The No-BS Guide to Better Gut Health

No gimmicks, supplements, or special diets necessary.

By Erica SloanMedically reviewed by Kerri Glassner, DO

September 4, 2024

If you feel like everyone and their mother is on a quest to improve their gut health (or proselytizing about a pill or potion that’s “healed” theirs), you’re not wrong. In a 2021 survey conducted by market research agency Mintel, nearly three in five people in the US said they try to eat foods that will give them a healthier gut. On TikTok, gut-health content is so prolific, it has its own hashtag (#guttok) that’s ballooned with billions of views. It all demonstrates a ton of appetite for gut-helpers—which the cash-stuffed digestive health industry has swooped in to satisfy.

Plenty of valid concerns are fueling the hype. For starters, research estimates that two-thirds of Americans deal with GI symptoms like bloating, heartburn, diarrhea, and constipation. And it’s hard to overstate how much these issues can trickle into your everyday life, impacting your ability to do basic things like eat well, poop regularly, and even have sex. Not to mention, there’s ever-growing research connecting your gut to other aspects of your well-being, like your mental state and immune system, so it’s not a stretch to say that giving your gut what it needs could set off positive ripple effects throughout the rest of your body.

The tricky part is there’s no one way that a healthy gut should look, Priya Simoes, MBBS, a board-certified gastroenterologist and assistant professor of gastroenterology at Mount Sinai in New York City, tells SELF. “Good” digestive health just means “not being plagued by gut-related symptoms,” and “more scientifically, having a diverse gut microbiome,” Dr. Simoes says, describing a colon teeming with all sorts of beneficial bugs (a.k.a. probiotics). “But there is no gold-standard set of bacteria that everyone should have,” she says. “More is better, but there’s huge [variation] from person to person.” Meaning, the mix of microbes that make up a healthy GI tract in one person might look super different in another.

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That’s why there’s unfortunately no “one-size-fits-all” probiotic supplement you can take as a quick fix, Olufemi Kassim, MD, a board-certified gastroenterologist and clinical assistant professor in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, tells SELF. Instead, improving your gut health looks more like nurturing the good bacteria that already live in your digestive tract by taking care of yourself. “A lot of the habits that were ingrained in us as children (like, “Eat your fruits and vegetables” and “Get good sleep”) still very much hold true here,” Dr. Simoes says.

Here’s exactly what gastroenterologists say you can do to improve your gut health, and how these everyday strategies will keep you—and your personal colony of bacteria—thriving.

1. Go big on fiber.

If gut health is the stage, fiber steals the spotlight. All five of the experts we spoke with recommend upping your intake of fiber (a.k.a. plant carbohydrates we can’t easily digest) by eating more foods rich in the stuff, like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and legumes. After all, most Americans are falling short of the USDA benchmark of roughly 28 grams of fiber a day (by a lot!)—and there are a bunch of different ways that this nutrient can help your gut.

You’ve probably heard it can keep you regular. Insoluble fiber (which doesn’t dissolve in your GI tract) adds bulk to your stool, pushing it along so you don’t wind up constipated. Longer term, having consistent poops may also lower your risk of colorectal cancer, in part by just keeping stool from hanging out for too long in your colon, Dr. Kassim says.

Other kinds of fiber, like many soluble types (which dissolve partially in the gut to form a gel-like substance), can act as fuel for the probiotics living in your colon, Dr. Simoes says, allowing them to outnumber and overpower the bad guys. Indeed, research shows that a high-fiber diet allows supportive bacterial strains like Bifidobacteria and Lactobacilli to proliferate, while disease-causing ones diminish. As your good gut bacteria nosh on fiber, they produce short-chain fatty acids, which nourish the cells of your colon, Dr. Simoes says (and this also contributes to lowering your risk of colorectal cancer).

Just note: That breakdown process can create some gas, potentially making you feel a little bloated—so you should incorporate fiber gradually into your diet, Taneisha Grant, MD, a board-certified gastroenterologist at Yale Medicine and assistant professor at Yale School of Medicine, tells SELF. “Start by introducing five grams, and increase in increments of five each day,” she says. (For reference, that’s about a 1/2-cup of oats or half an avocado.)

2. Remix your plant foods.

Sure, changing up your everyday meals keeps life interesting and helps you avoid the dreaded food rut. But it can also meaningfully support your gut microbiome. It turns out, the greater the variety of plants you can work into your diet, the more diverse your gut flora will be, Megan Rossi, PhD, RD, research fellow in nutritional sciences at King’s College London and founder of The Gut Health Doctor, tells SELF. “An observational study found that people who ate more than 30 types of plants in a week had a more diverse gut microbiome than those who ate fewer than 10 types of plants,” she says, “even though they had very similar volumes of plants.”

