Gut health

The gut is the term for your digestive system and it’s more than just the intestine. It includes everything from the mouth to the anus, including the stomach, liver and pancreas. The health of your gut affects everything from how much energy you have to how well you sleep at night. If you’re looking for a way to improve your health and wellness, paying attention to you gut health is a great place to start!

Annamarie Salyer FNP-C is a functional medicine specialist at Bion Aesthetics and Med Spa in Indianapolis, IN offering gut health testing for patients near Greenwood, IN, Carmel, IN, and Fishers, IN.

What is the gut?

The gut is a tube that connects the mouth, stomach, small intestine and colon. It’s made up of many different types of cells including:

  • Epithelial cells (surface lining) – these are responsible for absorbing nutrients from food as it passes through the gut. They also protect against harmful bacteria entering into your blood stream
  • Mucous-producing goblet cells produce mucus, which lines the walls of your intestines. They prevent damage from digestive enzymes or bacteria entering into your bloodstream if there is any damage to these surfaces.

How does your gut affect your health?

The gut is a complex system. It acts as an interface between your food, your environment and your body. The gut’s microbiome–a community of bacteria living within it–is essential for good health. It helps to digest food, regulate immune function and maintain overall wellness. It accomplishes this by producing vitamins and other nutrients needed by the body. If you have poor gut health (also called dysbiosis), this can result in inflammation throughout your body. Symptoms might include bloating after eating certain foods or feeling tired after eating too much sugar or processed carbohydrates like pasta or white breads. Dysbiosis also contributes to mental health problems like depression. This is because our brains are full of neurons that depend on healthy gut bacteria to function properly!

Does food affect the gut?

The gut is the second brain. It houses most of our immune system, and it’s where food is digested and absorbed into your body. When you eat something, it travels down through the esophagus into your stomach. It mixes with acid before moving on to be broken down by enzymes in your small intestine. This process takes several hours so that when you eat breakfast at 8 am, lunch at 12 pm and dinner at 5 pm, there are different types of bacteria present at each mealtime–each affecting how well we digest our food or absorb nutrients from it.

Food can affect both how much bacteria lives inside us as well as what kinds of bacteria are there at all! If we don’t get enough fiber or certain vitamins from our diet then certain types will die off. Others, however, thrive because they need less energy than those other ones did before being eaten up by our bodies’ digestive processes.

Is there a link between the gut and mental health issues?

It’s not just about your digestion. The gut is connected to the brain, which makes it a major player when it comes to your mental health.

It can affect mood, anxiety and depression–and even your ability to sleep or deal with chronic pain.

How do you know if you have a problem with the gut?

You may have a problem with your gut if you experience any of the following:

  • Stomach pain, bloating and gas
  • Diarrhea or constipation (or both)
  • Nausea and vomiting

The health of your gut can affect your overall wellness

Your gut health is the foundation of your overall wellness. It’s the realm keeper, and it lets you know when something is off in your body. When you have a healthy gut, it can be hard to imagine that there could be anything wrong with you.

But when your digestive system isn’t working properly–whether because of stress or an unhealthy diet–your immune system may become compromised as well. The result? You might experience everything from bloating to indigestion to painful cramps after eating certain foods (like gluten).

Your digestive tract contains trillions of bacteria that play an important role in how well food is digested and absorbed into your bloodstream. These bacteria help regulate inflammation throughout the body by producing anti-inflammatory molecules called endotoxins or lipopolysaccharides (LPS). These molecules help reduce inflammation. However, they also cause tissue damage if there are too many circulating at once due to a compromised intestinal barrier function caused by leaky gut syndrome (LGS).

Schedule a consultation today for Gut Health Testing in Indianapolis, IN

The health of your gut can dramatically affect your overall wellness. This article has explored some of the ways in which it does so, including how food affects it and how stress impacts it as well. We hope that by now you have a better understanding of how important this system is for keeping us healthy and happy! Do you live near Greenwood, IN, Carmel, IN or Fishers, IN, and want to find out more about gut health testing? If so, we encourage you to schedule a consultation with Annamarie Salyer FNP-C at Bion Aesthetics and Med Spa in Indianapolis, IN.

Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!

Bion Aesthetics and Med Spa offers comprehensive, individualized, and a holistic approach to total wellness and age management. By focusing on customized medicine, Bion Aesthetics and Med Spa helps patients earlier in the aging process in order to help prevent, rather than treat age-related issues. Founded and run by Annamarie Salyer FNP-C, Bion Aesthetics and Med Spa is dedicated to helping patients identify the root causes of any issues in order to restore the body to its peak performance, alleviate symptoms and ultimately, reverse the effects of aging and prevent age-related diseases. Bion Aesthetics and Med Spa creates personalized treatment plans with proven, effective and safe anti-aging solutions that include highly advanced testing, bioidentical hormone therapy, nutrient therapy, sexual health programs, medical aesthetics, weight loss and much more.

Blog Categories

Request a consultation

Get started today.

DO NOT send personal health information through this form.

Bion Aesthetics and Med Spa

Who we are

At Bion Aesthetics and Med Spa, we focus on finding a comprehensive, individualized, and scientific approach to aesthetic and medical rejuvenation.

Recent posts