How to Keep Your Gut Healthy as You Get Older

Author's Bio: Katie Bailey, MS, RD, LD, FNC

Hi everyone. Welcome back.

As we age, maintaining a healthy gut becomes increasingly important for our overall health. Our gut impacts everything from our immune system, our mood, and our energy levels. The digestive system undergoes changes as we age that affects our gut microbiome and therefore impacts our health.

In today's video, I'll be discussing how does aging impact our gut health, and what are some dietary and lifestyle strategies that can help us to keep our gut healthy as we age?

Hi, I'm Katie Bailey. I'm a gut health dietitian at Oswald Digestive Clinic, where we help individuals improve and resolve their bothersome gut issues. If you're interested in learning more about gut health, I'll have our free guide, Five Ways to Improve Your Gut Health here.

All right, let's get into today's video.

[Video Transcript Below Video - it is the same information]

How does aging impact gut health?

So aging significantly can alter our gut health through microbial diversity, digestive function, nutrient absorption, as well as systemic inflammation. The composition of our gut microbiome changes as we age, and it can lead to things like dysbiosis, which is an imbalance in the good, in the bad bacteria in your gut. Now, this dysbiosis can cause a lot of different health issues. Beneficial bacteria like bifido, bacterium and lactobacillus tend to be reduced as we get older. While there's an increase in more harmful bacteria, now dysbiosis can disrupt the integrity of our gut barrier and promote more inflammation, and this potentially can lead to more age-related diseases like arthritis and diabetes. Now, dysbiosis can also lower the production of our short chain fatty acids, and these are produced by our beneficial bacteria in the gut, and they help to combat inflammation and support our metabolic health.

So these are very important things that our bacteria create for us. If we have enough of the beneficial bacteria with a change in the beneficial microbes in our gut and increased inflammation, there is an increased risk for nutrient absorption, and this is going to lead to potentially having more nutrient deficiencies.

Another factor that impacts our gut health as we get older is reduced stomach acid and pancreatic enzyme production, as well as slower gut motility with reduced stomach acid and enzymes. Proper digestion is impaired, possibly leading to poor nutrient absorption, as well as GI symptoms like gas, bloating, or abdominal pain, and an increased risk for gastrointestinal conditions like IBS and IBD. With a slower gut, you're going to have an increased risk for constipation. As you can see, there are many different factors that can impact our gut health as we age. So really focusing on improving our gut health and maintaining a healthy gut is going to really help to mitigate these effects and improve our overall health.

What dietary and lifestyle strategies can help you keep your gut healthy as we age?

So let's jump into the dietary strategies first. So the first one is prioritizing fiber rich foods and prebiotic foods. So that's going to be a variety of different fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans and legumes, nuts and seeds. Now, fiber is what fuels that beneficial bacteria in our gut, which is going to promote more microbial diversity as well as increase the production of short chain fatty acids. It also is going to help to promote more regular bowel movements and reduce the risk of constipation as we get older. Now, you always want to make sure when you're increasing fiber that you do it slowly a little bit at a time, and always make sure you're drinking plenty of water as well, and the goal is to aim for at least 25 grams of fiber a day.

Next, you want to try to incorporate more fermented and probiotic rich foods. So this is things like yogurt, keifer, sauerkraut, and kimchi. These probiotics are going to introduce that beneficial bacteria into the gut in order to help maintain a healthy gut microbiome. Another thing you want to do is to choose anti-inflammatory foods, especially those omega threes that are found in your fatty fish, olive oil, walnuts, and flax seeds. This is all going to help to reduce inflammation in the gut. And then you also want to limit the consumption of heavily processed foods and added sugars because both of those things can help to promote inflammation as well as promote the growth of the harmful bacteria in your gut. The last thing I want to talk about before jumping into the lifestyle strategies is that you really need to optimize digestion in nutrient absorption. Now, some easy things you can do is to make sure that you're chewing your food thoroughly and eating slowly to really help aid in digestion.

Now, due to decreased stomach acid and enzyme production, some individuals may benefit from having digestive enzymes with their meals in order to further help break down their food. Now, this is not going to be everyone, but some people may benefit from that. Now, there are many different reasons why people struggle with digestive issues or absorption issues. So if you feel like you need help getting to the root cause of what might be causing your symptoms or what you're struggling with, then I would highly recommend that you work with a practitioner that can really look at your whole situation and your symptoms and come up with an individualized plan for you.

Alright, so now let's jump into the lifestyle strategies. The first one I want to talk about is prioritizing stress management. Now, I know we say this all the time, but it really is that important. So focusing on mindfulness, meditation, deep breathing, and even just spending more time outdoors can be really helpful. So chronic stress disrupts the gut-brain access. It can alter your microbial diversity and promote inflammation.

The next thing is to optimize your sleep. So poor sleep negatively impacts our gut microbiome and increases cortisol levels in inflammation. You really want to aim for seven to nine hours a night and really try to create a healthy nighttime routine to promote quality sleep.

Next is engaging in regular physical activity. So exercise is going to help with our gut motility and really help to get blood flow to the digestive system, and walking and swimming is particularly beneficial as we age. And then lastly, proper hydration. So making sure you're getting plenty of water is not only going to support our digestion, but it's also going to help promote regular bowel movements, which is really important as we age.

To wrap up our topic for today,

Maintaining gut health as we age can make a significant difference in our overall health. With aging, we see shifts in our gut microbiome, which can then lead to gastrointestinal symptoms or nutrient deficiencies, and an increased risk for constipation and inflammatory conditions. Eating a diet that's rich in probiotics, prebiotics, high fiber foods, and really trying to decrease the consumption of processed foods and added sugars can really help to promote a healthy gut microbiome. Now, it's also really important, like we talked about, to prioritize stress management, hydration, sleep, and exercise.

Okay, that's it for today's video. If you liked this video, please hit the like button and subscribe for more nutrition videos. If you're interested in working with our clinic, you could click the link here to schedule an appointment. We do take insurance. You can find more information about that on our website.

Thank you for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye.

If you'd like to explore any of this information further or obtain an individualized nutrition plan, you can schedule an initial appointment at our clinic.  We also take insurance and some of our clients get full coverage, which is great.

Or you can just start by downloading our FREE GUIDE: 5 WAYS TO IMPROVE GUT HEALTH  

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