Does The Food We Eat Affect Our Gut Bugs?

A major part of our body – our gut – is messed up and we feel like rubbish. Our first instinct for many of us is to find out what medication we need to take. ‘Just gimme a good, strong antibiotic and I’ll be fine!’

Unfortunately when our gut stops working, antibiotics don’t necessarily help and in fact often make matters worse.

If you’ve been struggling with gut issues for years, like many of the folks on our coaching program, you may have discovered through painful trial and error that medications often give no more than temporary relief, at best, or just make matters worse.

The nearest we get in gut health to a magic bullet solution is the probiotic. However generally we need to do more than take probiotics to get the result we want, namely a happy, functioning gut and a healthy body.

Nutrition Isn’t Taught At Medical School

Here at Gut Geek we put a lot of focus on food. Why? How do we know that changing our diet will make the slightest bit of difference?

There are countless scientific studies going on right now into different aspects of gut health and the microbes that live inside us, our microbiome. We are only just beginning to understand this wondrous biology working inside us for our benefit every minute of every day.

However one thing we know for sure is that our diet dramatically affects the makeup of our microbiome, more than any other single factor.

Another thing that’s become increasingly clear thanks to scientific studies since the turn of the century is that the microbiome is really an organ of our body in its own right.

These friendly microbes help us in so many ways that they are actually a crucial and integral part of our body. We can’t really function properly without them!

When our friendly gut bugs die back and become overwhelmed by unfriendly ones – a condition called dysbiosis – we suffer in all sorts of horrendous ways.

So you might think it’s a statement of the blindingly obvious to say that the food we eat affects our microbiome. But then consider that doctors in the UK, US and similar countries receive no training in nutrition, the most important way to care for our microbiome.

Our Microbiome Is VITAL To Our Health

And why is the state of our gut bugs important? Well, although you’re probably up to speed by now that these friendly bacteria are important, what you may not know is how deeply we depend on them.

These bacteria help break down food so we can absorb the nutrients. They create vital nutrients for us from scratch. They help our immune system to spot and fight off invaders. They manufacture brain neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. They drive our appetite signals and can make us fat or thin.

The list of ways we know of that our gut bugs help us or make us sick gets longer every day as scientists make new discoveries.

In the meantime, keep this in mind: we evolved over millions of years with these microorganisms. To function best they need the food that we ate when we evolved with them, which isn’t Cheerios and Pop Tarts! It’s food made at home in our cave from fresh ingredients, uncontaminated by antibiotics, pesticides and growth hormones.

If we consistently give our gut bugs the wrong food they’ll make us pay, not because they have a grudge against us but because they’ll die back and be replaced by other – much less friendly – bacteria. Result? Hey presto… our gut is broken and we feel like total crap!

Yes, you can take a probiotic pill and see big improvement but you’ll see far better results if you also change your diet.