How to Get a Healthy Gut: Your Ultimate Guide
- Dr. Brandon Heath
- Aug 27, 2025
- 8 min read
Updated: Oct 6, 2025
Do you ever feel like a hamster on a wheel? You go a mile a minute but get absolutely nowhere. That’s what it’s like when you’re trying to get your health under control without paying attention to your gut.
The Importance of a Healthy Gut
Understanding how to achieve a healthy gut is crucial for functioning at your highest level. You can try every health trick in the book—biohacking strategies for better brain function, nutrition changes to boost your energy, or the latest skincare product to reverse aging. But if you don’t have a healthy gut, it’s all in vain. Your gut health is a make-or-break component of optimizing your health and, ultimately, your life.
How good can life really be if you’re constantly dealing with fatigue, low energy, inability to focus, hormonal imbalances, excess weight, and chronic diseases? If you want to be invincible in life, your gut and health must be ironclad.
We’re going to tackle this problem together. I will show you what the gut is, what happens when it is unhealthy, and why it is so influential. Then, I will provide you with the tools you need to fix the situation. Think of this as your guidebook on “How to Get a Healthy Gut in 7 Steps.” Let’s jump off the hamster wheel and make some changes that will actually take us somewhere—your ultimate healthy body and mind.
What Exactly Is Your Gut?
I will talk a lot about your gut, so let’s clarify what I mean. Your gut is your digestive system, also known as your GI tract. This includes organs like your stomach, intestines, pancreas, and liver.
I will also mention your gut flora, or gut microbiota. This term refers to all the living creatures residing inside your body, totaling around 100 trillion. (Slightly creepy, right?)
What an Unhealthy – or Leaky – Gut Looks Like
Don’t worry; I won’t show you pictures. Instead, I will give you a clear word picture of what happens when your gut is unhealthy, often referred to as leaky gut. When you have a compromised digestive system, you may experience:
Diarrhea, constipation, or both
Frequent illness due to a lagging immune system
Headaches and brain fog
Food sensitivities, especially to gluten and dairy
Vitamin deficiencies
Allergies and/or asthma
Extreme exhaustion
Skin problems like acne, rosacea, or eczema
Cravings for sugar and carbs
Joint pain or arthritis
Depression, anxiety, or both
Autism, ADHD, and ADD
Autoimmune diseases like thyroid dysfunction, celiac, or Crohn’s
This list shows two things:
The gut influences many areas of the body.
These are common health problems affecting countless people every day.
Why All of This Happens
It all comes back to that gut flora I just mentioned. Bacteria can be either good or bad, friendly or hostile.
A quick use of logic leads us to realize we want less of the bad and more of the good. Healthy guts are filled with good bacteria, while unhealthy guts lack it. Unhealthy guts can also have compromised intestinal linings. This often happens from consuming a highly processed diet for too long, which is hard on the digestive system. Hard-to-digest proteins like gluten can cause microlesions in the gut, leading to leaky gut, food sensitivities, and autoimmune issues.
If your gut is unhealthy, you may also struggle with poor protein breakdown and nutrient absorption. This means your body isn’t absorbing essential vitamins and nutrients from food as it should, leading to micronutrient deficiencies and other health issues.
Antibiotics, while lifesaving, are not as selective as we’d like. They kill both bad and good bacteria, disrupting your gut flora. We are inundated with antibiotics:
We are overprescribed antibiotics, with at least 30% of prescriptions being unnecessary.
We ingest antibiotics given to animals when we eat conventional meat.
The CDC considers antibiotic resistance one of the world’s most pressing public health problems.
On top of antibiotics, toxic chemicals, pesticides, poor food choices, and antibacterial hand sanitizers further harm our gut bacteria.
Here’s the kicker: around 80% of your immune system resides in your gut. Many neurochemicals, like dopamine and serotonin, actually come from the intestine too. It’s no surprise that many medical professionals refer to the gut as the body’s “second brain.”
This means learning how to get a healthy gut not only improves your bowel movements but can change your entire life.
How to Get a Healthy Gut in 7 Steps
Now that you understand why a healthy gut is essential, let’s discuss how to achieve it. Here are seven steps to boost your gut health. You’ll see that diet is the main star of the show. If the digestive system can be the source of illness, it should also be your source of healing.
1. Add in Probiotic-Rich Foods
A healthy gut requires plenty of good bacteria. We can directly add more friendly bacteria to the gut through probiotics. Probiotics are friendly bacteria that protect, support, and optimize your entire gut. Anyone interested in learning how to get a healthy gut should start with fabulous food sources of probiotics and fermented foods, including:
Sauerkraut
Kimchi
Tempeh
Kombucha
Fermented pickles
The list doesn’t stop there. Any fermented food can contain probiotics, and just about any veggie or fruit can be fermented. You can easily make anything from fermented berries to fermented hot chili sauce.
Many people find that eliminating dairy while healing the gut is beneficial. However, if you still consume dairy, take advantage of two milk-based probiotic-rich foods: yogurt and kefir. If you choose dairy, opt for organic from grass-fed cows. Avoid conventional meat, as it’s often pumped full of antibiotics and hormones.
2. Add Prebiotic-Rich Foods to Your Diet
Now that you understand that a healthy gut needs probiotics, what about prebiotics? Prebiotics are a type of plant fiber, specifically FOS and inulin. Our bodies don’t digest fiber, but the good bacteria in our guts use it as fuel. Prebiotics essentially serve as food for probiotics.
