Welcome Back to Inside Matters: Boost Your Gut Health with These Three Essential Tips
Hello to all our Inside Matters listeners! After a brief hiatus, I'm excited to return and dive into one of our favorite topics: gut health. Today, I'm sharing three essential gut health tips, rooted in personal experience and backed by science, to help you enhance your overall wellness.
#### Tip 1: Incorporate Polyphenol-Rich Foods
Polyphenols have been a recurring topic on our podcast, and for good reason. As one of the three Ps—prebiotics, probiotics, and polyphenols—they play a critical role in promoting gut health. Polyphenols are powerful antioxidants found in many plant-based foods. They encourage the growth of beneficial gut bacteria while suppressing harmful varieties.
**The Science Behind Polyphenols**
Animal studies and human observational evidence demonstrate that polyphenols can significantly impact the microbiome. Notably, blue zones—regions of the world with high concentrations of centenarians—feature diets rich in polyphenols. When polyphenols reach the colon, gut bacteria metabolize them into bioactive compounds, fostering a symbiotic relationship that leads to numerous health benefits.
**Key Polyphenol-Rich Foods**
1. **Dark Chocolate**: High-cacao, low-sugar dark chocolate is not only delicious but also loaded with flavonoids, a type of polyphenol that supports gut bacteria diversity. 2. **Green Tea**: Rich in catechins, green tea can positively influence gut bacteria and reduce inflammation. It's also associated with a broad array of health benefits. 3. **Berries**: My personal favourites—blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries—are packed with anthocyanins that benefit gut health. These berries are true superfoods, rich in vitamins and minerals.
For optimal health, integrate these foods into your daily routine. For instance, enjoy a piece of dark chocolate post-exercise or start your day with a punnet of blueberries and raspberries.
4. **Olive Oil**: Rich in various polyphenols, including oleuropein, olive oil nourishes gut bacteria and protects against oxidative stress. Use it as your primary cooking fat and for salad dressings, ensuring you choose high-quality, extra virgin olive oil from reputable sources.
Tip 2: Consider Spacing Out Your Meals
Frequent eating and constant snacking can disrupt the migrating motor complex (MMC)—a recurring pattern that occurs in the stomach and small intestine during fasting periods. This "cleansing wave" moves undigested food and bacteria through the digestive tract, preventing the buildup of harmful substances.
**Why Spacing Meals Matters**
Allowing time between meals helps avoid issues like bloating, gas, and digestive discomfort. The classic advice is to wait three to four hours between meals. Personally, I have a large breakfast or brunch post-exercise, a healthy snack like a high-quality protein bar, and a substantial dinner. This eating pattern supports my nutritional needs and ensures I'm not feeling hungry before bed.
Tip 3: Engage in Belly Breathing
Diaphragmatic breathing, or belly breathing, is a simple yet powerful technique that stimulates the vagus nerve, connecting the gut to the brain. This type of breathing promotes deep relaxation and has significant benefits for gut health.
**How to Practice Belly Breathing**
1. Sit or lie in a comfortable position. 2. Place one hand on your chest and one on your abdomen. 3. Inhale slowly through your nose, allowing your abdomen to rise. 4. Exhale slowly through your mouth, feeling your abdomen fall.
Aim to practice this for five to ten minutes daily. Belly breathing can reduce stress—a major trigger for gut issues like IBS—and improve symptoms such as bloating, constipation, and abdominal pain.
---
In summary, incorporating polyphenol-rich foods, spacing out your meals, and engaging in diaphragmatic breathing can profoundly benefit your gut health. I hope you've enjoyed this return episode of Inside Matters. Recording this podcast is intellectually stimulating, and the po
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.