An introduction to your GI tract and good gut health

What is your gut?

Your gut is around 7m long and is in charge of removing waste from your body and taking in essential energy and nutrients. You might be surprised to learn that the process of digestion doesn’t only happen in your stomach—it starts in your mouth and ends near your bum.

Your gut is made up of several hollow organs: They include your mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine and anus. These organs are known as the gastrointestinal tract or GI tract. When we talk about digestion, we also include the liver, pancreas and gallbladder which play essential roles too.

In the upper part of your GI tract, your mouth takes a first pass at your food, chopping it up and mixing with it with saliva. Your stomach continues this work using acid, more enzymes and a churning motion. Your food then progresses into the small intestine, where it is mixed with digestive juices from the liver and pancreas. Here is where the bulk of food absorption happens. When food reaches your lower intestine, water is removed and waste is converted into stool.

What is your gut microbiome?

Inside your small and large intestine live around 10 trillion bacteria, known as your gut microbiome or microbiota. These bacteria play a role in breaking down food and creating some of the enzymes needed to facilitate the process.

Amongst these guys are good bacteria and bad ones. Increasing the amount of ‘good’ bacteria can have a lot of benefits, including better digestive health, better immune function and less inflammation.

In short, a healthy gut microbiome helps create a healthy you.

What are the problems with poor gut health?

As we just learned, your gut absorbs nutrients from food through the process of digestion. If your gut isn’t working properly, or indeed if you simply aren’t eating a well-balanced diet, you won’t be getting all the nutrients your body needs.

Conversely, if your gut lining is irritated or inflamed, some of the contents of your food and inner gut can get into your bloodstream where they shouldn’t be—the so-called “leaky gut”.

Poor gut health has been linked to multiple health issues (1), including Irritable Bowl Syndrome (IBS), obesity, bloating, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis and other autoimmune diseases. Indeed this is where the origin story of Earthy30 was born—in the treatment of ulcerative colitis.

How do I help my gut microbiome?

Here are a few handy ways to help improve your gut health by feeding your gut microbiome.

Tip 1: Eat real food

Real food, or ‘not processed food’, doesn’t come with a label! Think vegetables, non-farmed fish and grass fed meats. The fibre in plant-based foods helps feed your gut microbes and keeps them healthy. 

Tip 2: Eat fermented foods

Foods such as kimchi, tempeh, sauerkraut and kefir all contain live cultures that help support the good bacteria in your gut. Research cited (2) on our Science page has found that eating 2-4 portions of fermented foods daily can help the diversity of your gut microbiome for the better.

Tip 3: Consider reducing dairy and gluten

While not everyone has problems with dairy and gluten, I’m sure you know people who do. Perhaps they’re bloated or farty after dairy? (I am.)

People with celiac disease have an immune reaction triggered by gluten and indeed other people can be termed gluten-sensitive whereby they might suffer from bloating, diarrhoea or cramps after eating gluten. It’s not clear whether everyone should avoid gluten but it is a growing trend.

How can I eat more plant-based foods?

Lots of people try to count plant points as a fun way to get to 30-different plant based foods a week. This 30-a-week can be thought of as an upgrade from the well known mantra “5-a-day”.

Earthy30 is a challenge based around this concept: We challenge you to download our scorecard and keep count for 4 weeks! If you do, you have completed level 1. More on Levels 2 and 3 to follow. 

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Sources:

1/ Gilbert et al. Current understanding of the human microbiome. Nat Med (2020)

2/ Wastyk et al. Gut-microbiota-targeted diets modulate human immune status. Cell (2021)

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