6 Expert Strategies for a Healthy Gut in 2024

Experts say you should put your resolutions where your health is—in your gut. They offer simple ways to get healthy without focusing on how much you weigh.

Focusing on the health of the gut microbiome could be the key to reaching other New Year's resolutions. Shutterstock

When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, we tend to return to the same old abstract ideations that didn’t work in previous years: eat better and exercise more.

However, our ritualistic resolutions aren’t really working to solve the crisis of weight gain—and the associated diseases—that our country is facing.

In fact, it almost seems that the more we’ve collectively obsessed over weight, the more pounds our nation has put on. Perhaps that’s because we aren’t putting enough focus on a critical decider of our health: our gut microbiome. That’s the community of symbiotic microorganisms that help us to metabolize food so we can function.

“A lot of people have weight loss goals, but holding onto weight or gaining weight is a symptom,” Chelsea Blackbird, a nutritionist and co-owner of The School of Christian Health and Nutrition, told The Epoch Times. “Once you’re in better health, and gut health is a huge part of that, other things improve.”

She pointed out that even a really good diet may not be enough to facilitate sustained weight loss or improved health if the gut microbiome isn’t optimal. The gut microbiome consists of bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other tiny organisms.

As with insomnia, low energy, and brain fog, the tendency to carry extra weight may be an indicator that something isn’t functioning correctly in your body. There’s a high likelihood that this is reflected in your microbial community, which constantly changes in response to your diet and behaviors.

In other words, sustained weight loss isn’t always a simple “calories in, calories out” equation. Ms. Blackbird said a focus on improving the way that your gut functions, even outside of the quality of your food, can impart lasting health transformations that extend beyond the numbers on your scale.

Weighty Dangers

There’s a relationship between the microbiome and obesity, although researchers are still muddling through precisely how the two affect one another. But it makes sense that they would be related because metabolites made by microbiota contribute to body functions such as balancing blood glucose and producing hormones, including those that tell us whether we’re hungry or full.

Studies of twins have indicated that lean twins have diverse, rich microbial communities, while obese twins don’t have as many beneficial microbes. The rise of obesity also mirrors the loss of various bacteria and other microorganisms from the human gut.

A decade ago, there wasn’t a single U.S. state with an obesity rate above 35 percent. Today, 19 states exceed that level, and more than 40 percent of U.S. adults are obese, according to the Trust for America’s Health.

Health care expenses are also on the rise, with the total health benefit cost per employee expected to increase by 5.4 percent in 2024, according to Mercer’s national survey of employer-sponsored health plans. The typical increase is 3 percent to 4 percent. Mercer, a human resources and financial consulting firm, attributes the larger increase to inflation and industry labor shortages that have increased health care costs.

Obesity hits the pocketbook even harder. For adults who are above normal weight, the expense is about double that of those with normal weight, who pay an average of $2,504 in health care expenses annually, according to a 2021 study in the Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy.

The amount spent goes up as the degree of obesity rises—up to $5,850 in average annual health care expenses. The expenses examined were for inpatient and outpatient care, as well as for pharmaceuticals.

As Americans have gained weight, we’ve also lost many of the species that inhabited our gut. There are some known contributing factors to decreased microbial diversity, including a standard U.S. diet that includes more processed foods than ever before, as well as antibiotic exposure. This exposure can come through firsthand antibiotic use, particularly of broad-spectrum antibiotics that wipe out nearly all microbes, as well as the consumption of foods from animals that have been treated with antibiotics.

Our lifestyle is vastly different than it was just a few generations ago, too, including a new obsession with hygiene that kills off even beneficial bugs and exposure to glyphosate and other toxic chemicals in our food and water.

Top Gut Health Resolutions

There’s plenty of evidence that protecting and nurturing our microbiome can have drastic effects on various facets of our health.

And because only about 9 percent of Americans ever achieve their New Year’s resolutions, perhaps it’s time to give the tradition a new spin. Several experts have shared their top gut-health resolutions for 2024 with The Epoch Times.

Eat Plenty of Plant-Based Foods

In the lingo of modern science, everything is made out of chemicals, and that includes the natural substances in plants and our bodies. Some chemicals are much better for us than others.

“In general, plant-based foods are filled with chemicals that are good for the body, called phytonutrients. They have fiber, which is so good for gut health. They have prebiotics, which is food for the bacteria, which creates more of a healthy microbiome,” Dr. Joel Evans, founder and director of The Center for Functional Medicine, told The Epoch Times.

His personal strategy is to use his plate to measure his goal. He said in the past, protein has taken up about half of his plate, but in 2024, he would like vegetables to make up three-quarters of his plate, with about three to four ounces of protein.

A study in 2023 showed for the first time that vegetables and fruit have bacteria cells that can help us diversify our microbial community. Some nutrition experts say it’s better to do an “addition” diet than one that eliminates food. Rather than focus on what you can’t eat, which can be a little joyless, focus on eating more of what’s good for you.

