as shiitake, lion’s mane, and turkey tail taste delicious and boast great benefits. On top of helping your immune system and focus, these mushrooms will act as prebiotics for your gut, helping you to care for your gut microbiome.
If you want to get back on the road to a healthy mind and body, you must embrace these diet changes that will help improve your gut health. It’s important to remember that a diet change isn’t an instant fix. To live with a healthy gut, add more foods like these to your regular diet so that you can reap the rewards.