What is Gut Health and why is our Gut Microbiome Important?

How Our Digestive System Works

Our digestive system, made up of our gastrointestinal (GI tract) along with our liver, gallbladder, and pancreas allows us to breakdown and absorb the essential nutrients from our food. Our digestive tract is made up of a long, twisted, hollow tube that starts at the mouth, and ends at the anus. Yes, our mouth is the start of our digestive tract, and our oral health is vitally important for overall digestive health. Or digestive tract includes our esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, and anus. Our large intestine, or colon, is what most people are referring to when they address the “gut.” The large intestine is home to 50 trillion tiny bacteria referred to as our gut microbiome.

What is our Gut Microbiome?

Our gut microbiome is the collection of those 50 trillion tiny bacteria, with a mixture of some yeast and other microbes. Our gut microbiome itself weighs about three pounds! These microbiomes are good for our health, and we have evolutionarily co-existed with these helpful bacteria. Everyone’s gut microbiome is unique to them and is created by their environment, geographic location, and lifestyle habits like food preferences, sleep, and stress levels! Through our lifestyle, we can create a microbiome that is either healthy or harmful to our overall health!

There are different strains that we think of as healthy bacteria that promote anti-inflammatory effects, and there are some that are harmful. The harmful strains are also called opportunistic because they find any opportunity to overgrow and overtake the healthy strains. I like to think of this like mint in your garden. If you plant mint with other herbs, the mint will overgrow and overtake all the other herbs because it is opportunistic. The balance between healthy and harmful bacteria is important for our gut microbiome health, gut health, and whole body health.

Our gut microbiome is important to help us digest the food that we can’t digest, (think fiber-rich foods that are so healthy for us.) Fiber is healthy for us, not because we can directly digest it and extract the nutrients, but because our gut microbiome becomes healthier when it eats fiber, and in return, promotes health for our entire body! Our gut microbiome can also make important nutrients, enzymes, and amino acids that we cannot get from diet alone.

How Our Gut Microbiome Affects Our Health

After breaking down healthy fiber-rich foods like fruit and vegetables, our gut microbiome can impact the local health of our gut as well as impact other areas of our body. If our good and bad gut bacteria are out of balance, it leads to a local overgrowth of bacteria or yeast, which leads to local inflammation and causes digestive distress like significant gas, bloating, belching, diarrhea, and constipation.

The local environment of our gut can also cause widespread effects throughout the body. By using the immune system, our gut can send healthy, anti-inflammatory, or unhealthy, inflammatory signals to other areas of our body. If we eat healthy food, the signals are healthy, and anti-inflammatory, but if we eat unhealthy foods like processed carbohydrates, refined sugars, and fast food, our gut microbiome sends disease-causing, inflammatory signals to other areas of our body. This is how our gut microbiome can contribute to skin conditions like acne, eczema, and rosacea, as well as conditions like anxiety, depression, obesity, cancer, and more.

The Gut-Skin-Axis

The gut-skin-axis is one of the many connections from the gut microbiome to other parts of our body. The gut-skin-axis refers to the connection between our gut microbiome and our skin. This intimate connection between our gut and skin health actually goes both ways! Our body facilitates a communication between our gut and skin health via our immune system and inflammatory signals. Unfavorable and unhealthy changes in the gut microbiome have been found in conditions like acne, eczema, rosacea, and psoriasis. Establishing this gut-skin-connection has been helpful for the addition of holistic treatments that test and treat the gut microbiome to improve skin conditions- something I do in my practice on a daily basis!

Testing for Gut Health

Conventional testing options for gut health include visualizing the digestive tract with a tiny camera. While this type of imaging is important for understanding the structure of our digestive tract and identification of cancer, it is not the most helpful in understanding how well our gut health is functioning.

The best way to assess function of the gut and gut microbiome is stool testing. These simple to complete stool tests can be collected at a patients home and directly shipped back to the lab for analysis. Stool testing for gut health is my favorite way to assess the different strains of the gut microbiome, evaluate the balance between healthy and unhealthy gut microbiome strains, assess for bacterial or yeast overgrowth, parasitic or viral infections, and assess important immune system and inflammatory markers.

Remember, the way our gut health communicates with the rest of the body is through the immune system and inflammatory markers. This gives naturopathic doctors a comprehensive evaluation of our patient’s gut health, and with the information we receive from testing, we can create personalized, and targeted gut healing treatment protocols for our patients using diet, lifestyle, and natural supplementation.

Supplements for Gut Health

There are so many different options for supplements for gut health, and the type of supplements is based on the results from the stool testing. If the stool shows bacterial or yeast overgrowth, a combination of antibacterial and antifungal supplements are used to target specific overgrown strains. Many naturopathic doctors follow the 5R process of gut health which is first to remove the overgrown strains, repair the gut lining, replace reinoculate with healthy strains, and rebalance.

Many people will assume they have gut health issues and decide to take probiotics, but not all probiotics are the same, and they can even worsen your digestive issues, especially gas and bloating in bacterial overgrowth. The strains and types of probiotics are important for gut health, and require the guidance of a naturopathic doctor’s assistance. Probiotics are often not encouraged at the start of the gut healing protocol since the focus is on decreasing overgrown populations and once that has been accomplished, probiotics can be added back into the protocol later on.

Other nourishing supplements like glutamine and immunoglobulins and anti-inflammatory herbs like turmeric are often used to help repair and heal the gut lining.

Are you or someone you know struggling with digestive distress, gas, bloating, belching, abdominal pain, constipation, or diarrhea? Are you suffering from acne, eczema, rosacea, psoriasis, anxiety, or depression? Do you think you may have gut health or gut microbiome dysfunction? We can help! Click here to book your free Discovery Call with Dr. Dumont to see how we can help test and treat your gut and balance your gut microbiome naturally!

Dr. Ashley Dumont, ND is a Licensed Naturopathic Doctor in Portsmouth, NH at Coastal Thyme Holistic Skin + Wellness. She practices naturopathic medicine and specializes in holistic skin health, overall wellness, and heals gut health naturally with lifestyle medicine, holistic nutrition, and targeted supplementation. She is currently accepting new patient visits, and hopes to see you soon!