Your gut is an incredibly important part of your physiology. It breaks down your food every day and helps you absorb nutrients to live. When everything works properly, your health is top notch.
The number of interesting things about your gut are too numerous to count. It’s effectively a giant tube that runs the length of your head and torso. As such, the digestive tract that makes up your gut isn’t really in you.
If it were, you’d be screwed. There are trillions of microorganisms at the door, and if they were actually in your blood, you’d be a goner.
But since the lumen is outside of you, it’s actually an interface with the outside world. As is the case with the rest of the world, this gives microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi niches to live. We call these communities the microbiome.
The synergy between your organs of digestion, your digestive tract, and the microbes that live there plays an essential role in your health and happiness. But our perspective on the gut and how to keep it healthy is incredibly myopic.
In fact, most feel it centers entirely around diet. It doesn’t.
How your behavior impacts your gut
The digestive system is effectively a giant tube with 5 chambers hooked up to accessory digestive organs.
In addition to communicating with each other, they also have to communicate with the rest of the body. And of course, those microbes living within the tube have lots to say as well.
Though we often view the gut as one thing, it’s important to realize it’s many components and how they work with one another. Each part of the tube is different than the other. And the longer tubes tend to vary tremendously along their length
Then, to make things even more complicated, our gut is in constant communication with our immune system. Consequently, it also has a central role in regulating our metabolism.
While the food we eat certainly plays a role in how our digestive system works, it’s not the end-all-be-all. Most aspects of our everyday life play a role in our gut health, and if we ignore these things they can have pretty bad effects on our gut.
How lifestyle affects your gut
In today’s video blog, we cover the first steps in building a health gut. This includes:
- A 9-point GI scan
- Systemic factors that are important for gut health
- General tests from your annual physical
- Specialized GI tests
- Behavioral factors that impact the gut
This one is a long one, 55 minutes to be exact. The purpose of this video is to help you begin your journey of building a healthy gut. These should be your first steps, whether you are already healthy and looking to optimize, or if trying to manage a functional GI disorder such as IBS.
This comes before the supplements, before the elimination diet, and it’s something you can do on your own. As always, discuss these things with your medical practitioner.
We are in the process of adding even more videos to our channel. There are already quite a few that will help you in your journey to building great gut health.
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Enjoy!