Regulate Your Immune System

A top microbiome expert, Dr. Sabine Hazan, told The Epoch Times that she continues to focus on boosting the microbiome of her patients with vitamins C and D and zinc—a trio of supplements that she and many others have used since early on during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The combination has been shown to lessen the severity of the virus, as well as lower the risk of hospitalization. Dr. Hazan, a researcher and gastroenterologist who founded ProgenaBiome, created a blend that she has named “Biome Boosters.”

“There’s a misconception out there that probiotics are the end-all, be-all. It’s all about the nutrients that feed the microbes, not taking in microbes,” she said. “Boost your nutrients, especially in a world of probiotics when you can’t trust the probiotics that are out there.”

Rather than taking probiotics, which are usually just one strain that may not be the right one or may not contain an effective dose, Dr. Hazan said to focus on eating fermented foods and removing synthetic sugars, fake foods, and meats that have been treated with vaccines, hormones, or antibiotics.

Check Every Ingredient Label

“Read the ingredient label of packaged foods to spot and avoid emulsifiers that research shows could be harmful to your gut microbiome,” said physician and scientist Dr. William Li, bestselling author of “Eat to Beat Your Diet: Burn Fat, Heal Your Metabolism, and Live Longer.”

Look out for ingredients that don’t seem natural, he told The Epoch Times. In particular, carboxymethylcellulose and polysorbate 80 were found to “profoundly impact intestinal microbiota in a manner that promotes gut inflammation and associated disease states,” according to a study published in Microbiome in 2021.

Other food additives, especially those with emulsifying properties, could also be problematic for the function of the gut microbiome. Because there are many unknowns about how synthetic ingredients affect human health, avoiding them is the best course of action.

Reset Your Circadian Rhythm

“This is one you probably don’t hear about much, but it’s so important to align with your gut’s circadian rhythm,” Ms. Blackbird said. “Every system in the body has an ideal time to do its work—including the digestive system.”

The way that we inform the gut about the time of day is by when we expose our body to sunlight and by when we eat, she said. Spending more time outside and getting more early-morning sun exposure are important ways to nurture a healthy circadian rhythm.

Also, our bodies are designed to eat and process food during daylight hours. Using shift workers to research how sleep affects the microbiome, a 2023 study was able to connect disrupted circadian rhythms to a change in the gut microbiome that affected physiological processes.

“When we eat past daylight, everything gets sluggish. Foods that sit in the gut longer are going to cause bloating. You’re going to have more gas. You’re not going to process food well. You’re going to have more reflux,” Ms. Blackbird said. “We also have certain gut microbes that are day workers and some that are night workers.”

Give up Mouthwash

“Anyone who is using mouthwash—and that’s two-thirds of Americans—should think about giving up that habit and never going back again,” functional dentist Dr. Mark Burhenne told The Epoch Times. “They’re destroying their oral microbiome. ... and that feeds and seeds the gut microbiome.”

Subjects in a 2020 study in Scientific Reports used placebo mouthwash in one group and chlorhexidine mouthwash in another for seven days so that researchers could see how they affected different health markers. What they found was that the chlorhexidine mouthwash changed the makeup of the oral microbial community and shifted the saliva pH, increasing glucose while lowering saliva and plasma nitrite concentrations. Nitrite has been associated with inhibiting the growth of periodontal bacteria.

The study notes a trend of higher blood pressure after seven days of using the mouthwash.

“If someone asked me if you could wish a New Year’s resolution for everyone, it would be very simple. Just ditch the mouthwash,” Dr. Burhenne said. “Do tongue scraping, flossing, and, of course, eating well. That’s enough. These disinfecting, bactericidal mouthwashes are a mistake in so many ways.”

Address Stress

“You need to have something in your life that’s truly cathartic,” immune function researcher William Parker, a visiting scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told The Epoch Times.

Exercising on a treadmill while worrying about work doesn’t count, he said. Too many Americans aren’t practicing regular stress recovery, and continuous stress exposure is associated with changes in the microbial community.

A 2023 John Hopkins study even found that lower levels of Lactobacillus appear to change the stress response and may lead to depression.

Mr. Parker noted that stress-reduction activities shouldn’t be stress-inducing. In some cases, vigorous workouts only increase cortisol—the hormone released during a stress response—especially as we age.

“It can’t be a vicious cycle,” he said. “It’s not about burning calories on a treadmill. It’s more about something that gets your mind and body working in harmony.”

Be Realistic

“The most important thing about New Year’s resolutions is to set realistic ones. The worst thing that you can do is to set unrealistic ones and then fail at the first hurdle,” Mays Al-Ali, a naturopath and gut health nutritionist, told The Epoch Times.

If you set a general intention such as “heal my gut,” she suggested also adding a list of actionable items that might include what inflammatory foods you’ll remove from your diet and what nourishing ones you'll add.