Summertime is often associated with tasty seasonal treats and plenty of opportunities to indulge, but if you’re concerned about how to clean digestive tract and how to maintain your gut health over the summer, you may want to be proactive in looking after your digestion. Poor digestion can have ramifications in other areas of your overall health, and could put a serious damper on your summer.
Fortunately, you can take baby steps, from eliminating sugary summer snacks to doing a full-on digestive cleanse and more, to help keep your gut health intact. Here’s what you need to understand about maintaining a healthy gut this summer.
What Causes An Unhealthy Digestive Tract?
Before you can start nurturing better gut health, it’s important to understand what can make your digestive tract unhealthy in the first place. The summer season is often filled with backyard barbecues, picnics and get-togethers that can potentially lead to excessive indulgence, dehydration, heat stroke and even altered sleep schedules, all of which could potentially throw your gut health out of balance. Some common causes of unhealthy digestive systems and imbalanced gut flora include:
- Eating too few fruits and veggies or too few foods with probiotics
- Indulging in excessively rich, greasy or sugary summer treats
- Having a highly irregular sleep schedule
- Experiencing a health condition such as diverticulitis, irritable bowel syndrome, lactose intolerance or celiac disease
- Becoming dehydrated, getting food poisoning or experiencing heat exhaustion or heat stroke
First Step To Improving Gut Health
If you’re concerned that you may already have an unhealthy digestive tract and are wondering how to restart your digestive system, the good news is that starting small can make a big difference. Although you may be tempted to do a big overhaul of your routine, just making a few gut-friendly adjustments could do the trick. It may be helpful to identify your biggest weaknesses or temptations during the summer season and start there. For example, if you know that barbecues tend to tempt you to eat too many greasy foods, stay up too late or neglect your hydration levels, make sure to bring a healthy snack with you and avoid overindulging while at the barbecue. In order to start making more significant adaptations to your current gut health, you might consider:
- Doing a quick detox to help reset your system
- Spending some time exercising outdoors every morning
- Incorporating more probiotics into your diet or supplementation regime
- Eating plenty of fresh, in-season foods
- Getting your circadian rhythm on track by focusing on getting higher-quality sleep
Even though the summer season may provide plenty of opportunities to indulge and become lax when it comes to your gut health, digestive issues can quickly put a damper on summer festivities and may well have ramifications on your overall well being after the summer is over. In order to keep your gut healthy and fully intact this summer, make sure you understand the factors that can cause an unhealthy digestive tract and start taking steps in the healthy direction.
