Personal health awareness has been on the rise for the last couple of years, and this awareness has sharply risen due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In March of 2020, we all saw how the world shut down over the spread of the first major worldwide pandemic in over a century. Subsequently, people around the United States began to take a closer look at their personal health.
What most people found is that poor eating habits significantly contribute to poor health, and to a host of health problems ranging from obesity to poor gut health.
Poor gut health can cause serious problems if the issue isn’t treated, or if a lifestyle change that includes healthy, organic food sources doesn’t occur. And this can happen quickly before you even know you have poor gut health in most cases.
If you think your gut health is on the decline, here are a few common reasons why this could be happening.
Poorly Diversified Diets
The human gut is home to a staggering population of over 100 trillion bacteria, a number that easily dwarfs the human population on the planet today. But this “gut flora” as it’s referred to, is actually in our bodies for a reason.
The bacteria in our bodies are as diverse as the flora and fauna on the planet, and having a diverse range of gut flora is a sign of good health. However, when you don’t diversify your diet, your gut diversity also declines, and this can negatively impact your health in many ways.
The problem exists not solely due to poor individual diets, but from a world culture that has adopted a less diverse range of sustenance.
For example, according to the National Institutes of Health, 75 percent of the world’s food supply on average consists of just 12 plants and 5 animal species. And this is just not a diverse enough number to support proper gut health for the average human being.
Drinking Alcohol
Those who drink heavily may notice issues with gut health over time. And not only can heavy alcohol consumption cause an array of physiological issues, it can adversely affect your gut in several ways.
One way that heavy alcohol consumption can affect your gut is by causing dysbiosis. This is a condition that’s indicative of an imbalance in gut bacteria.
Basically, your gut is home to good guys and bad guys (good and bad bacteria). And dysbiosis occurs when there are too many of the bad bacteria running around in your gut.
Grain alcohol and spirits are considered worse for your gut in large amounts. The only two alcoholic beverages that seem to help with gut health are tequila (a natural prebiotic and probiotic) and red wine, which contains polyphenol, and this compound can also help to lower blood pressure and cholesterol.
Antacids
If you’re looking to improve your gut health, you’re going to want to get rid of your faithful antacid medications.
Antacids might do the trick in a pinch when you have painful heartburn, but these medications also come with dangers attached.
For example, the popular heartburn medication Zantac has been recently linked to the development of stomach cancer. And this has sparked numerous lawsuits seeking compensation due to complications from cancer.
Further, when it comes to gut health, antacids won’t harm your faithful bacteria, but they will decrease your stomach acid production. And though this is the reason why heartburn medication is effective, a decrease in stomach acid production also allows the bad guy bacteria to flourish, which will ultimately cause dysbiosis.
Gut health is more important than most people think. And it’s importance all hinges on its diversity.
If you think about it, if the planet that we live on was much less diverse, there would be many more problems than we have now in the world when it comes to the transmission of diseases and the overall health of the planet. Well, the same is true about your gut.
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