How Gut Health for Glowing Skin Supports Better Energy, Mood, and Radiance
When last did you do a gut-check? No, not to check your resolve, commitment, or priorities, but to actually understand if your gut is happy and healthy.
These check-ins are important because there’s a powerful link between your gut health and your overall well-being.
Issues like fatigue, bloating, and mood dips are signs that things aren’t in check in your digestive system.
An imbalanced gut microbiome – the ecosystem of trillions of bacteria and other microorganisms in your digestive tract – can manifest in various ways beyond just digestive issues.
How an Unhealthy Gut Shows Up
Your gut and brain are in constant, two-way communication through a network of nerves, hormones, and immune pathways, a relationship known as the gut-brain axis¹.
When this connection is disrupted, it can lead to various physical and mental symptoms.
Bloating
One of the most immediate and common signs of an unhealthy gut is that dreaded bloat. When there’s an overgrowth of “bad” bacteria or a lack of beneficial bacteria, the gut struggles to digest food properly.
Slower digestion means food can over-ferment in your intestines, producing excess gas that causes a feeling of fullness, distension, and discomfort.
Fatigue
An unhealthy gut can lead to fatigue in several ways². An imbalanced microbiome may impair your body’s ability to absorb essential nutrients, such as iron, magnesium, and B vitamins, which are crucial for energy production.
Additionally, there is a bidirectional relationship between gut inflammation and sleep. Gut inflammation can interfere with your sleep cycle, while disrupted sleep, circadian rhythms and melatonin production also impact inflammation regulators in the gastrointestinal (Gl) tract³.
Furthermore, gut inflammation can disrupt the production of hormones that regulate energy levels by damaging enteroendocrine cells⁴ – the primary producers of hormones that control appetite, blood sugar, and metabolism – and promoting stress responses that alter cortisol levels, leaving you feeling tired even after a full night’s sleep.
Glow With a Healthier Gut
Your gut is often referred to as your “second brain” because it produces about 90% of your body’s serotonin, a key neurotransmitter that regulates mood, sleep, and appetite.
While it is the serotonin in the brain that directly affects mood, sleep, and appetite, the serotonin produced in the gut plays a role in regulating these functions by communicating with the brain and influencing the body’s overall physiological processes, including digestive system function.
An imbalanced gut microbiome can affect production of this important neurotransmitter, leading to mood swings, anxiousness, and even depression⁵.
Gut inflammation can also trigger immune responses that impact brain function and emotional regulation⁶.
Glow With a Healthier Gut
Cultivating a healthy gut is a holistic process that requires a conscious effort to nourish your body from the inside out.
By focusing on a few key areas, you can help restore balance and promote a sense of vitality and glowing health.
Eating a diverse diet that is rich in natural, predominantly plant-based foods and fibre is the cornerstone of gut health. Fibre acts as a prebiotic, which feeds the beneficial probiotic bacteria in your gut.
Aim to “eat the rainbow” with a wide range of colourful fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and whole grains.
Incorporate more fermented foods, such as yoghurt and kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi and kombucha, to increase the population and diversity in beneficial bacteria that help create a balanced gut. Adding probiotic supplements to your regimen can also help.
Limit processed foods, unhealthy fats and sugar as these foodstuffs can feed the “bad” bacteria in your gut, leading to an imbalanced microbiome and inflammation.
It is also important to stay hydrated to support optimal digestion and prevent constipation, which can contribute to bloating and discomfort.
Supplement Support
In addition to dietary and lifestyle changes, certain supplements and foods can be powerful allies in your journey toward a healthier gut.
- Primal Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV) supports healthy digestion with its mix of beneficial bacteria, proteins, and enzymes. The acetic acid in ACV may also act as a prebiotic, feeding the beneficial bacteria that are already present⁷.
- Primal L-Glutamine 5000 serves as a primary fuel source for the cells lining your intestinal wall, and helps repair and strengthen your intestinal lining. By supporting gut barrier function, glutamine may help to reduce the bloating and inflammation caused by issues like leaky gut syndrome.
- Hydrolysed collagen, like the types I and III found in Primal Beauty Collagen, also provides structure and strength to the lining of your digestive tract⁸. The amino acids in collagen, particularly glycine and proline, are crucial for the growth and repair of this lining.
