Everyday Holistic Ways to Support Gut Health
Gut health is trending. You can find an endless stream of ads touting the benefits of various compounds for healing your digestive tract. I want to share a few of the basic, fundamental recommendations, from a Naturopathic medicine perspective, that I often make to my own patients for creating a foundation of health in the gut. You can always add on the fancy trending supplements, but these basic steps are far more important.
How you eat matters
Digestion begins before the first bite of food ever reaches your mouth. It starts in your senses and in your mind. Seeing your food, smelling it, anticipating a meal, and feeling safe and in no rush—these experiences all send signals to your nervous system that it’s time to digest, and your body begins releasing digestive enzymes.
When you eat in a relaxed state, your parasympathetic nervous system—the “rest and digest” branch—is predominant. This allows for proper stomach acid production, enzyme release, bile flow, and gut motility. Eating while stressed, rushed, or distracted shifts your body into a sympathetic state, where digestion is not prioritized.
Chewing your food thoroughly is one of the most simple and powerful ways to support digestive health. Mechanical breakdown in your mouth reduces the workload on your stomach and intestines and improves nutrient absorption downstream. Eating with a relaxed abdomen, sitting comfortably, and avoiding very tight clothing around your chest or belly can also make a meaningful difference in how well food moves through your system.
Regular bowel movements are essential
A healthy gut requires regular elimination. For most people, this means at least one bowel movement per day. Some people will naturally have two to three BMs daily. Healthy bowel movements are well-formed, easy to pass, and do not require straining.
Regular bowel movements help prevent the reabsorption of toxins and inflammatory compounds and support the health of both your gut and liver. Constipation is not just uncomfortable; it contributes over time to systemic inflammation and worsened gut symptoms.
Stay tuned for an upcoming blog focused specifically on natural constipation remedies. If you’d like to receive links to new blog posts as they’re published, you can click here to add yourself to my monthly newsletter.
Hydration
Adequate hydration is foundational for gut health (especially for preventing constipation) but it’s often overlooked. Water is necessary to promote proper digestion, nutrient absorption, and stool formation. Without enough fluid, even a fiber-rich diet can lead to sluggish digestion or constipation.
Hydration doesn’t only come from plain water. Herbal teas, broths, soups, and mineral-rich fluids all contribute to keeping the gut lining healthy and digestion moving smoothly.
Dr. Bastyr’s Soup
Speaking of hydration from mineral-rich fluids…Dr. Bastyr’s soup is the Naturopathic community’s well-kept secret that I share with almost every patient.
I am often recommending this soup during cold and flu season, during a gastrointestinal illness flare, when appetite is low, or when a person is depleted and needing serious nourishment.
Dr. Bastyr’s soup is simple: a combination of broth with well-cooked vegetables—carrots, cabbage, potatoes with the skin, and celery with the tops. It’s cooked until the veggies are soft. You can eat as is, or blend into a blended soup, or add things like chicken and rice. Whenever I’m sick, I make a big batch and basically sip on this soup all day long.
This soup is filled with glutamine, which is the preferred fuel of your enterocytes (single layer of cells lining your small intestine) and because of this it helps to heal the gut lining. It’s also chock-full of minerals from all of the veggies, and minerals support cellular healing and repair. The bone broth contains collagen, a protein that helps to strengthen the gut wall. The way this soup is warm and cooked makes it easy for your gut to digest and absorb all of the nutrients.
Eat the rainbow
You’ve heard this before. But why is it helpful for gut health? “Eating the rainbow” offers two different important benefits.
First, when you eat the rainbow you’re consuming a wide variety of different types of fiber. A diverse consumption of fiber throughout time supports the diversity of your gut microbiome. And we know from research that a diverse microbiome is a healthy one.
Second, when you eat the rainbow, all of those colors are different types of phytonutrients. Each color offers unique protective, antioxidant, and healing properties to your body. For example, the dark red polyphenols within pomegranates are a strong antioxidant that improves fertility, heart health, and brain health. The orange beta-carotene in carrots and squash protects your vision, skin, and lungs and has anti-cancer properties.
Eating the rainbow gives you the vast array of phytonutrients that can help to improve health and prevent disease in the long term.
