Love your gut as you head into the new year

The holidays are a time when love really is all around – yes… Love Actually is my favourite movie.

However, while you’re busy celebrating and enjoying the break with family and friends, it’s also important to spread that love to your gut.

In case you’ve forgotten, here are a few reasons why it’s important to look after your digestive system:

• Houses 70 per cent of our immune system.

• Absorbs essential nutrients for our health and excretes things we don’t need.

• Produces chemicals important for our mood and nervous system. The gut makes 95 per cent of the body’s serotonin! (Yep, seriously!!)

• It’s massive! If we spread it out, the surface area of the digestive system would cover roughly 32 square metres. To compare, the skin is roughly 1–2 square metres depending on age and weight. And think of how much effort goes into looking after our skin!

Here are four simple ways to nourish your gut:

• Embrace the bitter. Bitter foods can do wonders for our digestive health – despite being a food group we often instinctively avoid. They stimulate the digestive system from the mouth, all the way down by inducing hormones and enzymes involved in food absorption, digestion and satiety. Dandelion, chicory, kale and rocket are bitter leafy greens which are great in include in your salad. Or, consider a treat of dark chocolate and ginger! Scientists are so interested in the action of bitter compounds and their ability to evoke “feeling full” that they are trying to design “bitter pills” for the management of obesity!

• Probiotics. You’ve probably heard of these before, but probiotics are essentially the good bacteria that make up our microbiota and boast a myriad of terrific benefits for our immune system, mental health and liver function. Trial studies have demonstrated that probiotic supplementation can help to improve liver enzymes in alcohol-induced liver damage. It has also been suggested that a reduction of bowel flora may be linked to the pathogenesis of Alcoholic Liver Disease so probiotics, therefore, could be helpful! Considering the holidays are a time when we often have a drink in one hand, probiotic foods like yoghurt, kefir and sauerkraut ought to be in the other!

• Take a break between meals. The “migrating motor complex” is a mechanism of our nervous system that stimulates peristalsis – AKA, the movement of food through the intestines. But, it only switches on when we have stopped eating (roughly two hours after) and turns off when we eat again. Impaired function has been associated with poor intestinal motility, obstruction of the intestines and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO). Why is this important? Well, it’s never fun to be blocked up, but considering our poop is one of our primary means of excretion it is especially important following party season!

• Soothing, soluble fibre. As we know, fibre is important and helps to keep us regular too. As humans though, we’re unable to digest fibre but our probiotic bacteria can – hence why a healthy intake of fibre is so essential and acts as a prebiotic, feeding and looking after our billions of good guys. Look for sources of demulcents – resistant starch, green leafy veg, asparagus, garlic, leek, onion, banana and slippery elm – which provide soothing, slimy, soluble fibre for the gut. Some people find psyllium a harsher fibre on the gut, so it may be wise to avoid this. And don’t forget, all fibre needs to be teamed with water. Drink a minimum of 2L a day!

SHARE

About Unknown