New Year, Same You, Improved Gut Health!
If you’re anything like us, you like to treat yourself over the holidays. Or maybe you celebrated a little extra this year because of the rollercoaster of emotions we’ve been through this year. Either way, after a month of cookies, chocolates, overloaded plates at family dinners, too many glasses of coco-nog (with rum!), and champagne toasts, January is now a chance to reset, refresh, and improve your gut health.
Your guts are home to a variety of bacteria and other microscopic living things that together are called microbes – you’ve got trillions of them in your body, from on your skin to in your intestines. The microbes that are found in your intestines are specifically called the gut microbiome and these tiny living things play a big role in your overall health and wellness. A healthy and diverse gut microbiome helps with digestion and supports your immune system.
The health of your gut microbiome can be affected by your environment, stress, drugs (like antibiotics) and diet. Eating a diverse and varied diet rich in fibre can help keep your microbiome healthy, which in turn keeps you healthy.
Focusing on a more plant-based diet (fibre and nutrients for the win!) and limiting your red meat intake are great ways to spark up your microbiome and keep it happy and healthy. Plant-based diets have lots of health benefits – it may help lower cholesterol, can aide in weight loss, and may lower blood pressure.
Spark founder, Ellen, has been vegan for quite awhile and is sort of obsessed with Korean food right now (a taste of her family heritage). She loves kimchi fried rice, soybean sprout soup, bi bim bap (rice bowls), japchae (sweet potato glass noodles with assorted veggies) and anything tofu! Since Korean food traditionally has a lot of veggies, and the meat is almost like a garnish, the dishes are super easy to make vegan - which is the best part in Ellen’s opinion!
If you’re thinking about making the switch to a more plant-based or vegan diet Ellen suggests starting with small steps. “Try Meat Free Mondays or swapping out the meat for a meat alternative product to get started,” Ellen says. Or challenge yourself to join the Veganuary movement and cut out all animal products for the whole month of January.
Another way to show your guts some love is to add fermented foods to your diet. Fermented foods, including kombucha, have been found to contain probiotics which are beneficial to your gut health. Probiotics help with nutrient absorption and digestion and help to keep any bad bacteria under control.
Because Spark Kombucha is unpasteurized (or raw, as we like to say) that means that any probiotics that are created during fermentation are still there when you take a sip.
Your guts, your digestive system, aren’t just responsible for digesting your food. It communicates with your whole body and contributes to your overall health and wellness. Which means, you need to take good care of it so it can keep taking care of you.
The end of the holiday season and the start of new year is a time when people make sweeping resolutions to make big changes to their lives and habits. But you can improve your gut health with small, simple changes to your diet – eat more veggies and drink more kombucha!
Start Brewing your own Kombucha today with our Home Brew Essentials Kit. Learn more about the process here!
