Your gastrointestinal health can have huge effects on your overall health and well-being. Maintaining optimal gut health can come down to managing the balance of bacteria in your digestive system, creating a microbiome that allows strains of healthy bacteria to work together to help you absorb the nutrients you need.
But how can you make sure that your gastrointestinal health is at its best — and if it isn’t, how can you improve it? At Mint Nutrition, we can assess your gut health with crucial testing options and explain how to improve gut health.
Collectively, the bacteria, fungi, and viruses that live in your digestive system make up the gut microbiome. You can have trillions of these organisms inside your organs, mostly in a pocket of your large intestine called the cecum.
The gut microbiome helps you from the moment you are born by allowing you to digest breast milk. It can also support:
If you have an imbalance of healthy and unhealthy microbes, you can develop a gastrointestinal disorder. Some common symptoms of gastrointestinal disorders are:
What long-term symptoms can be an imbalance in your gut microbiome? It can lead to weight issues, making it difficult to lose those extra pounds and even making you more prone to gaining them. It can also cause digestive disorders like irritable bowel syndrome or potentially lead to inflammatory bowel disease.
Many of these symptoms of gastrointestinal disorders occur because microbes produce chemicals and gasses that lead to intestinal discomfort. By having a balanced microbiome, you can eliminate these gasses. A healthy microbiome can help control blood sugar levels, fight against diabetes, and even support brain health because certain bacteria promote the production of neurotransmitters like serotonin.
A microbiome test identifies your gut flora, giving you a snapshot of your digestive health so that you can then make the needed changes and avoid digestive disorders. This test will identify the various types of bacteria you have in your gastrointestinal tract, measuring their levels and how they interact with one another so that you can make adjustments to improve your long-term digestive health.
Microbiome testing requires a stool sample. Lab technicians examine the bacteria in the sample and look for markers that can indicate an illness or malfunction in your system. Some microbiome testing takes DNA from the stool sample and examines it to tell you what types of bacteria might be present in your digestive system. Although this is not foolproof, it can offer some guidance about the changes you need to make.
If your digestive system is not working at its best, what can you do? Some tips can help you learn how to improve gut health.
Adding probiotics to your diet is one of the best things you can do. Probiotics for gut health are microorganisms that help balance the microbiome in your gut. Probiotics occur naturally in cultured milk and fermented food, but you can also find them in supplements.
Take your time choosing the right supplements so that you don’t upset your digestive system’s balance even more. These supplements can help with numerous digestive issues, including IBS, ulcerative colitis, and even Crohn’s disease. One of the benefits of taking probiotics for gut health is that they lower the pH of your colon, which can allow it to move stool faster while helping you absorb vitamins and minerals.
Another way to improve gut health is to take antibiotics only when necessary. Antibiotics can kill both good and bad bacteria in your gut.
Although probiotics could help you get the balance in your digestive system that you need, they might not bring the overall health benefits you’re looking for. This is where getting individualized treatment comes into play.
You can get the exact care you need with targeted and specialized testing and a thorough assessment. Once we prepare a treatment plan, we’ll offer one-on-one coaching so that you can access the tools you need to change your diet and nutrition habits.
We’ll perform testing to get an idea of your gut health. This type of testing includes not only stool samples but also bloodwork. If necessary, we’ll also perform genetic and hormonal testing, as well as test the protein and micronutrients in your body.
Once we have an idea of the state of your gut health, we can put together a personalized nutrition plan to promote the kind of healthy bacteria you lack. Our goal is to make sure that the good bacteria in your gut outnumber the unhelpful bacteria. You can achieve this through changes in your diet as well as in your lifestyle.
Do you struggle with digestive difficulties? If the answer is yes, you should consider whether the microbiome in your gut is healthy. The microbiome can have a huge effect on your overall health, so understanding its impact on your digestive health and what steps you can take to fix these issues can make all the difference.
At Mint Nutrition in Mooresville, NC, we offer some of the most advanced testing options to help you understand whether there are problems in your digestive system. We’ll put together individualized treatment options to help you regain the balance you need from your digestive system. Contact us today to learn more about gastrointestinal health testing.
