A balanced and diverse microbiome in your gut creates a favourable environment for almost every other system in your body. In contrast, an unbalanced gut can affect your metabolism and mood. The quality of your gut is greatly affected by what you eat. Consuming probiotic supplements and consuming foods that contain good bacteria is essential to a healthy gut. The gut in your body is home to over 100 million bacteria, also known as gut flora.

You cannot overstate how important healthy gut bacteria are for your health. Many factors, including diet, lifestyle, and environmental factors, can adversely affect your gut bacteria. Known as dysbiosis, this occurs when there is an imbalance in gut bacteria between harmful and friendly bacteria. Several conditions, such as insulin resistance, weight gain, inflammation, obesity, inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer, are associated with both dysbiosis and reduced diversity of gut bacteria. Therefore, it’s essential to maintain a healthy and abundant gut microbiome.

The microbiome of your gut – also known as your microbiome – is directly influenced by what you eat. Chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer can be helped by a healthy gut, as well as reducing inflammation, maintaining a healthy brain and maintaining healthy body weight.

Lack of Prebiotics in the Diet

Prebiotics are fibres that pass through the body undigested and influence the growth and activity of friendly bacteria in the gut. They are usually found in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Diets deficient in these probiotics may be harmful to your digestive health. In addition, prebiotic fibre supplements promote the production of short-chain fatty acids, the primary nutrients for colon cells. By being absorbed into the blood, they support metabolic health, improve digestion, reduce inflammation, and reduce the risk of colorectal cancer.

Artificial sweeteners

Researchers have found that artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, saccharin and sucralose, which have zero calories and no sugar, negatively affect the microflora in the gut. Furthermore, studies have shown that these altered microbiomes may contribute to conditions like glucose intolerance.

Processed and Refined Foods

One of the best things you can do for your gut and health is to limit highly processed foods loaded with additives and salt. I wouldn’t go as far as to suggest you cut certain foods out of your diet entirely. “Processed foods” are hard to study as a group because each food has its ingredients. But, the most important problem with processed and refined foods is the lack of diversity and fibre. Your microbiome thrives on fibre and polyphenols from colourful fruits, vegetables, and whole grains since processed foods contain added sugars, salt, artificial sweeteners, additives, and preservatives.

Alcohol

However, research on the effects of moderate alcohol consumption on gut bacteria and how the polyphenols in red wine interact with the gut is lacking. Studies have found that alcoholism alters the intestinal microbiota. Moderation is the key for anyone who enjoys drinking, which is one drink for women and two for men daily.

Antibiotic Use

During the past decades, antibiotics have saved millions of lives by either killing bacteria or preventing them from multiplying. They are commonly used to treat infections and diseases caused by bacteria, such as urinary tract infections and strep throat. Antibiotics have the drawback of affecting good and bad bacteria. Even a single antibiotic course can damage the gut flora and change its composition. Antibiotics kill Bifidobacteria and Lactobacilli, but harmful organisms like Clostridium can increase.

Short-term use of antibiotics can adversely affect the diversity and composition of the gut flora, resulting in long-term negative consequences that may last up to two years.

Farmed Fish

Farmed fish and wild fish taste and are different. One major difference in why farmed fish can be bad for your gut is that antibiotics are used in aquaculture. Farmed fish are fed large amounts of antibiotics, and evidence indicates that they can pass these antibiotics on to consumers when they eat them. Having an unhealthy balance of bacteria in your stomach results from any antibiotic because it kills both the good and the bad bacteria.

Cigarette Smoking

Smoking causes harm to nearly every part and organ in the body and can lead to heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and other illnesses. Tobacco smoke contains thousands of chemicals, 70 of which are cancer-causing. Inflammatory bowel disease is a disease characterized by ongoing inflammation of the digestive tract, and cigarette smoking is one of the primary environmental causes of that inflammation. Smokers are also twice as likely to develop Crohn’s disease – a kind of intestinal inflammation – as non-smokers.

Gut bacteria are important for your health and are key to digestive problems such as constipation. Poor sleep quality, alcohol consumption, and inactivity can affect gut bacteria. Disruption to them has been associated with a number of health problems. Nutriplus Gut Health, a probiotic supplement, is formulated with Advance Hybrid Culture, a proprietary formulation that increases probiotic strains’ efficacy and viability.

It provides five species of beneficial bacteria which help maintain healthy intestinal flora. In AHCTM, the microbes are dormant and only activate once they reach the stomach. The unique strains can survive through the digestive tract and remain active until the stomach. This guarantees the maximum benefits from the microbes. The best way to maintain a healthy gut flora is by leading an active lifestyle, reducing your stress levels, and eating various whole foods. Keep your critters happy and your chronic disease risk low by eating moderate amounts of processed foods and limiting salt, sugar, artificial sweeteners, alcohol and added sugars.