I’ve worked with many individuals over the years who’ve experienced varying degrees of gut issues. Many have learned to accept the problems they experience as the norm, even at the expense of their quality of life never mind how it impacts their ability to train. Whether these issues involve a bit of bloating after meals to bowel movements taking place only once every 3 days, the impact can be felt in our sleep, stress levels, immune system function, and performance in the gym. It’s important that we don’t ignore what our stomach is telling us, it’s not called the “second brain” for nothing.
“All disease begins in the gut.” (Hippocrates, ~400 BC)
Gut Microbiome
Our gut is a microbiome, alongside our skin, mouth, ear canal, and more. Think of this as an ecological community that has a distinct array of organisms, a reasonably well-defined habitat with distinct bio-physio-chemical properties that changes over time. The more complex and stable our microbiome, the healthier we are, and the lower our risk of contracting diseases.
Our gut microbiome has 3 main functions:
Metabolic
Defensive
Trophic
Each function covers a wide range of individual functions, from vitamin synthesis, mineral absorption, metabolising bile acid, managing pathogens, and moving our food along the digestive tract. Our healthy microbiota “communicate” with pathogenic microbiota, and when that communication is good, things are balanced. When there’s an imbalance, issues like the following can occur:
IBD
IBS
Obesity
Inability to absorb carbs
Ulcers
Allergic disorders
Common Diets & Their Impact on the Gut Microbiome
There are many different dietary practices that people adopt, often in the pursuit of weight loss or due to their own personal code of ethics. Many of these are elimination diets, where an entire food group is removed. When it comes to weight loss, often the results from elimination diets are attributed to the success of the diet rather than an understanding of the principles of energy balance. Adding to this, the restriction of entire food groups reduces the overall diversity of our diets, which in turn reduces the complexity and diversity of our gut microbiome. Our gut health becomes less diverse and stable and subsequently, we gain less protection from it. Elimination diets should be used with this understanding in mind.
Elimination diets aren't the only problem when it comes to the diversity of our gut microbiome. The typical Western diet is pro-inflammatory, high in cholesterol, saturated fats, processed foods, and excessive amounts of animal proteins. This can also cause a reduction in microbial diversity. In most cases, the key to a healthy gut involves leading an active lifestyle, eating a diet that is varied, managing harmful stress, and avoiding excessive amounts of toxins like alcohol.
How to ensure your diet is varied? Nutritionist Phil Gerrard has a great analogy, which goes something like this: imagine a toy train pulling 20 compartments filled with different loads behind it. Each time it goes around the track, you take off 2-3 compartments and put 2-3 new ones on each carrying different loads, then you take the train around the track once more and repeat the process every trip. In this way, the core load you're pulling stays the same, but you rotate new and different compartments on a regular basis. Your diet can work the same way, whereby you keep the foundation consistent, and on a regular basis (say weekly) you change out a fruit, protein, carb, or vegetable source.
Fibre, sunshine, & namaste
There are many simple ways to help strengthen our gut health. We should ensure we eat enough fibre each day, which for adult women is around 25g or more per day and for adult men around 38g or more per day. It should be noted that with individuals with significant muscle mass and high protein intakes, these fibre intakes may not be sufficient. We should fortify our diets with probiotics, and make sure we are getting enough Vitamin D3 (seasonal intakes vary). We should eat in a restful state, chew our food thoroughly, and limit processed foods, and excessive amounts of cholesterol, animal proteins, and saturated fats.
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