Introduction: Top Causes of Poor Gut Health
The gut has been called the “second brain” because it’s centrally responsible for maintaining oneself in a state of overall health and welfare. While everybody is aware that diet, stress, or inactivity can destroy the gut, there are a few underlying, not-at-all well-motivated reasons ruining the gut as well. The article discusses some of the lesser discussed Causes of Poor Gut Health, within questions posed at irregular intervals by mainstream health coverage.
The Process of Chronic Antibiotic Overuse Following Infection
Although treatment with antibiotics when a person becomes infected with a bacterium has been well publicized, the equally unrecognized yet unwanted function of such antibiotic excess includes: antibiotics disrupt the exquisitely tuned gut microbiota system. Long-term or sustained exposure to antibiotics drains a broad spectrum of both pathogenic and commensal bacteria and interferes with the microbiome. In fact, in 2018 a study in Cell Host & Microbe discovered that one dose of antibiotics interferes with the gut microbiome and that certain forms of microbes can take as long as 6 months to recover—if at all. That’s the catch, however: it’s not how many antibiotics one is given but when and with what antibiotics.
When antibiotics are abused on viral infections (on which they have no effect), they destroy the gut microbiota in a way that leads to chronic disease like dysbiosis. Dysbiosis has been linked to disease like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), autoimmune disease, and even mental disease. The Causes of Poor Gut Health includes analysing the needs to have varied bacteria to work, and overuse of antibiotics guarantees this never happens.
Also, some antibiotics, especially broad-spectrum antibiotics, will create such a change in the intestinal environment that it becomes a haven for opportunistic pathogens to establish infections like Clostridium difficile, hence leading to additional Causes of Poor Gut Health.
- Antibiotics disturb readily disturbed gut microbial homeostasis.
- Chronic or frequent use of antibiotics, especially on viral infections, leads to microbiome dysbiosis.
- Broad-spectrum antibiotics kill beneficial as well as disease-causing bacteria, leading to dysbiosis.
- Dysbiosis makes an individual susceptible to infection with Clostridium difficile.
The Role of Modern Farming Practice: Pesticides and Herbicides
The new style of agriculture has altered what we eat and therefore our digestive well-being. The consumption of herbicides such as glyphosate—found regularly in foods such as Roundup—has been connected to altering gut health. Glyphosate is used to kill weeds but also it kills beneficial microbes in the soil, which lowers the level of bacterial diversity found within food that we eat.
When human beings consume food contaminated with such chemicals, they are inserting chunks of these chemicals into our digestive tract. Glyphosate has been proven scientifically to do harm to the gut by blocking the beneficial bacteria from producing important amino acids and neurotransmitters. Food with herbicide residue has been found to result in reduced diversity of gut bacteria through consumption, and later inflammatory disease, impaired immunity, and developmental problems. In 2017, Environmental Health determined that glyphosate-formulated herbicides suppress health-protective intestinal bacteria such as Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria but activate disease-promoting growth such as Clostridium.
This sinister but dark variable is never discussed whenever gut health comes up as a topic of discourse, but it plays a very important role in the explanation for today’s gut health epidemic.
The Relationship Between Sleep Deficiency and Gut Microbiota Dysbiosis
We all know that sleeping is healthy for brain and body health, but did you know that sleep is also healthy for healthy gut functioning? Not sleeping won’t just make you feel tired—sleep deprivation could screw up your gut microbiome.
There has been recent evidence demonstrating that the experience of a deficit of adequate sleep and sleep disruptions is more strongly supported to cause dysbiosis—the process in which gut bacteria homeostasis is disrupted. In particular, disrupted sleep has been demonstrated to add HLA activation of more pro-inflammatory bacteria but fewer health-maintaining bacteria that secrete SCFAs, which are essential in keeping the gut healthy. This was later corroborated in a 2016 review published in the journal Molecular Metabolism, which confirmed that sleep loss reduces microbial richness and enhances insulin resistance, with effects towards compromised sleep in gut as well as metabolic dysfunction. It is one of the major Causes of Poor Gut Health.
Worthy of mention in this regard is that the gut itself influences sleep. Microbiome abnormality causes sleeping disorders, hence sustaining the vicious cycle. Furthermore, insomnia triggers increased cortisol levels, the stress hormone, which again triggers gut disease by triggering gut permeability (leaky gut) and inflammation.
The Role of Chronic Stress and Emotional Trauma on the Gut-Brain Axis
Stress is a nasty gut-baddie, but not all stress is cortisol-hormone caused. The gut-brain axis, a sly matrix of interaction between the brain and the gut, is why our mood can affect our digestion.
