I take the health of my gut seriously. If you remember from my gut-brain blog post, a healthy gut is a crucial step in ensuring a healthy, well functioning brain. If I want my mental performance to be optimized daily, I need to make sure I’m supporting my gut health, and stocking my kitchen with foods that help me do so!
Gut health is a hot topic these days (for good reason, I should add), but there is still plenty of confusion around how to actually achieve it. Should we buy and take expensive probiotic supplements? (Hint: no. Everyone’s gut environment is as unique as their fingerprint, so why would we all take the same pill hoping to support our guts?). What about expensive protein powders that say “contains probiotics and prebiotics”? Or those supplements you can’t even pronounce sitting on the shelf at the grocery store? The truth is, for most people, these supplements won’t work. If you have chronic gut issues, like SIBO, IBS, diverticulitis, or other painful conditions, supplementing may be needed (speak with your healthcare provider) but only in addition to an overall gut healthy diet. Everyone can benefit from adding in foods that support their gut health, and subtracting foods that might wreak havoc on your guts (a blog post topic for another day). Here are some of my favorite foods that I keep stocked in my kitchen all the time to make sure my gut is healthy, and my brain is working well.
- Grass-Fed Greek Yogurt: yogurt containing live active cultures is a great source of probiotics. These are live bacteria (I know, it sounds gross…) that, once consumed, go down and repopulate your microbiome with beneficial bacteria. If you remember from my gut-brain blog post, the gut is home to trillions of microorganisms that can include both good bacteria that provide us with a ton of benefits, or pathogenic bacteria that can do some damage to our guts and our overall health. If the amount of pathogenic bacteria start to become greater than the population of beneficial bacteria, it is said we are in a state of dysbiosis (Oriach et al., 2016). This can cause our gut linings to become “leaky”, can cause chronic inflammation, and is linked to several diseases including mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, “brain fog” and even neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s (Cenit, Sanz, & Codoner-French, 2017). Sources of probiotics help to repopulate the good bacteria in our guts, making it more likely to stay balanced and keep our gut linings strong. Yogurt is my favorite source of probiotics, but you can also try other fermented foods such as kimchi, sauerkraut, kefir, or kombucha.
- Onions and Garlic: not only do these make a tasty addition to any dish, they are also great foods for overall gut health! Onions and garlic are vegetables that are high in what’s considered prebiotic fiber. Prebiotics are food for the good bacteria living in your gut. They help the beneficial bacteria grow and help them to produce substances that help our brains and bodies function better (learn more about these substances in my gut-brain blog post). Prebiotics help to ensure your gut is an environment that the beneficial bacteria want to live in. If you’re not an onion and garlic person (how could you not be?! But, I get it…) you can also find prebiotics in organic apples, asparagus, flaxseed, or Jerusalem artichokes (all foods that can be regularly found in my kitchen, depending on the season).
- Organic Mixed Berries, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, and Mixed Nuts: OK, these foods aren’t typically thought of as similar (even though they pair very well in a nice salad!), but the truth is they have several compounds in common! All of these foods are rich sources of polyphenols. Polyphenols are naturally occurring micronutrients that can be found in plant foods. Plants develop polyphenols as a protection from getting eaten. Although as humans we don’t often have to worry about getting eaten, we too can benefit from the protective effects that polyphenols provide-especially as it relates to the gut. Polyphenols have been shown to reduce dysbiosis (see above), restore the gut lining in those who suffer from leaky gut, and are associated with lower levels of zonulin, an inflammatory protein that causes leaky gut (Peron et al., 2021). There are several different types of polyphenols, and they can be found in a wide variety of foods. My best advice? Look for colorful plant foods, they are almost sure to have a high amount of polyphenols!
Improving your gut health, your mental performance, and your overall well-being begins with stocking your kitchen with the right kinds of foods. Now that you know some of my favorite gut-friendly foods, you can make your grocery list accordingly! To learn more about how the health of your gut impacts your brain and mental performance, check out my gut-brain blog post here. If you want to see how your gut may be impacting your mental performance, and how we can work together to start improving both, sign up for a free 30 minute coaching session with me here.
As always, eat well, think well!
References
Cenit, M. C., Sanz, Y., & Codoñer-Franch, P. (2017). Influence of gut microbiota on neuropsychiatric disorders. World Journal of Gastroenterology, 23(30), 5486. https://doi.org/10.3748/wjg.v23.i30.5486
Oriach, C. S., Robertson, R. C., Stanton, C., Cryan, J. F., & Dinan, T. G. (2016). Food for thought: The role of nutrition in the microbiota-gut–brain axis. Clinical Nutrition Experimental, 6, 25–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yclnex.2016.01.003
Peron, G., Gargari, G., Meroño, T., Miñarro, A., Lozano, E. V., Escuder, P. C., González-Domínguez, R., Hidalgo-Liberona, N., del Bo’, C., Bernardi, S., Kroon, P. A., Carrieri, B., Cherubini, A., Riso, P., Guglielmetti, S., & Andrés-Lacueva, C. (2021b). Crosstalk among intestinal barrier, gut microbiota and serum metabolome after a polyphenol-rich diet in older subjects with “leaky gut”: The MaPLE trial. Clinical Nutrition, 40(10), 5288–5297. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clnu.2021.08.027