Supporting a Healthy Gut for Mental Health
Anxiety is often misunderstood, dismissed with the simplistic advice to just meditate, breathe and take a walk. But for many, anxiety isn't just a mental struggle—it's intricately linked to gut health.
Anxiety runs deep, affecting the gut in a bidirectional relationship where stress damages the gut, while a damaged gut exacerbates anxiety, depression, and stress vulnerability.
This creates a vicious loop that's challenging to escape. Interestingly, many mood disorders are linked to gut issues, from anxiety and depression to ADHD and OCD, highlighting the profound connection between the gut and mental health.
In this blog post, I'll share my top strategies for supporting gut health, techniques that have proven effective for both my clients and myself in fostering balanced moods and optimal digestion. By understanding and addressing the gut-brain connection, you can take meaningful steps towards improving your mental and physical health.
- Beginners Guide to Gut Healing -
Eat A Whole Foods Diet
The basics of healing any imbalances in the body is to transition to a diet that’s primarily made up of whole foods, and organic when possible. This means eating foods as close to their natural form as possible, primarily fresh vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, herbs, spices, with some wild fish, and pasture raised, grass fed meat and eggs. By eating this way you avoid most of the harmful ingredients that are found abundantly in processed foods. Eating a diet revolving around whole foods also naturally increases fiber intake — more on this in a moment!
Focus on a Diversity of Plant Foods
The foods we eat determines the bacteria in our gut, and what we want is diversity of good bacteria because different strains have different influences on our health, including mood. If all you ate was avocados all day, then all you’d have a gut full of avocado loving bacteria. This bacteria I’m sure is beneficial, but does not create health alone. Our microbiome is like an ecosystem, similar to a rainforest.
In one study, it was found that those with the healthiest guts ate more than 30 different plants a week. This isn’t a magic number, you could have 27 plants of 32 plants, the more the merrier, but the point is plant diversity is dramatically beneficial to our microbiome, and thus our health and our mood.
When cooking, think where you can add in more plants. Herbs and spices count! So maybe you up level a pasta >> lentil pasta with a tomato sauce and a melody of sautéed vegetables like garlic, onions, zucchini, mushrooms and broccoli. Add a handful of basil and some hemp seeds, and you’ve got 9 plants in a single meal. Getting 30 into the week doesn’t seem so impossible now does it?
If you get gas and bloating from vegetables, focus on cooked vegetables while the gut heals. When vegetables are cooked, they are far easier to digest. When I was rehabbing my gut, I didn’t have raw vegetables for at least 6 months, with exception to some tender greens in smoothies.
Avoid Gut Harming Foods
There are a long lists of foods that are damaging to the gut, but those that are unquestionably damaging are sugar, artificial sweeteners, and gums like carrageenan, guar gum, and xantham gum.
Other foods that are harmful are those that are inflammatory, but keep in mind that what is inflammatory to one person may not be inflammatory to everyone. The top inflammatory foods are gluten, dairy, soy, corn, sugar, and commercial meats.
Discover Your Food Sensitivities
Bioindividuality baby. Each of us have foods that we are more sensitive to, and knowing which aren’t doing your body any favors is going to help heal your gut. Common food sensitivities are those on the inflammatory list above, plus eggs, legumes, nuts and seeds.
An elimination diet can be helpful in determining what you are sensitive to. This is where you eliminate the foods for 2-3 weeks, and then slowly add one in at a time, and see if you react in any way such as bloating, poor mood or brain fog. If you do, well, it’s not a friend to your gut and should be avoided. Another way to determine your sensitivities is through testing.
This is not to create a fear around food — that will make matters much worse — but rather to bring awareness to the fact that certain foods can contribute to digestive issues. It can be confusing because many food sensitivities are actually healthy foods, like eggs, but food sensitivities due to digestive issues is often temporary. The point of (temporary) elimination is to help the gut heal, and then at that point reintroduce the healthful foods if tolerated.
Rebalance with Probiotics
Probiotics are live microorganisms (good bacteria) that live in the gut and influence gut health and function by preventing the proliferation of harmful bacteria. When there’s an imbalance between good and bad bacteria int he gut, this creates what is called gut dysbiosis.
My favorite probiotics are SBO probiotics. SBO stands for “soil-based organisms,” which are naturally occurring probiotic strains found in the soil. SBO probiotics have a higher survivability rate than traditional probiotics, so I’ve found them to be far more effective. They are also usually well tolerated by those that have digest sensitivities which is very important as some probiotics can exacerbate a digestive issue — add fuel to the fire if you will.
The brand I love and trust is Just Thrive. If you want to ty them out I’ve got a code for you: use BLEUE for 15% off.
Get your Fiber
We’ve been hearing this our entire life yet essentially essentially everyone in the modern world has an inadequate intake of fiber. But if you follow #2 you’ll be good!
A diverse plant rich diet is going to give you a whole lot of fiber, both insoluble and soluble which are the two basic types of food fiber.
Soluble fiber provides food for the good bacteria in our guts, so that they can hang around a while. If you just take probiotics and don’t feed them, then they won’t survive long term. Soluable fiber is what we also call prebitoic fiber.
Insoluable fiber is the fiber that promotes healthy elimination. This is essential to gut health. We don’t want anything sitting around in us too long, which allows toxins, hormones and other compounds to be reabsorbed into our body.
Plant foods generally contain both, but in different ratios from plant to plant.
If you’re new to adding an abundance of plant foods and find you feel bloated or gassy it may be because your body isn’t used to it. It’s like going into the gym for the first time and trying to use 50lb dumbbells. Dial it back, start with 8lbs and go from there.
Hydrate
Drinking enough water supports the mucosal lining of the intestines, and the balance of good bacteria. Hydration is also important for elimination.
Avoid Antibiotics and Synthetic Drugs
Sometimes we need these, but many people are on non essential antibiotics and synthetic drugs which unnecessarily damages the gut. Antibiotics wipe out good bacteria, and it’s not as simple as just taking a probiotic to reinoculate the gut. It takes time, and often there’s lasting negative changes.
Synthetic drugs including aspirin and ibuprofen can break down the gut lining. Birth control negatively alters the balance of good and bad bacteria. So choose wisely when and if you use these.
Lower Stress
Stress wreaks havoc on our gut. Not only does it dramatically impair digestion by lowering digestive enzymes and HCL (stomach acid), but it kills good bacteria in the gut which allows the bad bacteria to thrive. Often those with chronic stress will see digestive issues develop like IBS and SIBO (that was me).
Many people will often find that getting calm before a meal dramatically improves their ability to digest food. There’s a reason it’s called rest and DIGEST.
Need help lowering stress hormones? See this post on 8 simple ways to lower stress and anxiety.
Eat Dinner Before Sunset
Our GI has a bedtime too and our digestion dramatically slows down in the evening. This is why people with digestive issues see bloating, gas and acid reflux more often in the evening, even with foods they seem to tolerate perfectly well in the morning. So eating before sunset can be very effective in improving digestion.
Limiting eating to sunlight hours also naturally has us fasting for 12 hours which can be deeply beneficial to digestion. Just make sure you’re not fasting for too long — I dive into the reasons on this post.
Get Enough Sleep
Dialing in on sleep is one of the best soft interventions for any health issues, and is especially impactful for gut health. Too little sleep has some serious consequences for the gut and our stress levels. Aim for 7-8 hours of quality sleep, more if you have issues with your adrenals, thyroid or any other fatigue causing imbalances. Check out this post on 10 ways to improve sleep to get better sleep tonight.
At the end of the day, we really have to look at digestion with a detectives mindset. Is there a thyroid issue, hormone imbalances, bacterial overgrowth, food sensitivities, poor diet, or a combination? If you still have digestive issues after making dietary and lifestyle changes and want 1:1 support, reach out to work with me.
As always, this article is for informational purposes only and is not personal medical advice. Speak with your health care physician prior to following any recommendations provided. Please read full disclaimer here.