- While some people with lactose sensitivity may find whey protein difficult to digest, a high-quality product like Primal Skinny Whey, which contains whey in isolate and hydrolysate form, can support your gut health.
Whey contains immunoglobulins and lactoferrin⁹, which are compounds that have a prebiotic-like effect, helping to nourish beneficial gut bacteria. It also provides a rich source of amino acids that support the overall health and repair of the digestive tract. Furthermore, whey protein can stimulate the production of certain gut hormones (like GLP-1 and cholecystokinin) that aid in digestion and nutrient absorption¹⁰.
By nurturing your gut with these nutritional tips and products, you’re building a foundation for overall well-being that can lead to improved energy, a more stable mood, and greater digestive comfort and function.
S0 PRIMAL APPLE CIDER VINEGAR. Each vegetable capsule contains: apple cider vinegar (as Malus pumila Mill. fruit, 7% apple acid) 500 mg, taurine 50 mg, pyridoxine (as hydrochloride) 1 mg, chromium (as polynicotinate) 50 ug. Complementary Medicine. This unregistered medicine has not been evaluated by SAHPRA for its quality, safety or intended use.
References:
- Appleton J. The Gut-Brain Axis: Influence of Microbiota on Mood and Mental Health. Integr Med (Encinitas). 2018 Aug;17(4):28-32. PMID: 31043907; PMCID: PMC6469458.
- Wang, JH., Choi, Y., Lee, JS. et al. Clinical evidence of the link between gut microbiome and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: a retrospective review. Eur J Med Res 29, 148 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40001-024-01747-1.
- Swanson GR, Burgess HJ, Keshavarzian A. Sleep disturbances and inflammatory bowel disease: a potential trigger for disease flare? Expert Rev Clin Immunol. 2011 Jan;7(1):29-36. doi: 10.1586/eci.10.83. PMID: 21162647; PMCID: PMC3046047.
- Xie C, Jones KL, Rayner CK, Wu T. Enteroendocrine Hormone Secretion and Metabolic Control: Importance of the Region of the Gut Stimulation. Pharmaceutics. 2020 Aug 21;12(9):790. doi: 10.3390/pharmaceutics12090790. PMID: 32825608; PMCID: PMC7559385.
- Mhanna A, Martini N, Hmaydoosh G, Hamwi G, Jarjanazi M, Zaifah G, Kazzazo R, Haji Mohamad A, Alshehabi Z. The correlation between gut microbiota and both neurotransmitters and mental disorders: A narrative review. Medicine (Baltimore). 2024 Feb 2;103(5):e37114. doi: 10.1097/MD.0000000000037114. PMID: 38306525; PMCID: PMC10843545.
- Hall CV, Radford-Smith G, Savage E, Robinson C, Cocchi L, Moran RJ. Brain signatures of chronic gut inflammation. Front Psychiatry. 2023 Nov 7;14:1250268. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1250268. PMID: 38025434; PMCID: PMC10661239.
- Boying Wang, Kay Rutherfurd-Markwick, Ninghui Liu, Xue-Xian Zhang, Anthony N. Mutukumira, Probiotic potential of acetic acid bacteria isolated from kombucha in New Zealand in vitro, The Microbe, Volume 4, 2024, 100130, ISSN 2950-1946, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.microb.2024.100130.
- Chen Q, Chen O, Martins IM, Hou H, Zhao X, Blumberg JB, Li B. Collagen peptides ameliorate intestinal epithelial barrier dysfunction in immunostimulatory Caco-2 cell monolayers via enhancing tight junctions. Food Funct. 2017 Mar 22;8(3):1144-1151. doi: 10.1039/c6fo01347c. PMID: 28174772.
- Ostertag F, Hinrichs J. Enrichment of Lactoferrin and Immunoglobulin G from Acid Whey by Cross-Flow Filtration. Foods. 2023 May 26;12(11):2163. doi: 10.3390/foods12112163. PMID: 37297408; PMCID: PMC10252284.
- Veldhorst, M. A. B., Nieuwenhuizen, A. G., Hochstenbach-Waelen, S. S., Westerterp, K. R., Engelen, M. P. K. J., Brummer, R. J. M., Deutz, N. E. P., & Westerterp-Plantenga, M. S. (2009). A dose-response effect of whey protein on postprandial appetite and food intake in normal-weight young adults. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 89(6), 1801–1808.