Why is Digestive Health so important?
Our Digestive tract is described as our second brain and can influence many facets of our health and nutrition. Advances in medicine show significant interactions between digestive health and health of the Central nervous system, like — mood, stress management, behavior, and nutrition. There also may be a link between digestive health and disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons.
Salient points:
There is science that may support the notion that Micro-organisms in a person’s digestive tract or gut microbiota can in fact influence our mental well being, nutrition uptake, immunity, inflammatory response, and in turn, overall homeostasis.
Digestive health can play a role in weight control.
Probiotics are healthy bacteria that help one’s digestive tract, and they may play a positive role in influencing mental well being.
We can introduce probiotics in our system by means of probiotic supplements, yogurt, kefir, and cultured dairy products. This may be beneficial, especially after the normal microbiota are killed by consuming antibiotics.
Pre-biotics are agents present in the food that we consume that help promote the growth of healthy microbiota within our gastro-intestinal system.
Ingestion of high sugar / carbohydrate rich foods and high fat foods may also play a role in causing dysregulation of the digestive tract by altering the microbiota flora, which in turn may affect weight management, inflammation, immune function, and nutrition delivery.
Imbalance of microbiota in the gut may result in inflammation that can play a role in the pathogenesis of chronic diseases.
There has been a worldwide increase in inflammatory bowel conditions since the 1800’s, this includes conditions like ulcerative colitis and crohns. This may also be due to changes in the microbiota in one’s gut, secondary to consumption of processed foods along with other genetic and environmental causes.
Having talked about digestive health, I would like to encourage everyone to make a healthy diet an important initiative in your life. Stay connected with your physician. Try avoiding processed foods in your diet. Eat a diet rich with vegetables, whole grains, beans, legumes, soy foods like edamame and tofu, and herbs like garlic, ginger, turmeric, and cinnamon. Also, consider eating lean meats — proteins like organic chicken, turkey, eggs, grass-fed cuts of lean beef, lamb, and omega-3 rich wild caught sea fish. It may be beneficial to eat yogurt rich in probiotics, and healthy fats like sprouted organic nuts, to diversify your diet. I wish as always that you live long and strong!
:
