Your gut can tell you a lot about your overall health.
Your gut is a complex system in your body. It’s proven that your gut health is linked to your mental health, mood, and immune system. Poor gut health can lead to cancer, autoimmune diseases, skin conditions, and many other illnesses.
There’s a lot going on in there. Your gut microbiome has hundreds of bacteria, both harmful and helpful, inside of it. Obviously, it’s important for your gut health to have a favorable ratio of good bacteria to the bad stuff. You can usually tell when something’s gone wrong, however.
In this post, we’re going to look at a few of the clearest signs that it’s time for a gut detox and what you can do to improve your gut health to keep yourself feeling fit in the future. Let’s not keep your gut waiting any longer.
7 Signs You Need a Gut Detox
Keeping a healthy gut is harder than it might sound. In this article from YEG Fitness, you can see why it’s necessary to do so. Luckily, your gut won’t wait long to let you know that something’s up.
The signs that you need a detox can range from something like skin irritation to autoimmune conditions, to sleep struggles and unexplained fatigue. We’ll tell you how to take better care of yourself later, but now let’s look at 7 ways your gut will tell you it needs a detox.
1. Getting Sick Too Much
Most of the immune system is in the gastrointestinal tract, so if your gut is unhealthy, then one of the first things you’ll notice will be frequent illnesses. This is in direct relation to the bacteria in your gut microbiome.
An unhealthy gut will increase inflammation, which leads to a malfunctioning immune system. If you want the illness-fighting antibodies in your immune system to work properly, you need a healthy gut.
2. Feeling Overly Depressed or Anxious
It’s well-documented that stress, depression, and anxiety are all linked to gut health. We can quite clearly see the results that these mental issues can have on the gut, but it can work the other way around as well.
Your microbiome can have an effect on neurotransmitters, which greatly impact the way your brain works. When things in the gut aren’t working quite right, you’ll feel it in your thought processes.
3. Digestion Problems
We’ve all had that bloated feeling before. Usually, it’s after a large meal or too many drinks. Ongoing bloating is a sign of an unhealthy amount of gas in the intestines.
This basically means that your intestines are having a bit of trouble processing certain types of food, like protein or carbs. When your body can’t break down these things, it can lead to fermentation and excess gas; hence, bloating.
Constant bloating can be a sign of bigger problems underneath the surface, so make sure to contact a medical professional if this is an ongoing problem.
Other digestion problems will manifest themselves in the form of constipation, diarrhea, or heartburn. A healthy gut won’t have too many issues with the processing of foods.
4. Sugar Cravings
If you’ve got a high-sugar diet, then you’re constantly feeding the bad bacteria and decreasing the number of good bacteria in your gut. When this happens, bad bacteria will give you sugar cravings. Giving in to these cravings can cause more and more problems.
5. Weight Fluctuations
If you’re gaining and losing weight without changing your diet or exercise regimen, it’s likely a sign that your gut health isn’t good. Poor gut health can lead to an imbalance of bacteria, which can then lead to an inability to absorb nutrients, store fat, and regulate blood sugar.
Weight loss could mean that there’s an overgrowth of bacteria in your intestines, while weight gain might mean that your body is resisting insulin.
6. Can’t Sleep
Trouble sleeping is a sign of many-a-health-problem, but it certainly could mean that something’s wrong in your gut. A lot of your serotonin is produced in the gut, so when there’s a disturbance in the production of serotonin, it can lead to insomnia or at least poor sleep.
When you aren’t sleeping well for nights on end, you get more and more fatigued. Lack of sleep is the cause of a litany of health issues, like anxiety, depression, diabetes, heart issues, and can lead to cancer.
7. Food Sensitivity
Sensitivity to foods that you’re used to eating somewhat frequently is your gut telling you that it needs a detox. This is a result of the difficulty that your body is having digesting these trigger foods. Again, it’s caused by poor bacteria quality in the gut and will lead to bloating, abdominal pain, gas, and nausea.
How to Improve Gut Health
There are so many things that you can do to improve your gut health and put an end to the symptoms that we just talked about. First, you need to consider your diet.
What you put in your body on a regular basis has an immense effect on how your gut will feel. Try eating high-fiber foods like legumes, oats, beans, bananas, berries, and asparagus to improve your gut health.
Don’t stop there, though. Try inserting more fermented foods into your diet as well. Things like kimchi, yogurt, kombucha, kefir, and tempeh are all great sources of probiotics, which are fantastic for your gut health.
Besides changing up your diet, you need to also improve your lifestyle in order to improve your gut health. Stress stemming from mental health issues has huge implications for your gut, so doing relaxing activities like meditation, yoga, and walking can lower stress and ease tension on your gut.
Getting a good amount of sleep will go a long way to improving your overall health, but especially your gut health. It’s a vicious cycle since your gut health can impact your sleep. Try to get at least 7-8 hours of good sleep per night. If you have too much trouble sleeping, see a doctor and find out what you can do.
Get Healthy Now
When your gut is healthy, you’ll feel healthier and happier. Your stress levels will lower and you’ll be able to sleep better and feel more confident about yourself. If you think you need to do a proper gut detox, check out one of the many detox guides on our website.
It’s never too late to start feeling good, so get healthy today.