The researchers speculated that the additional kinds of fiber present in the diets of the creative eaters were fermented by distinct types of bacteria—meaning, more strains could flourish. Versus the opposite outcome: “If, for instance, you were to just eat blueberries, then you’d only be feeding the gut bacteria that like blueberries,” Dr. Rossi says, “and neglecting the ones that like, say, quinoa or lentils or chickpeas.” Over time, then, only the blueberry-eaters would proliferate.

There’s also a variety of different phytochemicals (a.k.a. plant chemicals) that play a role here, including polyphenols, Dr. Rossi adds. They might be best known as antioxidants (which fend off cell-damaging molecules called free radicals), but newer research suggests they’re also fermented by your friendly gut bacteria, further supporting a healthy microbiome. Just another reason to load your plate with plants of any kind and color, she says.

3. Hydrate yourself well—for real.

Drinking enough water lubricates your GI tract so things can slip and slide with ease. You don’t necessarily need to aim for a hard-and-fast eight glasses a day, but it’s a good idea to keep a refillable bottle by your side and make an effort to sip it regularly, Dr. Simoes says. (A few signs that you need to drink more? Pee that looks more like apple juice than lemonade; having a dry mouth, lips, or skin; and yes, feeling thirsty.)

Perhaps the most obvious gut-health benefit of staying hydrated is avoiding constipation, which can be triggered or exacerbated by a lack of fluids, Dr. Grant says. And that applies all the more when you’re loading up on plant foods: Fiber binds with water in your digestive tract to move things along, so if you’re not replenishing fluids and you’re eating a good deal of fruits and veggies, you’re likely to find yourself backed up.

What may be more surprising is the gut-healthy role of hydration for folks with acid reflux. Being dehydrated can reduce the amount of saliva you’re producing, which “isn’t just for softening the food you chew but also helps lubricate the lining of your esophagus,” Dr. Grant says. Less saliva could mean you’re less able to clear acid from your throat, possibly increasing reflux symptoms, she explains. Whereas, staying well-hydrated ensures you can continue making a typical amount of saliva, which may help keep heartburn at bay.

4. Avoid popping antibiotics except when they’re prescribed.

You may need to take antibiotics to kill a bad strain of bacteria that’s causing an infection like strep throat, certain types of pneumonia, or a UTI, to name a few; these medications can bring serious relief and even save your life. But because most common antibiotics are broad-spectrum, they’ll often knock out a lot of your good gut bugs, too. It’s why Victoria Louwagie, DMSc, MS, PA-C, physician assistant in gastroenterology at Mayo Clinic Health System in Mankato, Minnesota, stresses only taking antibiotics when they’re “absolutely indicated or prescribed by a health professional.” That means not stockpiling them for when you might feel sick in the future or taking a friend’s Z-pack, for instance, when you think you feel a sinus infection coming on.

A course of antibiotics can leave you with an out-of-whack gut microbiome, which can allow bad actors like the bacterium C.difficile to multiply, Louwagie tells SELF. In this case, you could wind up with “significant, volume-depleting diarrhea and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth,” she says (a.k.a. SIBO, an excess of bacteria in a section of your GI tract where they don’t normally live, which can cause bloating and pain). That’s part of the reason why some physicians are being more careful about “not prescribing unnecessary antibiotics for things like upper respiratory infections,” Dr. Simoes says, “which tend to be viruses and aren’t helped much with antibiotics.”

If you do wind up needing an antibiotic, be on the lookout for really unpleasant digestive symptoms like diarrhea, which could indicate a wonky gut response, and flag these to your doctor, Louwagie suggests. Otherwise, take solace in the fact that your gut is generally resilient, and over time, by sticking to the suggestions on this list—particularly eating lots of fiber—you can restore the beneficial bugs that might’ve been wiped out by the drug.

Researchers are excited about these beneficial bugs—but there are a ton of unknowns once you stuff them into a pill.

5. Do some heart-pumping movement a few times a week.

You don’t just work your muscles when you exercise; physical activity can also trigger your intestines to contract and get things flowing through your GI system. The runners in the room are probably well aware of this effect—but you actually don’t need to be sprinting or even jogging to feel it. Any kind of movement can help keep your bowels regular and prevent constipation versus being sedentary, Dr. Grant says. (Fart walk, anyone?)

