How your gut microbiome is like a garden

Imagine your gut as a vibrant garden, beaming with life and bursting with colour. To keep this garden flourishing, you need to tend to it with care, balancing a variety of elements – much like a gardener nurtures plants, enriches soil, and waters diligently. In your gut, these elements are diversity, probiotics, prebiotics, postbiotics, and the management of pathogens.

Nurturing your gut health is like planting a seed and waiting for it to grow into a strong, fruit-bearing tree. Just as you don’t expect to harvest apples immediately after planting, it takes time, patience, and consistent care to see and feel the positive changes in your gut. Over weeks and months, with the right balance of probiotics, prebiotics, and a healthy lifestyle, your gut “garden” will gradually flourish, rewarding you with improved digestion, immunity, and overall well-being.

So, how can you cultivate a healthy gut “garden”?

The importance of diversity

Picture a garden brimming with different flowers, shrubs, and trees. Each plant contributes to the ecosystem, creating a resilient and productive environment. Similarly, a diverse microbiome is crucial for a healthy gut. Different species of bacteria play unique roles, from aiding digestion to fortifying the immune system. A lack of diversity can leave your gut vulnerable to disease and dysfunction.

To promote microbial diversity, include a wide variety of foods in your diet –

Fruits and vegetables: A rainbow of colours provides an array of fibres and nutrients. Think of a plate filled with vibrant reds, greens, purples, and oranges, each colour offering different benefits.
Whole grains: These grains act like a rich compost, feeding beneficial bacteria and helping them flourish. Quinoa, brown rice, oats, millet, buckwheat, and amaranth are excellent choices.
Legumes and pulses: Beans, lentils, and chickpeas add unique fibres that nourish a variety of beneficial bacteria.
Nuts and seeds: Walnuts, almonds, chia seeds, and flaxseeds provide essential nutrients and prebiotics.
Herbs and spices: Garlic, turmeric, ginger, rosemary, thyme, and many more offer antimicrobial properties and support overall gut health.
Fermented foods: Like adding compost to the soil, kefir, live yoghurt, sauerkraut, miso, tempeh and kimchi introduce beneficial bacteria to your gut, enriching the microbiome. Read Saskia’s article What’s all the fuss about fermented foods?!

Check out Shopping for plant diversity – 4 easy tips and try this gut health super salad, recipe here!

Probiotics: The beneficial bacteria

Probiotics are like planting new flowers in your garden. They are live bacteria and yeasts that are good for your health, especially your digestive system. They can be found in:

Chuckling Goat Kefir: Kefir is a naturally fermented drink that puts the good probiotics back into your system. CG Kefir, which provides 27 different naturally occurring strains of probiotics, is the hero element of our Gut Health Protocol. You can read more about the details of our Gut Health Protocol here.
Other fermented foods: Yogurt, miso, tempeh, sauerkraut, kombucha, and pickles. Imagine these foods as seeds that, when planted, bloom into beneficial bacteria, enhancing your gut’s ecosystem.

Incorporating probiotics helps maintain a healthy balance of gut bacteria, supports digestion, and can even boost your immune system¹ and resolve skin issues.

Prebiotics: Nourishing the soil

Prebiotics are the fertiliser for your garden. They are non-digestible fibres that feed your beneficial bacteria, helping them grow and flourish. You can find prebiotics in –

Fruits and vegetables: Green bananas, onions, garlic, leeks, asparagus, and artichokes.
Whole grains: Oats, buckwheat, brown rice, millet, rye, wheat bran, etc.
Legumes and pulses: Beans, lentils, and chickpeas.
Nuts and seeds: Almonds, walnuts, chia seeds, flaxseeds, etc.
Chuckling Goat Complete Prebiotic: contains 18 different prebiotics, feeding the beneficial bacteria the exact complex fibres they need.

By ensuring a steady supply of prebiotics, you support a thriving microbiome, enhancing your overall gut health.

