What an unhealthy gut could mean for the rest of your body

You think you are eating a fairly healthy diet, you have recently cut out dairy, you’ve tried to reduce gluten, you have bought the probiotics everyone seems to recommend, and yet the bloating and stomach cramps you get after eating some foods are not gone. You often feel uncomfortable after meals, your energy levels are low, your weight is harder to manage than it used to be, and you are starting to wonder what your body is trying to tell you.

Do you need to cut out more foods? Is your gut bacteria out of balance? Is stress making things worse? These are the questions that many people in their 40s are asking themselves, as gastrointestinal issues often become daily frustrations, and what starts as a minor digestive symptom can become a more serious health concern later.

Instead of chasing quick fixes or following the latest gut health trend, it’s more helpful to step back and look at the bigger picture. It is important to understand just how big a role nutrition plays in our overall health, and what difference your gut microbiome can have on both your physical and mental health. Digestive health sits right at the centre of how you feel day to day.

When your gut isn’t functioning well, it doesn’t always show up as one obvious issue. Sometimes it shows up as bloating after a meal, regular constipation, or acid reflux - these are the most common symptoms of imbalances in the gut. But issues with sleep, low levels of energy, or a general sense that your body isn’t working right could also be the manifestations that gut health is not optimal. Our gut function is highly significant not only for digestion but also for how we feel, function, and cope with daily life demands, as well as for long-term prevention of the risk of diseases.

When people hear the phrase ‘gut health’, they often think of gastrointestinal symptoms like bloating, constipation, acid reflux, diarrhoea, or IBS and how to get rid of those. These symptoms do matter, but they are only part of the picture. The gut does much more than digests food. We eat food to ultimately provide nutrients for all the cells in the body, and therefore the gut is the seat for overall health; it is responsible for the delivery of nutrients to the cardiovascular, endocrine, respiratory, musculoskeletal, neurological and all other systems in the body. It is often compared to a weblike system, and if it’s under strain, the effects can show up in a wide variety of health conditions, elsewhere in the body.

If we make poor food choices, or if the body cannot digest, absorb and utilise the food due to poor digestive functions, people can develop a wide variety of health issues, not limited to the ones of the digestive tract disorders, but including migraines, headaches, depression, anxiety, arthritis, insulin resistance, autoimmune conditions, eczema, chronic fatigue, and many more.

This is why gut symptoms shouldn’t be brushed aside as a minor digestive discomfort.

Having regular heartburn, for example, can lead to nutrient deficiencies and key mineral deficiencies, such as iron, calcium, magnesium and vitamin D3 that result in poor bone health and decreased bone density. Many people with heartburn or acid reflux resort to taking anti-acid medications to reduce heartburn symptoms. Unfortunately, without treating the root cause, the symptoms will not go away by themselves but may remain for months and years.

I worked with someone who had severe sleep issues due to regular heartburn, she was unable to sleep for longer than 4 hours per night, having several wakenings. As a result of poor sleep, she developed muscle and joint aches, chronic headaches, and her initial reliance on anti-acid medication made things worse in her musculoskeletal and also endocrine (hormone) health. Taking a whole-body approach, starting with her diet to heal the gut and restore the integrity of the gut lining, she got rid of acid reflux, her headaches went away, and soon afterwards, sleep was restored too.

One of the biggest reasons gut issues go on for so long is that people often try to self-identify them and look for a quick solution from an online resource. They remove foods, follow online elimination protocols, copy a friend’s diet, or start taking supplements without having an integrated approach to the role of lifestyle, their diet and their gut health conditions.

There are currently so many people who have cut out dairy, in the belief that their gastro issues are caused by lactose intolerance. And while it may be the case for some, the online advice majority of people are grounding their dairy avoidance is often based on the research evidence from the US, where dairy products contain hormones, and are not regulated in the same way as food in the UK. Sometimes an elimination diet that is self-designed may give short-term relief, but it often creates more confusion about what to do when the symptoms persevere.

Creating ‘healthy swaps’ in your diet is typically a forward approach, however, in my experience people tend to focus on one ‘healthy’ swap without the awareness of the role of their eating patterns on their gut health. A good example is sugar-free drinks. Artificial sweeteners, for example, are the substitute for table sugar and are widely used in food production. And while table sugar has been known to cause inflammation and insulin resistance for white some time, substituting table sugar with artificial sugars is not a well-known fact to many people. A substantial body of research shows that artificial sugars cause dysbiosis in the gut, leading to a higher state of inflammation, which is associated with a higher risk of heart disease and diabetes 2, the very diseases artificial sugars were introduced on the food market to tackle. Their ill effects are evidenced in the changes in the gut bacteria composition and the gut microbiome. This doesn’t mean every sugar-free product needs to be feared, but it is an example of how everyday choices can affect the digestive environment in ways people don’t always expect.