As the good bacteria break down prebiotics, the parts not used for food can support the gut’s lining. While FOS and inulin are found in many fruits and vegetables, the following foods are particularly rich in prebiotics:
Chicory root
Jerusalem artichoke
Dandelion greens
Garlic
Leeks
Onion
Shallot
Asparagus
Jicama
Under-ripe banana
Pro tip: Consuming these prebiotics in their raw form can be even more powerful than when cooked.
3. Remove Frankengrains
The term “frankengrains” nods to the mad scientist way that wheat and other grains have been genetically altered over time. The wheat we have today in America is not the same as what our ancestors grew and ate. It has been adjusted and hybridized.
When learning how to get a healthy gut, you should eliminate:
All products containing wheat
All products containing gluten (be aware that gluten can hide in products like soy sauce, marinades, spice mixes, and more)
All genetically modified grains (don’t forget about corn, which is often genetically modified)
If you still want to include some grains in your diet, choose low-glycemic options. White rice, even organic, offers no nutrition and spikes blood sugar. Instead, try organic quinoa, buckwheat, or a tasty alternative like cauliflower rice.
4. Remove Inflammatory Foods
Inflammation is meant to protect us from invaders like viruses. However, good things taken to an extreme can become bad. When our bodies become inflamed without needing protection, we are in trouble. Inflammation and the gut have a close relationship that can be either good or bad. When the gut is healthy, inflammation tends to decrease. When the gut is unhealthy, inflammation increases.
The American diet is filled with sugar, starches, and saturated fats while lacking vitamins, minerals, fiber, omega-3 fatty acids, and antioxidants. This is the exact recipe for inflammation.
Kick these inflaming foods out of your diet immediately (replace them with probiotic and prebiotic-rich foods):
Sugar
Artificial sweeteners
Processed foods (especially processed meats, which are carcinogens)
Saturated fats (commonly found in processed foods)
Dairy
Trans fats (often found in butter replacements and some baked goods)
Non-organic, grain-fed meats
Fast food
Gluten/frankengrains
5. Include Bone Broth
Long ago, people consumed more of an animal than we do now. We may think we are diverse when we use the breast and thigh, chop and roast, but traditional meat consumption included everything—bones. Not by gnawing on bones, but by producing bone broth. This is why our grandmothers made us chicken soup when we were sick. We knew it made us feel better, but we weren’t sure why.
Science does. Bone broth is full of minerals like calcium and magnesium, as well as collagen and gelatin. These substances, along with bone broth’s ability to reduce inflammation, aid digestive problems, and absorb vital nutrients, make it essential for a healthy gut diet.
Here is a recipe to make your own bone broth. Apparently, grandma knew how to get a healthy gut all along.
6. Add in Supplements
Food is your medicine. What you eat and don’t eat plays a significant role in creating a gut that supports your entire body. However, we could all use a boost from time to time.
When you think of dietary supplements as an extra helping hand to an already gut-friendly diet, you set yourself up for success. Here are some top choices:
L-Glutamine: This amino acid fuels and supports your gut, particularly the gut lining. It also helps burn fat and build muscle.
Probiotics: We know probiotics are essential for gut health. While eating probiotic-rich foods is crucial, adding more through supplements can be incredibly helpful. Look for a brand with a high count of active cultures and no fillers.
Gelatin: This ingredient in desserts like Jell-O is a fabulous healer of the gut lining. However, don’t consume cherry Jell-O loaded with sugar to boost your health. While you can get gelatin from bone broth, you can also purchase it in supplement form.
Collagen powder: This substance that keeps your skin youthful can also rejuvenate your gut. Collagen can soothe and protect your gut while filling in fine lines and wrinkles. You can get collagen naturally from bone broth or supplement with it. We love adding collagen to our morning protein shakes.
7. Reduce Stress
Your gut health has another enemy: stress. It’s crucial to understand the negative impact stress can have on your body. Science has shown that stress can:
Cause disorders like IBS, peptic ulcers, and reflux
Change gastrointestinal secretions and mucus
Harm the gut’s microbiota
Prevent full nutrient absorption
And much more
If those reasons aren’t convincing enough, you’ll undermine your efforts. To get a healthy gut, you must reduce stress. Start by discovering what helps you de-stress and unwind. This could be soothing meditation and yoga or weightlifting and kickboxing. Whatever it is, set aside time to do it regularly.
One aspect you may not have considered is stress while eating. This is just as important as managing stress throughout the day.
Having heightened stress hormones while eating can impair digestion and metabolism. A great way to reduce stress during meals is to diffuse calming essential oils in your dining area. Great choices include lavender, frankincense, vetiver, bergamot, and Roman chamomile. Then, turn off the TV and play whatever music feels relaxing to you.
Your Healthy Gut
Now that you know how to get a healthy gut, the keys to a healthier life are in your hands. Remember that each change you implement to improve your gut health radiates beyond your GI tract into your entire body and mind. Powerful, right?
So, let’s turn all of this information into a conversation. Talk to me below. Do you have symptoms of an unhealthy gut? Have you incorporated any of these seven steps yet? Do you have a killer fermented food recipe to share?
Sources:
Comments