The Role of the Gut Microbiome
Your gut health is central to your overall well-being, and one of the most critical aspects of digestive health is understanding the role your gut microbiome plays. The gut microbiome is a complex community of hundreds of bacteria and other microorganisms living in your digestive tract. These tiny organisms, or microbes, perform a myriad of functions essential to your health, from supporting the integrity of your gut lining to mediating inflammation and the immune system.
Why Diversity Matters
Each bacterial species in your gut microbiome has unique functions. A diverse microbiome is crucial because it ensures that these various functions are covered. Beneficial bacteria, such as Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium species are particularly important, as they not only provide health benefits but also help inhibit the growth of pathogenic bacteria.
However, when the balance of your microbiome is disrupted—a condition known as dysbiosis—and diversity is reduced, the risk of various diseases increases. These include inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), diabetes, depression and more.
Balancing the Gut Microbiome
- Healthy Nutrition: Focus on a diet rich in fiber, prebiotics, and polyphenol-rich foods while limiting processed foods, sugars, and unhealthy fats.
- Regular Exercise: Both aerobic and resistance training exercises contribute to a healthier, more diverse microbiome.
- Adequate Sleep: Good sleep hygiene supports the gut-brain axis and protects your microbiome.
- Stress Management: Mindfulness, meditation, and yoga can help reduce stress, which is known to negatively impact the microbiome.
- Mindful Use of Medications and Supplements: Avoid overuse of antibiotics and PPIs, which can disrupt the microbiome.
Nutrition: The Cornerstone of Gut Health
When it comes to gut health, nutrition is the most important modifiable risk factor. The Standard American Diet (SAD), high in processed foods, saturated fats, cured meats, refined carbs and added sugars, is linked to reduced microbial diversity. This reduction can have far-reaching effects on your overall health.
In contrast, an anti-inflammatory diet like the Mediterranean diet is ideal for promoting a healthy microbiome. This is a whole-foods, plant-based diet:
Plenty of vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, seeds, whole grains.
Emphasis on brightly colored vegetables and fruits and diversity of plants.
Healthy fats such as wild-caught salmon, anchovies, sardines, mackerel, herring, olives, olive oil, avocado, nuts.
Some lean poultry such as chicken and turkey.
Minimal red meat, cured meats, saturated fats, refined carbs, sweets and processed foods.
Fiber is another crucial component of a gut-healthy diet. It serves as the primary food source for the microbiome. When you consume adequate amounts of fiber, certain bacterial species produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which nourish the gut lining, support immune cells, reduce inflammation, maintain microbial balance, and even improve metabolic markers like cholesterol.
Adequate hydration is needed for a healthy microbiome. Poor hydration is associated with constipation, in which there are less frequent bowel movements, and this is in turn associated with negative microbiome changes. Some studies have also seen poor immune activation and increased risk of pathogenic microbes when poorly hydrated. Aim to drink about half of your body weight in oz of water daily (i.e. if you weight 160 lbs, you would aim to drink about 80 oz of water). When you are more physically active, sweating or in hot/humid environments, increase water accordingly.
Prebiotics & Polyphenols: Feeding the Good Ones
Prebiotics are a specific type of fiber that are selectively used by beneficial bacteria in the microbiome. Getting regular prebiotic fibers in your diet encourages a healthy balance of beneficial bacteria without encourage growth of opportunistic and pathogenic bacteria.
Prebiotic Sources
Foods: onion, garlic, oats, legumes, apple, bananas (less ripe/green), avocado, asparagus, flaxseeds
Herbals: chicory root, dandelion root, burdock root
Polyphenols are a group of compounds found in plants that function as anti-inflammatories and antioxidants. They encourage the growth of beneficial bacteria and increase microbial production of SCFA, which further support gut health. A short-cut for identifying polyphenol-rich foods is to prioritize brightly colored vegetables and fruits.
Polyphenol-Rich Foods
Berries (blueberry, blackberry, strawberry, raspberry)
Fruits: Cherry, Plums, Currants, Pomegranate
Green tea
Dark chocolate
Nuts
Legumes
Exercise and Movement
Those engaging in regular exercise tend to have a more diverse microbiome with healthier function compared to those with a sedentary lifestyle. Switching from a sedentary lifestyle to a more active lifestyle results in similar changes in the microbiome.
Aerobic exercise appears to provide greater benefit to microbiome health than resistance training, though concurrent exercise (doing both aerobic and resistance training) results in greater benefit than aerobic alone. Exercising with greater frequency, intensity and duration are likely to be more beneficial than less frequent or intense exercise, though any increase in exercise should result in some positive changes.
Exercise Recommendations
Aerobic: Aim for 5 sessions of moderate-intensity exercise, each about 30 minutes
Resistance Training: Aim for 2-4 sessions a week, with 1-2 sessions focused on upper body and core and 1-2 sessions on lower body and core
Start small! Build a habit first, even if it means only doing 5 minutes of cardio a day. Once there is consistency, work on increasing the duration and/or intensity of exercise
Sleep
SLeep is essential to health, affecting not only brain health, but also playing a role in immune function and digestive health. Through the brain-gut axis, sleep deprivation can result in deleterious effects to gut health and the microbiome. Studies have found that sleep deprivation can lead to reduced microbiome diversity and negatively impact the intestinal barrier, causing increased intestinal permeability (or leaky gut) and chronic inflammation of the gut mucosa.
