Learn about four healthy habits that also happen to be great for gut health, complete with how-to tips for each one.
Gut health is about more than what you eat. Yes, we love the health benefits of fermented foods and recognize the important role prebiotics and probiotics play in one’s diet, but there’s more to the story. Healthy habits and lifestyle choices that have very little to do with nutrition impact gut health too. Self-care is gut care!
From sleep to exercise to hydration to managing stress, healthy habits have a surprisingly positive impact on gut health. This healthy habits list of four practices – complete with how-to tips – will help nurture your gut and improve well-being.
Healthy Habit #1: Protect Your Sleep
Ah, sleep. That one thing we insisted we didn’t need much of in our youth is the healthy habit we crave today. When you get enough sleep, you feel more human. Your mood is elevated, your focus is better, and you have more energy.
Our bodies and brains do so much important work when we sleep. The brain stores away new information, cells are repaired, and energy is restored. And that’s just a fraction of what happens during sleep.
There’s also a surprising connection between sleep and gut health. Several studies indicate that adequate sleep promotes the growth of beneficial bacteria in the gut. Meanwhile, too little sleep or sleep that’s too fragmented, can wreak havoc on your microbiome.
Bottom line: Protecting your sleep is a healthy habit with a plethora of benefits, including improved gut health. Nurture your gut by getting at last seven hours of sleep per night.
Tips to Protect Your Sleep
- Keep bedtimes and wake times consistent, even on weekends
- Get plenty of physical activity and exposure to bright natural daylight during the day, especially in the morning
- Make sure naps aren’t too long or too late in the day
- Come bedtime, keep your bedroom dark, quiet, cool, and uncluttered
- Consume caffeine only in the morning and early afternoon
- Avoid alcohol, especially shortly before bedtime
- Have a bedtime ritual
- Stop eating at least two hours before bed
We elaborate on these tips and more in our 10 Tips For Getting a Good Night’s Sleep post.
Healthy Habit #2: Stay Active
Regular physical activity – about 30 minutes of moderate exercise per day – does a body, and a gut, good. We know working out is great for heart health, metabolism, mood, aging well, and disease prevention. But what is it about this healthy habit that is so beneficial to gut health?
Moderate cardio exercise like walking, jogging, cycling, and hiking appears to be key for gut health. Aerobic activity increases the amount of good bacteria in your gut, adds more diversity to your microbiome, and helps commensal bacteria to flourish – these microbes work together to protect the body from pathogens and infection.
Notice we use the term moderate. Intense cardio can actually harm the microbiome by triggering inflammation and thinning the mucosal layer. That’s a recipe for illness. Meanwhile, moderate aerobic exercise is a healthy habit you can practice at almost any stage of life, and to great benefit to your microbiome: it reduces gut inflammation and permeability and increases health bacteria.
Tips to Stay Active
- Do whatever activities you enjoy. The important thing is to simply get moving. Healthy habits like exercise are achieved when you focus on progress, not perfection.
- Stay hydrated throughout the day and avoid heavy meals shortly before a workout – they’ll leave you feeling sluggish.
- Don’t workout too close to bedtime – the energy boost exercise provides may hamper your ability to fall asleep.
- Working from home or at a desk job? Incorporate a 30-minute brisk walk into your daily routine. Sitting for too long poses health risks, so make it a priority to get up and go outside.
- To prevent injury and improve flexibility, end your workouts and your days with some gentle stretches.
- Use the buddy system – ask a friend to work out with you.
Healthy Habit #3: Stay Hydrated
60% of the human body is made of water. Fluids are critical to our bodies and all of its functions, so staying hydrated is an important healthy habit! Adequate hydration prevents headaches, provides energy, improves mood, and sharpens focus.
In addition to housing most of your body’s beneficial bacteria and precious immune cells, your gut also does stuff: it digests food, extracts nutrients, and eliminates waste. To eliminate waste and have easy-to-pass bowel movements, you need fluids. Dehydration is one of the most common causes of constipation. Help your gut regularly indulge in its own healthy habits: drink water, and lots of it!
Like the healthy habit of exercise, staying hydrated also has a beneficial impact on the gut’s mucosal lining. Fluids keep the immune-cell rich environment of the mucosal lining lubricated and in tip-top shape so that it can better ward off pathogens and get all the electrolytes where they need to go.
Tips to Get Enough Fluids
- Keep a healthy, low-sugar, non-alcoholic beverage (you can’t go wrong with water!) within reach at all times. This is especially important when exerting yourself in hot weather because your body can lose between 2.6 to 5.3 pints of water per hour.
- Eat foods with a higher water content. Think melons, berries, and other juicy fruits; soups; and summer veggies like cucumbers and tomatoes.
- Eat spicy and salty foods – they’ll prompt you to drink more water.
