Your gut health should never be ignored. It not only can affect areas of your life like your mental and cognitive health, but recent studies have also found that it can affect things like your blood pressure levels.
Pursuing a healthy gut is possible, but it may require some alterations to your daily diet. For example, eating a lot of processed foods and drinking heavy amounts of alcohol have been known to alter your gut microbiome in a negative way.
So when it comes to finding the right ways to eat for a healthy gut, how do you know what to choose? To find out, we asked some experts about their recommendations for eating habits that are good for your gut health. Read on, and for more on how to eat healthy, don’t miss 7 Healthiest Foods to Eat Right Now.
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Beans and legumes are great additions to your diet when you want a healthy gut because according to Laura M. Ali, RDN, a culinary nutritionist based in Pittsburgh, they act as prebiotics and provide food for the probiotics inside your gut.
“Chickpeas, black beans, kidney beans, and lentils are excellent sources of fiber that work throughout your gastrointestinal tract and help with digestion by working together with the probiotics,” says Ali.
When you’re not getting enough fiber in your daily diet, you may experience things like bloating, increased hunger, and stomach discomfort. This may mean it’s time to implement more legumes or beans into your meals.
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Along with beans, Ali highly suggests incorporating more berries into your diet as well.
“Not only are they a good source of fiber, but they are loaded with antioxidants and vitamin C, which helps feed those healthy bacteria and reduces inflammation in our GI tract. You can mix them up with some Kefir in a smoothie for breakfast and you are off to a great start for the day,” says Ali.
RELATED: Secret Effects of Eating Blueberries, Says Science
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According to our experts, incorporating fermented foods into your diet can significantly help your gut health. “You should include one fermented food in your diet every day, which can be plain whole milk yogurt, miso, or a fermented vegetable such as real sauerkraut,” says Marie Ruggles, MS, RD, author of the award-winning book, Optimize Your Immune System: Create Health & Resilience with a Kitchen Pharmacy.
One 2021 study recently found that a diet high in fermented foods, like yogurt and kimchi, increases microbiome diversity, lowers inflammation, and improves immune response.
RELATED: What Happens To Your Body When You Eat Fermented Foods
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Believe it or not, your gut can actually be negatively impacted by eating too much of the same foods and not allowing food diversity into your meals. Research shows that the wider the range of plants that we eat, the more diverse our gut bacteria will …….
Source: https://www.eatthis.com/best-eating-habits-for-gut-health/