Your gut microbiome is essential. There is a lot of research now showing that changes in the gut microbiome can be linked to conditions like depression, mood disorders, diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease, to name a few. Therefore, knowing what could be harming your gut bacteria is important.
Stress
Chronic stress can make increased changes to your gut microbiome. Even short-term stressors like exams may decrease beneficial gut bacteria levels. Stress can change your gut bacteria through a variety of mechanisms. When stressed, you do not secrete adequate hydrochloric acid to break your food down, decreasing nutrient availability to make neurotransmitters stabilise mood. Stress may cause some individuals to eat poorly, increase sugars and fatty foods that feed bad bacteria, and lower healthy foods like those rich in fibre to feed good bacteria. Dietary intervention focusing on increasing fibrous foods may also decrease perceived stress by promoting growth of beneficial bacteria. 1
Low Dietary Diversity
Eating a variety of foods is vital as some foods support the growth of certain strains of bacteria over others. Low diversity can produce an imbalance of gut bacteria. Increasing diversity with whole foods such as fruit, vegetables, and whole grains can increase microbial diversity. Aiming to eat a rainbow diet with different foods daily can help that.
Lack of Prebiotic Foods
Prebiotic foods are essential as fuel for healthy gut bacteria. Foods high in prebiotics are leek, artichoke, bananas, onion, lentils, garlic, oats, apples, chickpeas, beans, almonds and more. A lack of these foods in the diet can again cause an imbalance of gut bacteria, leaving you more susceptible to the harmful effects of antibiotics, infection or medication use. Increasing these foods aids the growth and balance of beneficial bacteria.
Use of Medications
The use of medications can change your microbial balance. Common medications like proton-pump inhibitors used for reflux reduce the stomach acid that usually kills off any harmful bacteria coming in through food, which can increase the risk of bacterial infections and increase oral bacteria.
Antibiotic Use
Antibiotics are overprescribed in Australia, causing antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. There are times when antibiotics are needed. Yet broad-spectrum antibiotics kill off beneficial bacterial strains and cause low diversity in our gut bacteria. Antibiotics' effect on the gut microbiome can take months or years to correct.
Overuse of Alcohol
Alcohol can change the balance of bacteria in your gut by providing fuel for bad bacteria and increasing the toxic load in the gut. Alcohol and its breakdown products can also cause inflammation in the gut, in turn causing changes to gut bacteria and triggering a leaky gut. A leaky gut can then cause more inflammation and lead to food intolerances.
Poor Sleep
The relationship between sleep and the microbiome is bi-directional. Microbiome diversity has been linked to having longer sleep and better sleep efficiency. Sleep deprivation depletes the number of beneficial bacteria and increases the number of harmful bacteria linked to illness and disease. 2 A good night's sleep may improve your microbiome and overall health.
Sedentary Lifestyle
Exercise is indeed good for everything, including our gut microbiome! Studies have shown that moderate to high-intensity exercise of 30-90 minutes at least three times weekly causes positive changes to the microbiome in healthy individuals. Aerobic exercise can change the microbiome in just two weeks. Combining both aerobic and resistance training may improve the microbiome more. However, the most significant changes in diversity are seen with high-intensity exercise. 3
1. Berding, K., Bastiaanssen, T.F.S., Moloney, G.M. et al. Feed your microbes to deal with stress: a psychobiotic diet impacts microbial stability and perceived stress in a healthy adult population. Mol Psychiatry. 2023 28, 601–610. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-022-01817-y
2. Sun J, Fang D, Wang Z, et al. Sleep Deprivation and Gut Microbiota Dysbiosis: Current Understandings and Implications. Int J Mol Sci. 2023 May 31;24(11):9603. doi: 10.3390/ijms24119603.
3. Boytar AN, Skinner TL, Wallen RE, et al. The Effect of Exercise Prescription on the Human Gut Microbiota and Comparison between Clinical and Apparently Healthy Populations: A Systematic Review. Nutrients. 2023 Mar 22;15(6):1534. doi: 10.3390/nu15061534.
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