1. Get Down & Dirty
Take a cue from your kids (or grandkids), get outside and get your hands dirty. Beneficial bacteria like Mycobacterium vaccae are common, harmless and live in soil and dirt. Studies on both humans and animals exposed to these bacteria have shown reduced stress, better quality of life, increased immune response, boosted brain power, elevated mood and lower levels of anxiety and depression. And the good news is, you don’t have to pay a fancy spa or invest in expensive supplements to get it. Just get out of your sanitised air-conditioned home or office and play, breathe or dig in the dirt. Even better – get a veggie garden going. The author of one of the studies, Christopher Lowry says: “A three to four leaf spinach plant has over 800 species of bacteria inside it.”
Don’t have a garden? No worries, just get to your local park, community garden or the closest walking trail. If you’re not a fan of cleaning soil from under your nails, it could be as simple as drinking from the tap. M. Vaccae can be found in many council’s water supplies too. So, ditch the fancy crystal decanter of French Alps H20 and drink some of the good stuff straight from your own kitchen sink.
2. Forget Frankenfoods
Mwah-hah-hah. You’ll recognise these baddies. They’re pre-packaged, sugar-laden, zero-fat, artificially sweetened, genetically modified, highly processed, and full of empty promises like retinol-infused (ok, maybe that’s an exaggeration) but you know what we mean. Basically, if it comes in colourful packaging and is owned by a company that has the $$$ to spend on star spokespeople and prime-time marketing, chances are it’s not real food. Use the 80/20 rule you learned in How to get Food High to judge whether or not it’s worth dedicating a portion of your plate to.
Frankenfoods tend to make up the bulk of a typical western diet – with around only 75% of the world’s food supply coming from fewer than 12 plants and five animal species. Remember, diversity is key when it comes to healthy gut, so eat real food and eat a variety of it. (Yes, it’s ok to indulge in that cheeseburger every now and then, but it shouldn’t form the basis of your diet.)
3. Just Eat Real Food
It might sound reductive and a little absurd, especially when the #JERF hashtag has been hijacked by insta-models and bloggers using it to flog things like powdered detox teas, packaged smoothies, pills and potions. But the essence of this message is still a good one – and you should be familiar with it after living the SuperLife for months now. But we’ll say it again for those all the way in the back: dedicate most of your food intake to… well, actual food!
Lean protein, vegetables, fruits, beans and legumes, quality wholegrains and dairy. Your beneficial gut bacteria thrive on a diet high in these foods and they also help to prevent the growth of disease-causing bacteria and parasites.
4. Pursue Probiotics, Prebiotics and Polyphenols
Say what? Ok, we’ll break it down for you in simple terms. Probiotics are the beneficial bacteria that live in your gut. Prebiotics are foods that those bacteria live on. Most prebiotics are indigestible fibre – like that found in plants. Your own body can’t digest it, but your trillions of bacteria thrive on it. And polyphenols are another natural substance that your bacteria also love.
Here’s another way to think about it: your gut is a garden. The probiotic bacteria are the seeds, and the prebiotics are the water and fertiliser you feed those seeds to help them grow and flourish. And polyphenols? Well, think of them as a little ray of sunshine. On top of helping your garden, the sun does loads of other good things too. And polyphenols are the same! As well as being something your gut bacteria love, they’re free-radical scavenging antioxidants which can protect against health conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease and stroke, plus they’ve also been associated with reducing the effects of aging and age-related diseases. In short, they’re #winning.
Find probiotics in:
Fermented foods like kim chi, tempeh and miso soup
Fermented drinks like kombucha and kefir
Dairy like yoghurt and buttermilk
Some fermented cheeses like Gouda, cheddar, cottage cheese, ricotta, parmesan
Foods pickled with sea salt like sauerkraut and gherkins
Find prebiotics in:
Fibrous veggies like asparagus, leek and artichoke
Bulbs like onion and garlic
Grains like barley, oats and wheat bran
Fruits like apples and bananas
Seeds and beans like flaxseeds and cocoa
Roots like konjac, chicory, burdock and jicama
Greens like dandelion and seaweed
Find polyphenols in:
Beverages like red wine, tea, coffee and cocoa
Dark berries like cherry, blackcurrant, strawberry and raspberry
Spices like cinnamon, ginger, cumin and cloves
Herbs like oregano, sage, rosemary and parsley
Nuts like pecans, hazelnuts, almonds and walnuts
Green leafy veggies like spinach, broccoli and endive
Black and green olives, and olive oils
5. Avoid Non-Essential Antibiotics
And the key word here is ‘non-essential’. Antibiotics are really helpful when they’re used correctly – they kill the harmful bacteria that cause infections and they’ve saved millions of lives. But, we tend to use them when we don’t really need to. Like when we have a cold. The drawback to antibiotics is that they don’t just kill harmful bacteria. They kill ALL bacteria – good and bad. And it’s the good bacteria like bifidobacterium and lactobacillus that help to keep baddies like clostridium, e.coli and streptococcus in check.
But here’s the biggie – after a course of antibiotics, your gut flora can be altered for up to four weeks. And it doesn’t always completely return to its pristine initial state. In fact, one study in particular showed that it could take more than 2 years for gut bacteria to return to normal.
6. Log Your Forty Winks
You already know that your body has an internal clock known as the circadian rhythm, which tells you when to sleep, when to wake and helps regulate things like body temperature, hormones and so on. But did you know that your gut follows a similar 24-hour rhythm? And disrupting this rhythm can result in negative changes to your gut.
An interesting study in 2016 compared the effects of a good night’s sleep (8.5 hours) versus several hours of sleep deprivation (4 hours per night) on beneficial gut bacteria and found a few surprising things:
1. Just two days of sleep deprivation caused subtle, but negative changes to gut flora
2. Sleep deprivation also increased the prevalence of gut bacteria associated with weight gain, obesity, type 2 diabetes and fat metabolism.
Crazy, right? Yep, catching Z’s is so powerful… even your gut loves it! So, enjoy those hours in dreamland because they’re helping your health in more ways than one.
Well, Master Fasters, this just proves that there’s always more things to learn! And we hope that’s helped to simplify the topic of gut health for you. Just eat real food, get a little dirty sometimes, avoid any antibiotics you don’t need, dose daily with probiotics and prebiotics, and sleep a little longer.