Chronic anxiety, stress, and unresolved emotional trauma also disturb the balance of gut microbiota. When stressed, your body is placed under fight-or-flight mode and produces excess stress hormones. Stress hormones disrupt proper digestion and make you constipated, have diarrhea or bloating, or acid reflux.
Aside from this, emotional trauma also impacts the gut through altering how the brain responds and interprets messages of digestion. It has been established that those who experience prolonged emotional trauma have conditions such as IBS, which has been accounted for by increased gut-brain sensitivity.
It’s worth noting that emotional health is required in making the gut healthy because mental health and gut health are interrelated.
The Role of Artificial Sweeteners in Gut Health
Artificial sweeteners are most commonly ingested as a sweetener that is “healthy” in relation to sugar and are often prescribed to individuals who must reduce calorie consumption. Sugar substitutes will likely unintentionally affect the gut’s health. Experiments found that artificial sweeteners like aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin alter the gut microbiome, giving potentially less healthy bacteria space.
Although not metabolized, these sweeteners interfere with gut bacteria, altering their function and encouraging the population of pathogenic microbes. Such dysbiosis would lead to such conditions as inflammation, insulin resistance, and even gut permeability, all of which have been observed in such diseases as Crohn’s disease, diabetes, and obesity. Artificial sweeteners are also noted to be linked to sweets craving and sweets-containing foods, which contribute to unhealthy intake.
Artificial sweeteners’ are also the major Causes of Poor Gut Health in the long run have not been studied much until now, but the first reports say that perhaps they aren’t as innocuous as everybody believed until recently.
Overtraining and Its Impact on the Gut
Even as health and fitness is gradually more well known as the centerpiece of well lives, still in the shadows in the background has been overtraining. With all the enthusiasm endurance exercises are being introduced to common application and with fantastically demanding training phases, individuals have increasingly become prey for overtraining syndrome, that in a negative way leaves its mark on stomach health.
Overtraining overwhelms the body and turns on too much cortisol and inflammation. Overtraining also destroys the gut by reduced motility (movement of gut through intestines), elevated gut permeability (leading to leaky gut), and causing an imbalance of the gut bacteria large enough to create inflammation.
Specifically, the athletes will also present signs like belly cramps, diarrhea, and bloating as a result of this disruption of the gut. This has been underrated in the past as a training effect but puts more emphasis on gaining recovery-exercise balance for the gut.
The Role of Microplastic Consumption in Gut Disturbance
Now our planet is contaminated with microplastics, and microplastics are very small plastic remnants after enormous bits of plastic are broken. Microplastics also came in before to enter the water, foods, even and in our atmosphere. In the case of swallowing microplastics, in reality, it might affect the gut microbiota microbiome.
Microplastics have been proven to have detrimental effects on gut health by interacting with gut microbiota and causing inflammation. Microplastics also interfere with the natural barrier function of the gut, thus exposing the pathogen, toxin, and pathogenic microbe.
While the studies are of beginner grade, already we are sure that the presence of microplastics in our system is one that needs to be brought to both the world and gut health attention.
The Impact of Cooking at High Temperatures on Gut Health
The way that we prepare our food can influence its effects upon gut health, as well as the quality of food for nutritional purposes. Thermally labile cooking processes such as frying and grilling give off chemicals which have the capacity to disrupt the integrity of the gut lining as well as the balance of microbiota.
There is one class of chemicals known as advanced glycation end products (AGEs) that is formed when foods are intensely cooked and was discovered to induce inflammation and oxidative stress within the gastrointestinal tract. It may lead to leaky gut and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Blanched vegetables and fruits under high-heat cooking will also release healthy fiber and antioxidants that are accountable for a healthy microbiome.
Conclusion
Although the general wisdom of gut health is exercise, diet, and stress control, there are the not-so-obvious, more subtle causes of ill gut that must be uncovered too. Only by taking into account the role of such as the overuse of antibiotics, intensive farming practices, emotional trauma, artificial sweeteners, and excessive overcooking will we be well placed to wisely create a complete healing regimen for the gut.
The path to a healthy gut is as much the path to being healthy in diet as to being more mindful, and to repairing the delicate web of causatives that control our digestion mechanisms. Simply by becoming more mindful of less obvious causatives of disturbance in our gut, we thereby have more authentic, more powerful tools by which to repair our gut back to its natural equilibrium.
