Are you looking to optimize your gut health? In the latest episode of the Rena Malik, M.D. podcast, Dr. Kumkum Patel dives deep ...

best-gut-health-foods-to-optimize-your-health-according-to-experts

Best Gut Health Foods to optimize your health, According to Experts

the one thing that I found so interesting when I learned about it in medical school was that that that's our biggest organ outside after skin right skin is number one and gut is number two so it makes sense that it plays such a huge role in our lives and in mood like you said and heart health and so if your heart is having issues your sex life is also having issues so guys listen up this is going to give you you're going to learn so much on this podcast so what can we do to have a healthy gut now there's lots of things so let's focus let's start on diet first like how can we optimize our diet to get the best gut health okay so that's a great question you know gut health is really reliant on the foods that we eat and our bacteria really rely on getting something called Prebiotic foods and probiotic rich foods and that's because our bacteria the biotic portion of it is relying on things that is going to help make its metabolites so when we think about that think of high fiber foods so high fiber foods are things that can allow the bacteria to make something called short chain fatty acids okay and short chain fatty acids are really the metabolites or breakdown products of fermentation by this bacteria so when a bacteria are able to make those then those short chain fatty acids can then bind to other receptors and help make serotonin your happy hormone it can help make dopamine that's your other happy hormone it can help with insulin sensitivity which is huge in terms of weight control it can help give your messages to the brain in terms of how we're supposed to be feeling and vice versa you know it's important to as to what you think and what you see and what you expose yourself to that's also very important in terms of that so what do you mean by think see exp like in terms of like what you look at like is that going to affect your gut health so yes and no so when you see what you want to do is to see sunlight a natural daylight okay our brains have something called the supermatic nucleus which is a fancy term basically meaning that that's the area of the brain that realizes when it's daytime when it's nighttime so our not only do we awaken but our bodies and our minds awaken when you know the Sun is up and so by getting natural sunlight your body has something called a circadian rhythm which runs on 24 hours and that is awoken by seeing sunlight and getting at least 20 to 30 minutes of natural light it can be even on a cloudy day can really help two one set what you know the temp the time is in your body and also helps release endorphins serotonin in your body so that also allows for the gut to know okay it's time to kind of get things moving in our system to get things processing we don't have to slow down at this time so when it's daytime it can start processing so what you see should be sunlight first the other thing is what you hear right having negative or toxic or disruptive sounds of disruptive thoughts disruptive conversations can actually be negatively impacting our gut health because they can produce stress or anxiety right so if you have you think about if you get in a fight with someone and or you have a bad conversation with someone you're in a state of almost distress because you're like oh God like this person told me something or now I don't feel good that then triggers your brain to not release serotonin that's it's it's shutting down that the amount of happiness or happy hormones that it's releasing and so that alters the way that our intestines move sometimes it puts our bodies into almost like a fight or flight mode because the body feels like it's in a state of distress and chronically that can really affect the way that our intestines move yeah that's so that's so good because you know we learned in medical school that so fight ORF flight for those of you who don't know basically your blood flow is taking away from these organs rest and dig Gest organs and going towards the ability for you to like run or get away from the stressor right and so you're no longer providing blood flow to the gut is that right yeah that's absolutely right okay yeah and then back to the diet because I wanted to go deeper into that so prebiotics probiotics break it down for us what is the difference what are some good foods that will give us both prebiotics and probiotics and our supplements like is there a role for them okay so think of prebiotics as food for the Pro biotics okay so food for our bacteria can include onions it can include garlic asparagus um think of your green leafy rough veggies okay so you think about like you know asparagus and broccoli and your brussel sprouts right those are fiber filled foods that will feed the bacteria now what bacteria the probiotic bacteria that you think of include lactobacillus right you think of you see a bottle of a kefir or yogurt you see on there it's written all different kinds of lactobacillus that's one of the probiotic bacteria bifidobacterium that's another one rosis is another one and so those are key uh probiotic bacteria that are very important in helping to make those metabolites called short chain fatty acids got it got it and so what's the difference between prebiotics and probiotics so prebiotics are the foods and the probiotics are the bacteria got it got it okay that makes sense so um is there Foods so as you mentioned there's foods that are the prebiotics and then the probiotics keer yogurt what else is there that we could have like are there fermented foods or things like that so fermented foods I think are great so if if you don't know fermented foods are foods that have undergone the natural process of turning their organic sugars into uh organic acids like lactic acid okay and so I think of Lem as foodsa begin with the K because again my name begins with with the k and so like okay I will tell my patients sour Crut has a K in there kimchi kefir kombucha right those are all things and and think about them they're all kind of Tangy and so those are the foods that contain a lot of live active bacteria and they have undergone the natural process of uh fermentation over time and so that that's why they contain a lot of lactobacillus or bacterium and multiple other strains that are very healthy for for for you that's great and I think you know in our culture we eat a lot of yogurt as like with every meal we'll often have yogurt and I think that comes from ancient like teachings of like health and how it's good for our gut

Dr.

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