Nourish your Gut Microbiome to improve your health

It wasn’t that long ago that bacteria in your gut was considered just a putrefier of your waste. We have come so far in the past decade or so to understand that your gut bacteria actually plays a hugely important role in your health. Your gut microbiome is a huge deal - you have more bacteria cells in your gut than you have human cells in your entire body! Just like a rainforest, it is important to have a diverse range of bacteria in your gut. With hundreds of different species of bacteria in your gut with lots of different roles, you could argue that your gut microbiome functions as an extra organ in your body.

Did you know you gut bacteria influences not just your gut symptoms, but your overall health, including cardiovascular, metabolic, inflammation, weight and much more?

We all have a different balance of gut bacteria, as individual as your fingerprint, however unlike your fingerprint you can manipulate the balance of your gut bacteria by changing what you feed it. Different foods, fibres and nutrients feed different bacteria.

Nourish your gut microbiome to reduce your gut symptoms

There is now plenty of research available which demonstrates the importance of improving your gut health to reduce your symptoms, including IBS, IBD, Constipation etc.

One downside of the usual approach to improving gut health is that if you have gut symptoms already, many of the foods and supplements recommended to help improve your microbiome can actually trigger worse symptoms! But don’t give up, it is definitely possible to improve your gut health, and I can show you how.

Nourish your gut bacteria to optimise your overall health

Research is booming to show us the many amazing ways that your microbiome is linked to so many aspects of health including

• Immune function

• Inflammation, including arthritis

• Heart disease, cholesterol

• Diabetes

• Mood

• and much, much more

How do you improve your gut microbiome?

The simplest way is to change the balance of what you eat - choose more foods that research shows are helpful for gut bacteria, and less off foods that are unhelpful for your microbiome. Likewise specific prebiotic supplements may also be helpful. This will be helpful for many people.

I can help you with simple dietary strategies to improve your overall gut health, and how to do this in a way that minimises any gut symptoms that your experience along the way.

Microbiome testing

However, you can also take this one step further an individualise this approach based on your own gut bacteria ‘fingerprint’. Microbiome analysis (a stool test) assesses your gut bacteria so that you can take a more targeted approach to improving your gut bacteria. Your results will help to guide the best plan for you to optimise your gut health to improve not just gut symptoms but so many aspects of your health.