The optimal amount of sleep needed for good health varies between 7 and 10 hours, though generally speaking most people should strive for 8 hours a night. The best way to support good sleep quality is through good sleep hygiene.
Sleep Hygiene Recommendations
Go to bed and wake up at the same time each day. The body likes routine!
Keep your room dark, cool and quiet.
Reduce overhead light exposure after sundown, opt for lamps.
Put away phones and other screens 30-60 minutes before bedtime.
Avoid exercise too close to bedtime as it can be stimulating
Consider a warm shower before bed. The cooling down helps make you tired.
Mindfulness and Stress Management
Stress management is another key factor in maintaining a healthy microbiome. Both psychological and physical stress can have a negative impact on microbiome composition. This starts with the impact of maternal stress during pregnancy, stressful exposures in childhood and can continue with through adulthood. Chronic stress in particular can result in significant changes in microbiome diversity and abundance of beneficial species, even if the chronic stress is low-grade. Beyond affecting the microbiome, stress can also lead to changes in intestinal permeability and immune activation.
Stress Management Strategies
Meditation: The best strategy for stress and cortisol reduction is meditation. If you are new to meditation, it can be challenging to know where to start. Guided meditations with these apps can help: Headspace, 10 Percent Happier, Calm, Insight Timer
Yoga: Next to meditation, yoga has been shown to be very beneficial in managing stress and reducing cortisol levels. Taking local classes or using video or apps for guided classes can be helpful if you are new to yoga.
Mindfulness: Body scans, breathing exercises and activities like mindful walking and mindful eating can help as well. The goal is to focus on the physical body, slow down, and switch from sympathetic fight-flight to parasympathetic rest-digest.
Additional Strategies
Limit Antibiotics
Antibiotics can be an extremely helpful tool in the treatment of a vast array of bacterial infections. Unfortunately, the use of antibiotics have increased dramatically and are often overprescribed. While these antibiotics will address the intended infection, the microbiome ends up as collateral damage.
Talk with your doctor before starting antibiotics, discussing potential alternative therapies.
S. boulardii: This is a probiotic yeast that supports the immune system of the gut. Taking S. boulardii while taking antibiotics can reduce the associated digestive distress and diarrhea.
Probiotics: Taking probiotics while taking antibiotics is unlikely to be helpful, as antibiotics act indiscriminately. However, starting broad-spectrum and high-dose probiotics following a course of antibiotics can help to reseed the microbiome.
Fiber & Prebiotics: Ensure you continue taking in adequate amounts of fiber, especially brightly colored vegetables and fruits, while on antibiotics and after completing antibiotics. This supports the growth of beneficial bacteria.
Avoid Antacids
Antacids and PPIs (proton pump inhibitors) are used to treat heartburn. They work by reducing the amount of stomach acid that is produced or neutralizing the acid. The thought is that there is too much acid, resulting in the reflux and heartburn, however, in more situations than not, heartburn is related to too little stomach acid. While antacids and PPIs will resolve symptoms, they don't get at the root cause, and ultimately negatively impact the microbiome and overall health.
Stomach acid serves many roles. It is involved in protein metabolism, mineral and vitamin B12 absorption, activation of digestive enzymes, and it acts as the first line of defense against harmful microorganisms that may enter the digestive tract from food. Without stomach acid, food is poorly digested and both beneficial and harmful bacteria may overgrow, resulting in dysbiosis and harmful imbalances. Talk to a doctor if you think you need a PPI or antacid, because there may be another solution!
Supplements
When it comes to supplements, the decision should based on individual symptoms and dysbiosis patterns (usually discovered via comprehensive stool analysis). Sometimes supplements are used in the short-term to address the presence of pathogenic organisms, or continued in the long-term to encourage the prolonged health of beneficial bacteria, gut mucosa and intestinal lining. Common supplements used for microbiome and digestive health:
Prebiotics: partially-hydrolyzed guar gum (PHGG), acacia fiber, pectins, inulin
Probiotics: S. boulardii, Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium
Immune Support: S. boulardii, immunoglobulins, colostrum
Gut Lining Support: glutamine, demulcent herbs (aloe, marshmallow, licorice, slippery lem, etc.)
Antimicrobials: berberine-containing herbs, olive leaf extract, neem, essential oils (the list here is huge! and varies significantly based on individual needs)
Conclusion
The gut microbiome is a cornerstone of your overall health. By supporting a diverse and balanced microbiome through proper nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress management, and mindful use of medications and supplements, you can significantly improve your digestive health and reduce the risk of many chronic diseases. Remember, small changes in your daily routine can lead to significant improvements in your gut health.
If you're looking for personalized guidance on how to balance your microbiome, consider booking a consultation with a naturopathic doctor who specializes in digestive health. If you have questions or need personalized guidance, don’t hesitate to reach out. Together, we can create a plan tailored to your unique needs, helping you achieve optimal health from the inside out. Let’s work together to find what’s best for you!
Disclaimer
The information provided in this blog and throughout the website is intended for educational purposes only and should not be considered, or used as a substitute for, medical advice. The content is not meant to diagnose, treat, or cure any medical condition. This blog does not constitute the practice of any medical, nursing or other professional health care advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider before making any changes to your health regimen or starting new treatments, and never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking care because of something that you have read on this blog, website or in any linked materials. Your individual needs and circumstances should be evaluated by a medical professional to ensure safe and appropriate care. If you are experiencing a medical emergency, please call 911 or call for emergency medical help on the nearest telephone immediately.
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