Top Tips for Good Gut Health
Taking a good quality probiotic really will improve your health. The trick then is to adopt a few healthy habits that, together with your probiotic supplement, will keep you feeling well.
1. Eat more fibre. Most people think of bran, but probably the best and certainly the easiest way to increase the amount of fibre in your diet is to eat more high fibre fruits and vegetables and to sprinkle a tablespoon of organic flaxseed onto your breakfast cereal or salad each day
2. Drink plenty of water. People get hung up on how much and what type - the fact is that any water is better than none. Water helps soften waste material in the gut and can help prevent constipation which, if left unchecked, can lead to longer-term digestive stress.
3. Identify food allergens. Find out which foods you may be intolerant to and avoid them for a while. The most common culprits causing problems and leading to Digestive Stress Disorder are wheat, dairy, citrus fruits, tea, and coffee
4. Herbs to heal the gut. Aloe vera will help soothe and heal an inflamed gut. Buy it in liquid form from your local health store and drink a quarter glass before breakfast and again before supper
5. Leave a footstool in the bathroom. The human body was never designed for the modern lavatory, but you can get around this problem if you keep a small stool or step in the bathroom. If you don't have young kids, pretend it is for the grandchildren or visiting nieces to reach the taps. Adopting this position will take pressure off the lower bowel and can help relieve constipation
6. Think about Prebiotics too. The next generation of functional foods will be the prebiotics - substances that help maintain good gut health by feeding the existing good bacteria in the digestive tract and ignoring the bad ones. If you are going to take a probiotic, you could be super smart and take a prebiotic too. The best known one is called Fructo-oligosaccharide; thankfully shortened to FOS. It is made from plant fibres, tastes a little like sugar, and is usually sold in powder form in health stores
7. Vitamins & Minerals. In an ideal world, we would get all the vitamins and minerals we need from our food. However, in reality this is rarely the case - which is why most people will benefit from a multisupplement. As well as taking the guesswork out of which nutrients to take and in what dosages, a good multisupplement will make sure that these vitamins and minerals work with and not against each other to promote optimum health and support all the body's systems, including the digestive tract.
8. Take some exercise or buy a yoga mat. You may think standing on your head is nothing short of bonkers, but those ancient yogis knew what they were doing. Yoga is known as the science of purification - and if you invert the body, as in the head or shoulder-stand, you take pressure off the digestive tract. All the forward bends massage the internal organs to keep digestion healthy and all the asanas or postures are designed for specific areas.
