Gut health and why it’s so important: 

You can feel it in your gut when your system is running at its optimum

We’re all aware of our gut. It’s both the catch-all term often used to describe your digestive system, and more colloquially, an internal barometer of how we assess a situation. It makes sense when we say we have a “gut feeling” about something, though, as the gut and the microbiome of your gut are designed to communicate directly with your brain.  

There are obvious indicators of when “gut health” has gone wrong. It’s painful, uncomfortable, and the sickness it brings can be debilitating. This is usually caused by something going awry, like stress, poor nutrition, or even overuse of antibiotics. All of these can factor into poor gut health, destabilizing the immune system, and can cause all kinds of issues like chronic fatigue, chronic illness, and inflammation. These are usually indicated by symptoms of brain fog, diarrhea, constipation, gas, joint pain, etc.

Luckily, the path to a healthy gut doesn’t require emergency services (except maybe in certain extreme conditions). The key to balancing the microbiome of the gut comes from reducing and managing stress, eating healthy, getting regular sleep of 7-8 hours, and of course, exercise.
And while it’s important to maintain proper gut health for your overall wellbeing, a recent study found a direct link between the gut-brain pathway that regulates motivation for exercise. So, while exercise is great for balancing your gut biome, it makes sense that a healthy gut would help you to exercise. Now, it should be noted the study was conducted on mice, and the relationship may not be so direct in humans, it makes sense that if you feel well, you’re more likely to be motivated to exercise.

In truth, healing a damaged gut takes time. It isn’t unbalanced overnight and thus won’t become righted overnight. It takes time and dedication to work towards a healthy gut through a healthy lifestyle, but once we start working on eating healthy and managing stress, the rewards are plentiful towards our overall health.