Do you suffer from any of the following common symptoms? Bloating, gas, diarrhea, abdominal pain, nausea, fatigue, cramping, mouth sores, poor appetite, weight loss, headaches, joint pain, rashes, depression, trouble focusing, anxiety, dark circles under eyes, insomnia – your questionnaire results concludes you may have gut inflammation. Try giving your body a rest from some of these high inflammation foods and fuel by putting the bliSsh recipes into your diet and see how you feel. What do you have to lose, except maybe some bloat, diarrhea, fatigue, cramping, rashes, headaches, and joint pain!?
Gut inflammation is caused when something outside the safeguard layer of your gut comes into contact with your delicate gut lining. This can happen due to diet, lifestyle, or genetics. Gluten and grains are the most common dietary triggers, but other issues can arise from infection of a parasite, bacterial overgrowth, or yeast, which can be contributing to SIBO or SIFO.
Anti-Inflammatory Foods for Gut Health
Foods believed to beat inflammation include yellow veggies, brown rice and oatmeal, nuts, salmon, strawberries, and other fruits, mustard, green veggies, and antioxidant-rich foods. Every food you eat gives you a choice of fighting inflammation, but start by removing the fast food and processed food first that bring nothing but a bombarding of negative chemicals into your microbiome. Find a good reason to eat good food, such as eating well to nourish yourself rather than eating poorly to fill your pride’s infatuation to eat from a certain network’s website. Your digestive system is made to handle unpleasant foods for a brief period of time, and then it’s designed to recover properly with nutrient-rich food that restores good microbes. Symbiosis in your tummy’s chorus of good food is what paves the way for getting through life’s challenges.
Inflammation of the gut lining can be due to a number of reasons like bacterial or viral infections, drugs, stress, or immune dysfunction. Diet plays a vital role in the management of inflammation. There are a whole lot of foods that can help reduce inflammation in the gut. The best way to stop inflammation is before it happens, and the fastest way to stop it once it begins is by making immediate changes to your diet and lifestyle. Pain, heartburn, and forgetfulness are signals that your gut may be inflamed, and within two hours your body could have massive surges of the stress hormone cortisol and the inflammation hormone histamine.
Fruits and Vegetables
Fiber, known as insoluble fiber, these vegetables and fruits sweep through your digestive system and brush out toxins. Soluble fiber ferments in the gut and provides food for the normal “good” bacteria in your gut and helps maintain a proper pH. These important fermenting bacteria break down the fiber and supply fuel to your cells. Scientists have discovered that short-chain fatty acids, which the bacteria produce, have a sweeping effect on the body; they reduce liver inflammation, aid in weight loss, and have other positive effects on metabolism. Eat these foods every day, try a variety of colors and types, and eat them fresh, raw, and organic.
Your dietitian will advise you to eat more fruits and vegetables, and she will have a solid scientific reason for doing so. These are the wonder foods that do so many great things for you. Fruits and vegetables are loaded with vitamins, minerals, fiber, antioxidants, and phytochemicals that work in complex ways to bring healing and good health to your entire body. Each one carries its own unique health-promoting specialty.
Healthy Fats
Healthy fats are important to help vitamins and minerals in other foods get absorbed by the body, he said. When including these plant-based sources of healthy fats in your diet, be sure to aim for whole food options like raw almonds, raw flaxseed oil, and olives. If the nuts or seeds are coated in sugar and chemical preservatives, then you are not consuming anti-inflammatory foods.
Including healthy fats in your diet and reducing overall fat can help stop or reduce inflammation in the gut lining, Vogt explained. In fact, fatty acids are thought to help regulate intestinal inflammation. To do this, include sources of healthy fats like omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids. In addition to fish, Vogt likes plant-based sources of fatty acids like nuts, seeds, avocados, and extra virgin olive oil. Foods high in saturated fats like bacon, sausage, and margarine can increase inflammation in the gut.
Probiotic-Rich Foods
Your gut is better at processing foods when it can cycle between having a good ratio of good bacteria and bad bacteria. In many cases, increasing the amount of probiotic-rich foods you eat can promote this balance by increasing the good bacteria in your system. This can make it easier to pull energy from the foods you eat and can protect you from a number of gut-related issues like functional bowel disorders, food allergies, obesity, and inflammation of the gut. If you are feeling bloated or are having some unexplained GI issues, adding a few probiotic-rich foods to your diet could help soothe the irritation and can prevent these issues from happening in the future.
Probiotic-rich foods can be helpful in promoting a healthy gut and can help reduce inflammation. Many people take a probiotic supplement to increase the good bacteria in their digestive system, but there are also plenty of foods that contain probiotics including yogurt, kefir, tempeh, kombucha, kimchi, miso, and traditional buttermilk. Just like with anti-inflammatory foods, not everyone is going to react the same way to each food and what helps reduce inflammation in one person may not work the same way for someone else. The best way to find out how your body will respond to these foods is by slowly adding them into your diet to see if they help support a healthy gut.
