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Five Strategies to Improve Your Gut Health

In the meantime, as you contemplate your New Years resolution to join the gym (again),lose weight, improve your diet, or to purchase the latest gizmo to track your every move,

you might want to consider whether your microbes will support your decision. After all,

theyre in control. Below are five suggestions on how you might improve the health ofyour gut microbes (and some other microbes in your life) in 2013.

Avoid antibiotics. Its a familiar story by now: overzealous use of antibiotics aredriving antibiotic resistance among microbes at an alarming rate. But it gets

worse: the average child in the developed world will likely receive 10-20 courses

of antibiotics before his or her 18th birthday. This, coupled with the low

therapeutic doses in animal feed and ipso facto food, may be shifting our gutmicrobes into an unhealthy state and possibly contributing to the metabolic

disease of obesity.6

Its also well documented that following a course of broad-spectrum antibiotics, itcould take weeks, months or even years for your gut microbial community to

bounce back if at all. During this period of imbalance, opportunistic pathogenscan set up shop. Or worse. While antibiotics are clearly needed in some scenarios,

ask more questions in 2013 before downing them without a care.

Open a window. For 99.99 percent of human history the outside was always part

of the inside, and at no moment during our day were we ever really separated

from nature. Today, a National Activity Survey7 found that between enclosedbuildings and vehicles, modern humans spend a whopping 90 percent of their

lives indoors.

Though keeping the outside out does have its advantages protection from the

elements and decreasing your chances of being eaten by a zombie it has alsochanged the microbiome of your home. Studies8 show that opening a window and

increasing natural airflow can improve the diversity and health of the microbes in

your home, which in turn benefit the inhabitants. In the not-so-distant future,

building codes will likely reflect the biological benefits of rewilding our livingand workspaces. Never hurts to get a head start.

Adopt an ecological perspective. In 2013, familiarize yourself with the writingsof Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and other important and interesting past and

present naturalists and ecologists. The human-microbial superorganism is a vastecological system, subject to the same rules of resistance, resilience, and balanceas any ecosystem on the planet. The sooner you learn to tend your microbial

garden, the sooner you will understand how human ecology and your health is

nothing more than understanding our history and place in the larger biosphere.9

Eat more plants. This is not a hard one. I dont mean to give up meat, but I mean

to eat a greater diversity and quantity of whole plants. This is the single most

important (in my opinion) dietary strategy for improving the diversity and health

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of your gut microbiome. In short, your gut microbes thrive on a diversity of

fermentable substrates (aka dietary fiber). But not all fiber is the same (physically

or chemically), so consuming a diversity of whole plants will assure as steadyflow of substrates for your resident microbes.

And make 2013 the year you eat more of the whole plant, not just the soft andtasty parts. Consume the entire asparagus, not just the tip; consume the trunk of

the broccoli, not just the crown; consume all of the greens at the top of the leek,

not just the bulb. By doing so, you will guarantee that the harder-to-digestportions of the plant will extend the metabolic activity of your microbiome deep

into your bowels. Also track how many species of plants you eat in a week

shoot for 30-40, or more.

Get your hands dirty. More to the point: start a garden. Getting your hands dirty

and covering more of your body (and food) with mother natures blanket will helpyou not only connect with the natural world we have tried so hard to remove

ourselves, but will reacquaint your immune system with the trillions ofmicroorganisms on the plants and in the soil. The loss of this interface with theterra firma of our evolutionary past body to soil, body to nature is where the

wheels came off the wagon.

As people of the world move from poverty to middle class, they also move from

the gritty reality of our ancestral life to the promise of modern development and

its triple-washed produce and squeaky-clean surroundings. Reconnecting withecosystems, through gardening or some other outside means, will allow you to

understand and manage your inner-ecosystem. There is no better way.