ByChristina Sterbenz
Published December 15, 2023
• 4 min read
‘Tis the season of indulgence. All those cookies, candy, and decadent holiday feasts tend to take a toll on your health—in more ways than you might think.
What you consume affects your gut microbiome, a community of microscopic organisms including bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites. And its importance can’t be overstated. This tiny world helps protect the body against invading pathogens, activate the immune system, and digest food, to name just a few functions. If these gut microbes are out of balance, they can cause problems, like a yeast infection or disease.
So how can you maintain a healthy gut microbiome—or re-balance it after a few too many slices of Bûche de Noël?
(How the yule log became a Christmas favorite.)
Eat the right foods
The minuscule organisms that make up your gut microbiome, especially bacteria, help the body break down carbohydrates, proteins, and sugars, into useful nutrients and process fiber in the colon.
“Everything we eat and drink and we don’t digest and absorb goes down through our intestinal tract to our distal intestine, to our colon, where the majority of the microbes are and becomes food for the microbiome,” says Gail Cresci, a microbiome researcher in the department of pediatric gastroenterology, hepatology, and nutrition with Cleveland Clinic Children’s.
(Learn more about how your gut health can affect the rest of your body.)
For example, your body digests foods that are high in sugar and low in fiber quickly, which doesn’t leave many nutrients behind for gut microbiota to consume, while the sugar that doesn’t get digested can feed pathogenic bacteria. Antibiotics, meanwhile, can kill off good bacteria along with the bad.
The gut microbiome is resilient and will bounce back relatively quickly if that person resumes a healthy diet or stops taking medications, according to Cresci.
That also means that only a long-term healthy diet can truly maintain or improve your gut microbiome. Experts recommend eating foods high in fiber, like complex carbohydrates found in grains, vegetables, and legumes. You should also incorporate fermented foods, such as kimchi, kefir, and sauerkraut, which contain their own probiotics—live microorganisms that can increase microbiota diversity in the gut. And keep sugar intake low and combine it with fiber, like eating your fruits instead of drinking them in juice.
Consider the science before taking probiotics
However, the jury is still out on manufactured probiotics, a multi-billion industry often touted as a one-size-fix-all for our various microbiomes. The reality is much more complicated and coaxing the gut to accept a probiotic is difficult.
(Prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics—what’s the difference?)
“Probiotics in this situation are more of a kid who gets transferred to a brand new high school, but they know nobody. They will get kicked out of that group because all the other microbes in that community are used to each other,” says Purna Kashyap, professor of medicine and physiology at the Mayo Clinic.
In fact, clinical trials for probiotics as treatment for a majority of diseases have not shown a benefit, according to Kashyap, pointing to the American Gastroenterological Association’s guidelines.
The probiotics market also has a lot of different types and varying levels of quality. Navigating that can be confusing and overwhelming for a consumer. Probiotics also aren’t considered a drug in the U.S., so most aren’t regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
If you are going to take a prebiotic or probiotic supplement, always check with a doctor first. Some can be harmful for people, like those on immunosuppressive medications, according to Cresci. If you do decide to take supplements, she recommends using an online resource like consumerlab.com, probiotics.com, or the National Institutes of Health website, to research the various types and to see if they’ve been approved by the FDA.
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