- On very hot days, stay in the shade as much as possible.
- If you’re in a beverage rut, try some of Thistle’s cold-pressed juice and shots. Or try making your own!
We elaborate on these hydration tips and more in the following posts:
Winter Wellness To-do: Stay Hydrated | Summer’s Most Hydrating Foods
Healthy Habit #4: Regularly De-stress
While people can usually handle stress in small doses, too much of it takes a toll. Chances are, your body, mind, and gut are feeling the toll of too much stress these days. Since we can’t simply turn off the stress tap, healthy habits and coping schools are necessary. We need stress management now more than ever!
Persistent stress can impact your entire body by creating a positive feedback loop. Despite the name, that’s not a good thing. It simply means a change in one system enhances a change in another. Here’s what that means for constant stress: it can trigger or exacerbate chronic inflammation, autoimmune disease, and impaired immune function. It also increases disease risk – think heart disease and mental health disorders like anxiety and depression.
Let’s talk about how stress impacts the gut in particular. Too much stress can cause bouts of nausea and GI diseases like gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). If you treat only the symptoms – with medication and such – you may get temporary relief. If you treat the potential source – chronic stress – via healthy habits and coping skills, you may have long-term relief and even experience complete healing.
What healthy habits help cope with stress and give your gut a break? What are some ways to de-stress, if even for a moment? Practicing the first three healthy habits on this list – sleep, exercise, and hydration – are a great place to start because it creates not a harmful positive feedback loop, but a positive one. Here’s our full list of tips:
Tips to Regularly De-stress
- Regularly spend time with supportive friends and loved ones
- Get enough sleep
- Regularly exercise
- See a therapist
- Take breaks from social media
- Eat healthy meals that include plenty of fiber, fruits, vegetables, and fermented foods
- Avoid sugar, refined foods, and inflammatory foods
- Make kindness your default response
- Give breathing exercises, yoga, and meditation a try
- Recognize your limits: outsource tasks and set whatever boundaries you can; a Thistle subscription is a great option
Find more de-stressing tips and advice on the Thistle Thoughts blog:
Prioritizing Self-Care: Healthy Meals and More | 7 Self-Care Tips for the Holidays | Top 5 Tips for Self-Care While Working From Home
Healthy habits for life are oftentimes the same healthy habits that nurture your gut. They go hand-in-hand. Self-care is gut-care. May you find time for it today and everyday.
Learn about four healthy habits that also happen to be great for gut health, complete with how-to tips for each one.
Gut health is about more than what you eat. Yes, we love the health benefits of fermented foods and recognize the important role prebiotics and probiotics play in one’s diet, but there’s more to the story. Healthy habits and lifestyle choices that have very little to do with nutrition impact gut health too. Self-care is gut care!
From sleep to exercise to hydration to managing stress, healthy habits have a surprisingly positive impact on gut health. This healthy habits list of four practices – complete with how-to tips – will help nurture your gut and improve well-being.
Healthy Habit #1: Protect Your Sleep
Ah, sleep. That one thing we insisted we didn’t need much of in our youth is the healthy habit we crave today. When you get enough sleep, you feel more human. Your mood is elevated, your focus is better, and you have more energy.
Our bodies and brains do so much important work when we sleep. The brain stores away new information, cells are repaired, and energy is restored. And that’s just a fraction of what happens during sleep.
There’s also a surprising connection between sleep and gut health. Several studies indicate that adequate sleep promotes the growth of beneficial bacteria in the gut. Meanwhile, too little sleep or sleep that’s too fragmented, can wreak havoc on your microbiome.
Bottom line: Protecting your sleep is a healthy habit with a plethora of benefits, including improved gut health. Nurture your gut by getting at last seven hours of sleep per night.
Tips to Protect Your Sleep
- Keep bedtimes and wake times consistent, even on weekends
- Get plenty of physical activity and exposure to bright natural daylight during the day, especially in the morning
- Make sure naps aren’t too long or too late in the day
- Come bedtime, keep your bedroom dark, quiet, cool, and uncluttered
- Consume caffeine only in the morning and early afternoon
- Avoid alcohol, especially shortly before bedtime
- Have a bedtime ritual
- Stop eating at least two hours before bed
We elaborate on these tips and more in our 10 Tips For Getting a Good Night’s Sleep post.
Healthy Habit #2: Stay Active
Regular physical activity – about 30 minutes of moderate exercise per day – does a body, and a gut, good. We know working out is great for heart health, metabolism, mood, aging well, and disease prevention. But what is it about this healthy habit that is so beneficial to gut health?
Moderate cardio exercise like walking, jogging, cycling, and hiking appears to be key for gut health. Aerobic activity increases the amount of good bacteria in your gut, adds more diversity to your microbiome, and helps commensal bacteria to flourish – these microbes work together to protect the body from pathogens and infection.