Whole Grains
Dietary Fiber. There are two types of dietary fiber: soluble and insoluble, and both are good for the gut and help to reduce inflammation. Soluble fiber is found in many plant-based foods, including vegetables, fruits, and grains. Just like whole grains, dietary fiber increases the production of short-chain fatty acids, reducing inflammation in the gut. Soluble fiber is also known to help balance the gut microbiota and has a preventative effect on diarrhea, inflammatory bowel disease (such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis), and colorectal cancer.
Whole grains such as rye, wheat, barley, and oats are packed full of fiber, protein, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Whole grains have been proven to increase the production of short-chain fatty acids by the gut microbiota, which has anti-inflammatory effects. This can reduce inflammatory diseases and protect the gut barrier. Whole grains are particularly beneficial in people suffering from metabolic syndrome and obesity.
Foods to Avoid for Gut Health
These are individuals who react adversely to different foods. This can be anything from wheat, other bread, beans, some of the greens, the whole variety of things. We will often test them for food allergies or sensitivities to see if these are the things that are driving their symptoms. And somatrophs irritable bowel symptoms can be improved by identifying the foods that cause bloating and gas and simply not eating them. Eating non-absorbable carbohydrates can help with bloating and gas. These are carbohydrates like garlic, beans and legumes, leeks and onions, artichokes, or fruits like plums, watermelon, nectarine, and grapefruit, and then bananas. They feed the bacteria in your gut and can improve gas and bloating.
There’s no single food or diet that will actively improve your gut health. Instead, it’s recommended to eat a broad range of foods rich in vitamins and minerals. In general, go for a diet high in vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and whole grains for a diverse range of fiber. Make sure to include quality proteins like red meat and chicken, fish, eggs, and probiotics. Include fermented foods for gut diversity. Both prebiotics and probiotics, the good bacteria in the gut, have been linked to improved digestion and absorption of nutrients, renewal and repair of gut cells, immune health, and reduction of inflammation in the body.
Meal Planning for Gut Inflammation Reduction
Given that there is a paucity of research on reducing inflammation directly to find an optimal diet for people with IBD, it seems one of the strategies would be to add other triggers to the identification of personal triggers that are widely accepted, and that are generally tested for. For each food, meal, and mix of things consumed, people can track their personal experience of pain with lesser exacerbation after incidents of one of the triggers for the disease. With this added information, one can find a diet that is meant to reduce, not increase gut inflammation – subtracting sugars taken in general or as fasting, that food with coconut oil, food on fasting, or fasting. To this point, IBD sufferers should follow all the usual rules for a healthy diet such as including organic, fresh, homemade meals, and avoiding fast food, processed and junk food. Opting for fresh fruit and vegetables from the “Clean Fifteen” as often as possible can also be helpful.
It’s clear that inflammatory bowel disease both leads to inflammation and is also exacerbated by it. Given the role food plays in these, it is not surprising that people with IBD would like to know the foods they should eat to reduce gut inflammation. As inflammation is a major factor in many diseases, so much has been written on this topic. Unfortunately, most of this writing surrounds the notion of reducing gut inflammation rather than diets to reduce it. In general, this seems to be more about weight loss diets for inflammation reduction than those that should really be optimal for inflammatory bowel disease diets.
If you are actively trying to heal your gut, then it is a good idea to avoid foods that may contribute to inflammation. Gut irritants include caffeine, which causes the stomach to produce more acid, and artificial sweeteners, emulsifiers, and thickeners, as these may have a negative impact on the essential gut bacteria. Foods that contain sugar can promote the growth of unfriendly bacteria and disrupt your balance of good and bad bacteria. Experts recommend a diet that is free from processed foods and uses plant-based foods, fruits, and vegetables to support good bacteria and a healthy gut lining. Try to minimize your intake of cereals and grains. These can be difficult to digest and contain compounds such as gluten, lectins, and phytates, which can sometimes exacerbate inflammation. They can go on to damage the gut lining and promote further inflammation in some people. Dairy products have a tendency to cause symptoms or worsen them in those with lactose sensitivity or lactose intolerance, and these patients should avoid them. High amounts of fats can alter the makeup of the gut bacteria and produce undesirable by-products if consumed to excess in the long term. Finally, avoid consuming alcohol excessively as it raises your risk of harming your gut.
Ginger: A warming herb with powerful anti-nausea properties, ginger can also help to soothe and calm the digestive system and suppress inflammation in the gut.
Nuts: As long as you are not allergic to nuts, then these fatty plant foods are beneficial against inflammation due to their high levels of fiber, antioxidants, and healthy fats.
Berries: They are full of antioxidants, which help to protect against inflammation. Particularly blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries are known for their high levels of anthocyanins.
Coconut oil: A good source of medium-chain triglycerides, these fats are less likely to cause inflammation than other fats and can also be beneficial for the cells lining the gut.
Bone broth: It contains collagen, gelatin, and the anti-inflammatory amino acids glycine and glutamine, which are capable of healing the gut lining and inhibiting inflammation.