Postbiotics: The harvest

Postbiotics are the beneficial compounds produced by probiotics during fermentation. When you consume probiotics (beneficial bacteria) and prebiotics (fibres), the probiotics use the prebiotics as fuel. This fermentation process produces beneficial compounds known as postbiotics. Postbiotics include short-chain fatty acids (e.g. butyrate, acetate, propionate), vitamins, and antimicrobial peptides.

You can think of it as an equation: probiotics + prebiotics = postbiotics.
In garden terms: beneficial seeds (probiotics) + nutrient-rich soil (prebiotics) = a beautiful harvest (postbiotics).

Postbiotics are like the fruits of your garden, providing numerous health benefits such as:

Supporting immune function
Reducing inflammation
Enhancing nutrient absorption
Improving gut barrier function
Inhibiting pathogens (harmful bacteria)
Supporting mental health through the gut-brain axis

Pathogens: The unwanted weeds

Every garden faces the threat of weeds, and your gut is no different. Just like weeds in a garden, pathogens are harmful bacteria and viruses that can disrupt the balance of your gut microbiome. They can overgrow when the beneficial bacteria are outnumbered, leading to various health issues, including digestive issues, skin problems, infections and chronic diseases.

To keep pathogens at bay –

Maintain a healthy diet: Eat diverse foods that are high in fibre. Cut or reduce the sugar, sweeteners, and ultra-processed foods. Imagine removing debris and dead leaves, ensuring a clean, healthy environment for your plants.
Incorporate natural anti-microbials: Foods, such as garlic, ginger, rosemary, thyme, and turmeric help to inhibit the growth of harmful bacteria in the gut. Ashwagandha is another powerful antimicrobial that is an absolute favourite for us at the Chuckling Goat.
Practice good hygiene: Wash your hands regularly and prepare food safely.
Avoid unnecessary antibiotic use: Antibiotics can kill beneficial bacteria, allowing pathogens to thrive. Think of it as using pesticides sparingly to avoid harming beneficial insects.

To deal with the regular issue of pathogens, we hand-crafted artisan vinegars from a base of raw apple cider vinegar, with the mother. These carefully selected combinations of antimicrobial herbs are steeped in the vinegar, to produce a safe, natural and delicious product that is lab-tested to inhibit specific pathogens. You can add any or all three delicious vinegars into your routine in rotation, to give yourself broad-based pathogen protection! To read more and source, click here!

Environmental influences

Your gut microbiome (“garden“) is not isolated; it’s influenced by its surroundings. Factors such as stress, sleep, and physical activity can significantly impact your gut health.

Stress: High stress levels can alter gut bacteria composition, leading to dysbiosis (gut imbalance). Techniques like meditation, yoga, and deep-breathing exercises can help manage stress, much like providing shade and water to stressed plants.
Sleep: Poor sleep disrupts the natural rhythms of your body and gut, potentially leading to an imbalance. Aim for 7-9 hours of quality sleep per night, ensuring your body gets the rest it needs to rejuvenate.
Exercise: Regular physical activity promotes healthy digestion and enhances microbial diversity.²³

Beneficial gut bacteria produce neurotransmitters like serotonin, which influence mood and cognitive function. A healthy gut can lead to improved mental wellbeing, while a disrupted microbiome can contribute to anxiety and depression.⁴ For more on this, have a read of How is your mental wellness connected to your gut?.

Gut problems? Get tested!

End the confusion. Get the evidence-based answers you’ve been waiting for! By analysing your gut’s microbiome, you can get a detailed picture of its diversity and health, allowing you to tailor your diet and lifestyle to nurture it back to vibrant health. It’s a cool, science-backed way to ensure your gut “garden” is thriving and resilient. See if our test is right for you and get your personalised roadmap to a healthier garden here.

To learn more, check out our Diversity post and find gut-healthy recipes here!

Any questions? Contact one of our Nutritional Therapists via live chat, weekdays from 8 am to 8 pm.