Together with diet, your gut health is influenced by levels of stress, sleep patterns, the timing of your meals or circadian aspects in your meals, alcohol and tobacco, medication use, supplements and environmental toxins. Removing foods ad hoc without understanding the bigger picture of gut health can leave you eating a more restricted diet while still feeling unwell and issues being unresolved.

A more structured approach would yield better results. Instead of asking, ‘What should I cut out next?’ The more useful question is, ‘Why is my body reacting like this?’ And another question would be examining your lifestyle in regards to the above factors that disrupt gut health.

Many people take their persistent digestive symptoms, such as bloating, indigestion, constipation, heartburn or IBS, as part of their daily living. They have lived with their symptoms for so long that they start to treat them as ‘normal’. Some less common things to look out for in relation to compromised gut health:

On their own, these symptoms are often considered unsubstantial; they overlap with so many conditions, and therefore are often missed in medical check-ups or in doctor-patient discussions. Understanding them from the gut health background, they often suggest that your digestive system needs more support. Many people also become so used to these symptoms that they no longer see them as warning signs. They normalise them and carry on. But they are often the body’s way of saying that something needs attention.

Your gut contains trillions of bacteria and other microbes, and their balance plays an important role in how well your body functions. Having a healthy gut bacteria composition means there is a good balance between disease-causing and probiotic (healthy) bacteria. When this balance is off, digestion can become more reactive, the gut lining becomes irritated and inflamed, which further entails inflammation elsewhere in the body.

This is one of the reasons gut health needs to be taken seriously. Poor gut bacteria balance is linked not only to symptoms like bloating, IBS, gastritis, food intolerances, and allergies, but may also contribute to other inflammatory diseases in the body - cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance, high blood pressure, arthritis, eczema, fatty liver disease, hormone problems, autoimmune conditions and others. Your gut bacteria composition and gut health could be the main part of the problem.

What matters most is understanding that gut health isn’t just about how your tummy ‘behaves’ or ‘misbehaves’; the effects can be felt across the whole body. This is why ongoing digestive symptoms should never be dismissed as something minor or part of life.

There is rarely one single cause behind long-term digestive discomfort. More often than not, several factors build up over time.

What you eat matters, but so does how you eat. A diet that is low in fibre, high in ultra-processed foods, or built around rushed meals and regular snacking can make digestion harder to regulate. The role of nutrition, as well as nourishing the body, is to also provide information; with every bite you take, you either turn on anti-inflammatory genes or turn them off. Fibre is the main food for our gut bacteria; it is through fibre that our microbes are born (the role of prebiotics) and nourished (the role of probiotics).

However, fibre is missing from the diet of thousands of people. The UK’s recommendation for adults to consume 30g or more of fibre per day is only observed by less than 5% of the population (a recent government survey found that 96% of adults didn’t meet this recommendation.) The British Dietetic Association says most adults eat about 13 to 16g of fibre per day, which is 60% of what it should be. In other words, many people are trying to improve their gut health while overlooking one of the crucial foundations of digestive support.

For the majority of people, improving gut health could begin with getting the basics right (such as increasing the intake of fibre foods) and asking what the body needs more of. An anti-inflammatory way of eating is the best for everybody, and the Mediterranean diet has been proven time and time again in research to reduce inflammation and prevent cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes 2, cancers and other. A recent study found it is associated with a 23% reduction in mortality from all diseases. However, a healthy diet should always be taken in the prism of one’s lifestyle: what is the medical history, family history of disease, lifestyle habits, sleep and stress patterns, existing health conditions all matter. So working with a professional is the best route when changing your diet.

Stress has a direct effect on the digestive system. For some people, digestion slows down under stress. For others, it speeds up. Many people notice that bloating, cramping, acid reflux, loose stools, and IBS flare-ups often become worse during busy or emotionally demanding periods.

This isn’t just a feeling people imagine. Stress can worsen digestive conditions such as stomach ulcers and IBS, and the Mental Health Foundation includes indigestion, constipation, bloating, and diarrhoea among the physical symptoms that happen when someone is under stress.