A growing body of research also links exercise with positive shifts in the gut microbiome, Dr. Simoes says. A 2023 analysis of studies on the topic found that doing aerobic training in 30- to 90-minute sessions three to five times a week sparks the greatest increase in bacterial diversity (a marker of a happy gut), as opposed to doing either less or more. As for why? It’s not yet totally clear, but it seems that a certain amount of cardio can change the chemicals released as part of your metabolism, bolstering the growth of good bacteria. (The same analysis notes that pairing aerobics with resistance training—a great idea for other parts of your body, like your muscles and bones—can amplify that gut benefit, though strength workouts alone don’t seem to bring about the same effects.)

Aiming for a few half-hour cardio sessions a week is fantastic, but if that’s feeling ambitious, easing into a physical activity that gets your heart rate up for 15 minutes just a couple times a week can make a difference, Dr. Grant says. Even better if you can find something you look forward to, whether that’s riding your bike, dancing, kickboxing, or something else entirely.

You might notice that moving your body regularly also makes you feel less stressed, Louwagie adds, which could have trickle-down benefits for your gut, too (more on that below).

6. Try your best to reduce the stress in your life.

If you’ve been blessed (read: cursed) enough to deal with stress-related diarrhea or constipation, you already know the gut can respond poorly to any sort of mental upset. The reason why has to do with the gut-brain axis: Feedback flows constantly between your GI tract and your brain, Dr. Kassim says, which is how you perceive hunger and fullness—but stress triggers a little chaos in that loop. “You can think of the nerves that innervate the gut becoming live wires [under stress],” Dr. Rossi says. So, normal intestinal movements, which you might not typically notice, can translate as abdominal pain or upset. Stress can also trigger spasms of different parts of your intestines, either moving poop through them too quickly or too slowly, all of which can cause discomfort.

Longer-term, harboring stress might even alter your trusty microbiome—potentially increasing the ratio of bad-to-good bacteria—and weaken the lining of your gut, letting harmful bugs more easily seep into your blood.

That’s all to say, you’ll be doing your gut a favor—both now and in the future—by making an intentional effort to reduce your stress level. That’s obviously easier said than done, but incorporating even a few minutes of meditation into each day, practicing deep-breathing or grounding techniques in moments of anxiety, and trying out an exercise like yoga that focuses on connecting your breath to your movement can help, Dr. Grant says.

An important note: It’s also possible for an off-kilter gut to influence your mood—after all, the connection between your brain and digestive tract is bidirectional. Specifically, having a GI condition like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) that causes irritation and pain can make you more likely to develop a mental health condition; and emerging research suggests that an imbalance in certain gut bacteria may also be part of what initially causes depression. So, if you’re dealing with both mental and gastro symptoms, it’s worth seeking out a therapist in addition to a GI doctor so you can tackle both pieces of the puzzle in tandem.

7. Actually get to bed.

Much like being stressed, not getting enough sleep can throw your gut into a tizzy. “Research shows that as little as two nights of disturbed sleep can actually change the profile of your microbiome in a negative way,” Dr. Rossi says. Indeed, a 2023 analysis of several studies looking at the effect of different kinds of sleep loss on the gut found a consistent drop in beneficial Bacteroidetes bacteria and a subsequent rise in their less-friendly counterpart Firmicutes. Not to mention, people with a GI condition like IBS or inflammatory bowel disease (like Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis) tend to experience worse symptoms in the wake of poor sleep, Dr. Kassim says.

Though scientists are still untangling why sleep loss can have these downstream consequences for your gut, it likely has to do with your body’s stress response to being fatigued. Lack of sleep can skew the balance of your nervous system, over-activating your sympathetic (a.k.a. “fight-or-flight”) system and increasing your cortisol levels—all of which can trigger “an inflammatory cascade” that may be detrimental to your gut, Dr. Grant says.

On the flip side, a few studies have shown that markers of good sleep, like high self-reported sleep quality and high efficiency (spending most of your time in bed actually snoozing), are linked with a broader mix of gut microbes. All the more reason to prioritize quality shuteye, both by setting aside a good seven to nine hours for it and brushing up on your sleep hygiene (for instance, ditching screens an hour before bed and following a soothing nighttime routine). As with most of the items on this list, it’s a habit your gut bugs are as likely to appreciate as the rest of your body.

Erica Sloan is the senior health writer at SELF, where she covers sleep, mental well-being, and sexual and reproductive health, among other health topics. Previously, she was the senior lifestyle editor at Well+Good, and she’s also held editorial positions at Martha Stewart Living, Prevention, and Washingtonian. Erica lives in New... Read more