Pain relief alternatives
We all need pain relief from time to time. Some of us need it daily. And sometimes, all you have to take the pain away is ibuprofen—I get it! I’ve been there.
Naturopathic medicine offers a wide toolbox of options for dealing with pain, from root cause investigation to herbal compounds such as ginger and willow bark. Working with a licensed Naturopathic doctor can help you get to the root of your pain.
Did you know that ginger root can at times offer as much pain relief as abortive migraine medications called triptans? It’s true! Here’s a research paper that talks about this. While ginger doesn’t work perfectly for everyone, it’s an example of an NSAID alternative that not only avoids the side effects of NSAIDs; it offer myriad positive benefits to the gut, heart, and musculoskeletal system.
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, also known as NSAIDs, are powerful regulators of inflammation. NSAIDs block a famous inflammatory pathway involving the enzyme COX (cyclooxygenase). When this pathways is blocked, your immune system can’t produce the prostaglandins that cause pain. But those prostaglandins do more than pain creation; they are in charge of an important mucous layer in your gut that protects the single-celled layer of your gut lining. Without these prostaglandins, your gut will lack the protective mucous layer and blood flow it needs for proper repair.
NSAIDs also directly damage your cells and disrupt your microbiome, potentially leading to overgrowth of pathogenic (harmful) bacteria and toxin production. If you’re not having proper bowel movements and liver function, these NSAIDs can be recirculated between your gut and your liver and continue to do damage over time.
Sometimes, use of NSAIDs is unavoidable. But when you have options, start with alternatives—and find an ND who can help you create a plan for decreasing your NSAID use over time.
Include fermented foods
While probiotic supplements can provide benefit during gastrointestinal illness, after food poisoning, and during and after antibiotic use, it’s not necessary to take probiotics continuously. If you are using probiotics specifically to help treat and reverse a particular health condition, great! But fermented foods can provide many of the same benefits, and in some cases are superior. Here is a short list of common fermented foods you could add into your meals on a regular basis:
Sauerkraut
Kimchi
Pickled vegetables
Pickles (refrigerated)
Milk kefir (dairy and non-dairy)
Water kefir
Yogurt
Kombucha
Sourdough bread
Miso
Tempeh
Natto
Apple cider vinegar
A few ideas for incorporating more ferments into your routine: top any savory meal with sauerkraut or kimchi. Make your own homemade beet kvass and drink a few ounces daily. Use apple cider vinegar in your salad dressings. Turn any excess of summer or fall veggies into pickled veggies. Opt for sourdough when bread baking or shopping. Stir miso paste into any soup for extra salt and umami flavor.
Sunlight
Exposure to sunlight, especially during the summer when you absorb UV-B rays, increases your vitamin D levels. Vitamin D is necessary for healing and repair of your gut lining. Sunlight also has a beneficial impact on the diversity of your gut microbiome. And a more diverse microbiome creates a healthier environment for the signaling of your immune system and colonocytes (colon cells).
Morning sunlight, specifically, enhances the signaling of your circadian rhythm—the day-night cycle of hormones and organ function. Morning light increases your serotonin, which is an essential signal for proper gut motility—movement—facilitating digestion of food, absorption of nutrients, and regular healthy bowel movement.
Sleep
It doesn’t appear related upon first glance, but sleep is a critical time for repair and regeneration throughout the body, including your gut. During sleep, your intestinal lining undergoes healing, regulation of your immune system, and a shift of your microbiome into maintenance mode.
Poor quality sleep or inconsistent sleep schedules can increase inflammation, disrupt gut bacteria, and impair digestion. Supporting healthy sleep patterns is an essential but often underestimated component of gut health.
Consistency Over Perfection
Gut health is not built through occasional interventions, short-term efforts, or a pile of expensive supplements. It’s created through daily, repeated habits over time. Small actions—eating a variety of foods, slowing down at meals, getting sunlight, staying hydrated—add up to move you in the direction of health.
You don’t need to do everything perfectly for your gut to benefit. Consistency matters far more than perfection. Build a foundation that feels sustainable, supportive, and realistic for your life, and let the benefits accumulate gradually.
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