When the nervous system is constantly under pressure, it can affect digestion, inflammatory activity, and the balance in gut bacteria. This is one reason gut health and mental wellbeing are so closely linked. The gut and the brain are in constant communication via the gut-brain axis. In fact, the digestive system is often called “the second brain” because of the vagus nerve and the Enteric Nervous System (ENS), by which the vagus nerve connects the brain with all of the organs of the digestive tract. Our gut produces significantly more neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, dopamine, GABA, and melatonin, than the brain. In fact, more than 80% of serotonin is made in the gut, and every class of the brain neurotransmitter has been found in the gut.

Research over the past 15 years has shown that people with celiac disease experience higher rates of mental health conditions compared with the general population, including anxiety, depression, eating disorders and other psychiatric disorders. Studies have also shown that 54-94% of IBS patients have at least one psychological comorbidity.

Sleep and gut health are closely linked. Poor sleep can affect appetite, energy levels, cravings, weight management, and the body’s ability to regulate itself. At the same time, digestive discomfort can make it harder to settle properly at night, creating a cycle that’s easy to get stuck in.

This is why symptoms such as bloating, tiredness, high stress, and cravings for sugary or salty snacks don’t sit in silos. They can be different signs of the same system being put under pressure, rather than a set of unrelated problems.

If you’re waking up at different times of night, digestive issues such as IBS, acid reflux, and other gastrointestinal symptoms might be part of the reason. Over time, inadequate sleep can increase physical stress on the body, including raised cortisol levels and creating an inflammatory state. When this becomes a pattern, digestive symptoms often become harder to settle. This is why poor sleep, digestive discomfort, low energy, and feeling run-down so often come together. They may be different signs of the same system being under strain.

Many people only think prescription medication can affect gut health, but over-the-counter meds can play a significant part in disrupting gut functioning, especially when used frequently. Nurofen, paracetamol, codeine-based pain relief medications, anti-acids, antihistamines and cough medicines are among the products people take casually and regularly, without understanding their wider effects on gut bacteria balance and gastrointestinal symptoms.

These are common gut disruptors and should only be used for a short period of time. If a person is repeatedly reaching for over-the-counter medication while also struggling with bloating, reflux, constipation, or other digestive symptoms, it’s worth stepping back, looking at the bigger picture and working with a gut health professional.

One of the most important messages is that digestive symptoms aren’t always just digestive symptoms. The gut is responsible for reducing or increasing the inflammatory processes in the body, which is why gut dysfunction often sits alongside issues such as food intolerances, eczema, allergies, IBS, gastritis, fatigue, insulin resistance, fatty liver disease, high cholesterol, anxiety, or low mood.

When digestive symptoms are persistent, they should be taken seriously, as they may be part of a much bigger picture. If the gut is inflamed or imbalanced, such as the case in dysbiosis, overall health can suffer as a result.

This is where many people could change their approach to a better, more holistic one. If you’re reacting badly to foods, feeling bloated after meals, waking in the night with discomfort, or dealing with ongoing gut symptoms, the answer isn’t to keep trying different diets or continue eliminating foods in the hope that one of the approaches works for you.

Your body isn’t asking for another guess. Its signalling support is needed. Every meal you eat either helps nourish the body or creates ill-health.

Working with a gut health specialist can help you make sense of patterns that are easy to miss on your own. Instead of relying on generic advice, you can follow a plan that fits your body and your routine. Progress comes from a consistent approach, making step-by-step changes, such as making better food choices, getting enough rest, reducing stress, and following a routine that looks beyond a list of symptoms.

There is a lot of conflicting advice about foods and diet out there. The science of nutrition is constantly evolving, and I really feel how confusing it can feel for you.

If you are living with bloating, IBS-type symptoms, acid reflux, food reactions, poor sleep, fatigue, or a general sense that your health is becoming harder to manage, it may be time to stop self-diagnosing and try an informed approach. The sooner you take these signs seriously, the easier it can be to start making meaningful changes.

Gut health is at the centre of my Health Coaching. Taking in your dietary patterns, your cultural food choices and your individual food preferences, as well as your patterns of stress, sleep and overall lifestyle, I help clients create meaningful, long-lasting transformations in their health. If your digestive symptoms are becoming part of daily life, don’t ignore them. Working to restore your gut health can shape your long-term longevity, prevent risks of disease and give you vitality and boundless energy daily.

Reach out to discuss your gut health. I’d love to help you feel better daily.

Stay healthy, be joyful!

Love, Katya