Notice we use the term moderate. Intense cardio can actually harm the microbiome by triggering inflammation and thinning the mucosal layer. That’s a recipe for illness. Meanwhile, moderate aerobic exercise is a healthy habit you can practice at almost any stage of life, and to great benefit to your microbiome: it reduces gut inflammation and permeability and increases health bacteria.
Tips to Stay Active
- Do whatever activities you enjoy. The important thing is to simply get moving. Healthy habits like exercise are achieved when you focus on progress, not perfection.
- Stay hydrated throughout the day and avoid heavy meals shortly before a workout – they’ll leave you feeling sluggish.
- Don’t workout too close to bedtime – the energy boost exercise provides may hamper your ability to fall asleep.
- Working from home or at a desk job? Incorporate a 30-minute brisk walk into your daily routine. Sitting for too long poses health risks, so make it a priority to get up and go outside.
- To prevent injury and improve flexibility, end your workouts and your days with some gentle stretches.
- Use the buddy system – ask a friend to work out with you.
Healthy Habit #3: Stay Hydrated
60% of the human body is made of water. Fluids are critical to our bodies and all of its functions, so staying hydrated is an important healthy habit! Adequate hydration prevents headaches, provides energy, improves mood, and sharpens focus.
In addition to housing most of your body’s beneficial bacteria and precious immune cells, your gut also does stuff: it digests food, extracts nutrients, and eliminates waste. To eliminate waste and have easy-to-pass bowel movements, you need fluids. Dehydration is one of the most common causes of constipation. Help your gut regularly indulge in its own healthy habits: drink water, and lots of it!
Like the healthy habit of exercise, staying hydrated also has a beneficial impact on the gut’s mucosal lining. Fluids keep the immune-cell rich environment of the mucosal lining lubricated and in tip-top shape so that it can better ward off pathogens and get all the electrolytes where they need to go.
Tips to Get Enough Fluids
- Keep a healthy, low-sugar, non-alcoholic beverage (you can’t go wrong with water!) within reach at all times. This is especially important when exerting yourself in hot weather because your body can lose between 2.6 to 5.3 pints of water per hour.
- Eat foods with a higher water content. Think melons, berries, and other juicy fruits; soups; and summer veggies like cucumbers and tomatoes.
- Eat spicy and salty foods – they’ll prompt you to drink more water.
- On very hot days, stay in the shade as much as possible.
- If you’re in a beverage rut, try some of Thistle’s cold-pressed juice and shots. Or try making your own!
We elaborate on these hydration tips and more in the following posts:
Winter Wellness To-do: Stay Hydrated | Summer’s Most Hydrating Foods
Healthy Habit #4: Regularly De-stress
While people can usually handle stress in small doses, too much of it takes a toll. Chances are, your body, mind, and gut are feeling the toll of too much stress these days. Since we can’t simply turn off the stress tap, healthy habits and coping schools are necessary. We need stress management now more than ever!
Persistent stress can impact your entire body by creating a positive feedback loop. Despite the name, that’s not a good thing. It simply means a change in one system enhances a change in another. Here’s what that means for constant stress: it can trigger or exacerbate chronic inflammation, autoimmune disease, and impaired immune function. It also increases disease risk – think heart disease and mental health disorders like anxiety and depression.
Let’s talk about how stress impacts the gut in particular. Too much stress can cause bouts of nausea and GI diseases like gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). If you treat only the symptoms – with medication and such – you may get temporary relief. If you treat the potential source – chronic stress – via healthy habits and coping skills, you may have long-term relief and even experience complete healing.
What healthy habits help cope with stress and give your gut a break? What are some ways to de-stress, if even for a moment? Practicing the first three healthy habits on this list – sleep, exercise, and hydration – are a great place to start because it creates not a harmful positive feedback loop, but a positive one. Here’s our full list of tips:
Tips to Regularly De-stress
- Regularly spend time with supportive friends and loved ones
- Get enough sleep
- Regularly exercise
- See a therapist
- Take breaks from social media
- Eat healthy meals that include plenty of fiber, fruits, vegetables, and fermented foods
- Avoid sugar, refined foods, and inflammatory foods
- Make kindness your default response
- Give breathing exercises, yoga, and meditation a try
- Recognize your limits: outsource tasks and set whatever boundaries you can; a Thistle subscription is a great option
Find more de-stressing tips and advice on the Thistle Thoughts blog:
Prioritizing Self-Care: Healthy Meals and More | 7 Self-Care Tips for the Holidays | Top 5 Tips for Self-Care While Working From Home
Healthy habits for life are oftentimes the same healthy habits that nurture your gut. They go hand-in-hand. Self-care is gut-care. May you find time for it today and everyday.
