How exercise can benefit your gut health
There are quite a few ways that exercise can support and even benefit your gut health. Not surprisingly exercise is most beneficial when your gut is already in a good place. Maybe most importantly, exercise can get you moving. Literally. What I mean in simplest terms is that it can help to get your digestive fire going in a way that can support pooping. Since low gastrointestinal motility (how quickly you process your food and poop it out) is largely correlated with physical inactivity, expertise can really help with constipation symptoms. Aerobic exercises are best known for this - walking, running, and higher intensity movement. This makes exercising pretty important as not pooping every day can be pretty inflammatory for the gut and may increase your risk of colon cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, and more.
Exercise can influence more than your gut motility, it can also support other digestive functions too. Moving your body helps to move lymph and other fluids produced and used by your body. As it relates to digestion, moving your body regularly can lead to better responses in the digestive chain like the secretion of stomach acid which helps to break down protein, digestive enzymes, and bile which helps to break down carbs and fats respectively. Without these functions working properly you may experience stomach aches, heartburn, gas, bloating, constipation, or loose stools.
Lastly, there is some strong evidence that exercise may increase microbial diversity. Microbial diversity refers to the amount and different types of beneficial microbes living in your gut. Research suggests that having a wide array of microbes in our gut makes our microbiome more capable and resilient. A diverse microbiome can function better than a microbiome with only a few kinds of bacteria and different types of gut bacteria serve different important functions such as aiding in digestion, helping absorption, and production of essential nutrients like Butyrate as well as regulating our immune, metabolic and nervous systems. Butyrate promotes the repair of the gut lining and reduces inflammation, therefore potentially preventing metabolic dysfunction, inflammatory bowel disease, and insulin resistance, which can lead to diabetes.
How do I know when exercise is harmful to my gut health?
The digestive process performs optimally when we are resting and in a relaxed state. When we are taxing our body to the limit, like doing a tough workout, your body will take focus away from digestion to respond to the current challenge - your workout. If you notice negative changes to your digestion following a tough workout or symptoms that get worse following a workout, this might be a good time to take a step back and focus more on less strenuous workouts like walking and yoga while you work on your gut health. Things like gas, bloating, heartburn, reflux or loose stools are symptoms of some gut healing that needs to be done, and your body’s way of telling you to slow down and reduce your stress until your symptoms improve or you figure out what is going on.
Strenuous exercise (really all exercise) is a stressor to our bodies and if our gut is already stressed, the added stress of a tough workout will only make your symptoms worse. While some stress can be good for us, it isn’t necessarily good when the body is already in a very stressed state. Any healing, including gut healing, also requires us to be in a relaxed, “rest and digest” state. If your gut is compromised in some way it needs fewer stressors and cutting back or removing strenuous exercise for some time will send the signal to your body that it is safe and relaxed and will give your body and your gut the time it needs to rest and heal.
What are the best exercises to support your gut?
Low to moderate-intensity workouts are the most supportive to your gut. This might include walking, yoga, pilates, and low-impact resistance training. Moderate exercise may even reduce the severity and frequency of symptoms for people with inflammatory bowel disease or who suffer from unexplained digestive symptoms.
If your gut is in pretty solid shape, go for more intense workouts a couple of times a week, but pay attention to how your body responds after a tougher workout. With regard to gut health, is your digestion different? Are you noticing any new symptoms or does something feel off? Are you experiencing pain or discomfort? Signs and symptoms are the body’s way of communicating that something is off or something is going wrong and paying attention to how you are feeling is a great way to get to know your body better and what it wants and needs. If you reduce your workout intensity and are still experiencing digestive symptoms, it's probably a good idea to dig deeper to see what might be going on.
When your gut is in a good place, exercise can play a role in maintaining microbiome diversity in the gut, promoting better energy and mood, and a stronger immune system. It can also aid in getting your digestive fire moving, supporting the entire digestive process so that you are moving out toxins and pooping daily. When you are feeling good, feel free to go for more intense workouts a few days a week. If you’ve got some gut stuff going on, remember that strenuous exercise is a stressor to the body and your gut will be better off with some lower-key movement like walking, yoga, and lower-intensity strength training. In the end, go with your gut. It will tell you what is best for it.
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