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If you’ve been learning about gut health for a while, you may notice how much of an effect it has on pretty much everything in your life. This may lead you to consider what else it might help if you haven’t encountered that topic yet. One topic you might struggle with is energy levels — because most people do! In this article, we will dive into the research: can your gut boost your energy levels? Can your gut boost your energy levels?

Let’s find out!

What is gut health?

If you haven’t been in the gut health world for long, you may have many questions regarding gut health. So let’s take a quick minute to review some basics on gut health and why it’s important. 

Gut health refers to the state of your gut microbiome. Your gut microbiome is a collection of microorganisms (bacteria, protozoa, fungi, etc.) that live inside your colon. These microbes help your body to extract nutrients from food through a process called fermentation. 

Depending on the foods you eat, these microbes can give off healthy (or unhealthy) byproducts. The byproducts then go throughout your body and affect your cells. Healthy foods contribute to cellular health and unhealthy foods can destroy your cellular health.

Many different things affect your gut health. The quality of your food is a major contributing factor. However, many other things in your lifestyle affect your gut health, too. Some of the things that affect your gut health include:

  • Active vs sedentary lifestyle
  • Type of exercise you do (if any at all)
  • Sunlight exposure
  • Sleep quality and duration
  • Stress levels

Many different things affect the state of your gut health. But why is your gut health important to the rest of your health?

How does the gut affect energy levels?

Since the gut microbes give off metabolic byproducts, it can change your body’s overall health. Some of the different things your gut health has an impact on include:

Immune support + Disease onset and progression

When your gut is healthy it maintains the integrity of your digestive tract. This is extremely important because it prevents a leaky gut. Dysbiosis (an unhealthy balance of gut microbes) can cause the tight junctions to become loose, allowing the gut bacteria to escape (hence the name leaky gut). 

The bacteria in your gut are healthy for you when they’re in your gut. However, if they leave the colon, your body will treat them as infectious bacteria because they aren’t where they are supposed to be. This causes an immune response, leading to inflammation wherever your immune cells find the bacteria, and this raises the potential for disease development. 

When the balance of the gut microbiome is healthy, the tight junctions remain tight and keep the good bacteria inside your gut. Feeding these good bacteria healthy foods allows them to give off healthy byproducts like short-chain fatty acids (SCFA). They also unlock different nutrients that the body normally cannot get from foods without the fermentation process.

When the immune system is running normally your energy levels can be maintained and stay higher. However, if your immune system is constantly putting out fires, it becomes exhausted because of the extra work these cells need to do. They’re constantly on high alert looking for more problems and if the gut is unhealthy or leaking, they have an endless job to do. This is why your immune health (and especially the gut aspect of it) is so important for energy levels.

Nutrient absorption

Every food we eat offers our body different nutrients. Foods like fruits and vegetables have different nutrients than grains or dairy. They’re much more nutrient-dense than a bag of potato chips. Extracting the nutrients from food is sometimes referred to as energy harvesting because these nutrients are so important to our energy levels.

However, many nutrients need to be taken out of the foods in a certain way. While the general digestive process uses enzymes and acids to break food down, this doesn’t necessarily mean your body pulls nutrients into valuable molecules. Once these foods get to the colon, the gut microbes ferment them. During fermentation, foods are further broken down into smaller, easier-to-use molecules. Fibrous foods contain a lot of nutrients, but without the gut microbiome to break it down our body cannot unlock and use them. 

Once the gut breaks them down, they are absorbed by the intestinal wall or sent back into circulation to be transported where those nutrients are needed. 

The gut bacteria also create different enzymes that help to release minerals that the enzymes our bodies create on their own do not release.

This process is negatively altered in two ways: 

  • If you’re eating unhealthy foods that are not nutrient-dense, your healthy gut microbes have nothing to feed on, and unhealthy strains multiply to take over the process. This leads to unhealthy molecules being sent out, which damage your cells and lead to fatigue.
  • If your gut microbiome is unhealthy and doesn’t have the right strains to break down the foods, it cannot extract the nutrients in them leading to pain, malnutrition, and low energy levels.

Your other microbiomes (skin, mouth, eyes, genitalia, etc.)

You have so many microorganisms that live on and in your body. Each area of your body uses these microorganisms to keep that area in homeostasis and communicate with the microbes in other areas of the body. This helps one area of your body to positively influence the other areas. 

Your skin, mouth, eyes, nose, gut, and nearly every other part of your body have microbiomes. They each use a distinct group of microbes to ensure their health. The gut is one of the biggest and most influential of all of the microbiomes. Because it processes our food and extracts nutrients, it can directly impact the health of these other microbiomes. 

If any of the other microbiomes experience dysbiosis, it causes local inflammation in that area for the body to try and repair it back to normal. The gut being a major factor in all of them drives molecules to these areas. Much like when we are sick, our body goes into overdrive to repair which takes energy to do. This limits our energy levels because our body is trying so hard to get back to normal. So if you notice that one of these areas seems to continually be in dysbiosis, this can be an indicator that your gut health may be off as well. Doing the things that allow the gut microbiome to be in good health, can also positively impact these other areas, too. 

How to change your gut to support your energy

Gut health has been studied during recent decades but is still a little difficult to truly understand. Since there are so many things at play, it’s hard to narrow down which thing exactly is to blame. 

Many doctors don’t do testing on your gut health unless there are obvious symptoms related to the gut. However, with all of the recent research pointing to gut health being a major factor in nearly every health condition, it should become more routine to have microbiome testing done. These tests can check what microbes you have in what quantities which can help make a blueprint of your health.

However, each person’s microbiome is as unique to them as their fingerprint making it somewhat difficult to pin down a specific strain they would need. 

On the plus side, there are some basic steps you can take to ensure good gut health that are relatively easy!

  1. Eat a diverse and healthy diet that contains fiber, polyphenols, healthy fats, and protein. If you’re focusing on getting these things, you don’t have to focus quite as much on what to cut out because your body will fill up on what it needs before sending out craving signals for snacks. This also provides your cells with the right kind of energy and nutrition to improve your energy levels.
  2. Sleep well. Following the circadian rhythms is important for your digestive system to stay on track. Sleep/wake cycles help your gut to know when it’s time to rest and digest. So staying on a normal routine of sleeping and waking up is actually a really great way to improve your gut health and energy levels. 
  3. Prebiotics and probiotics to feed your microbiome. While fiber is great for feeding your microbes, these specific foods are what your gut needs. You can get them in your diet but can also add them as a supplement. Just make sure to check with your doctor if you’re going the supplement route. Atrantil and AtrantilPRO are great options because they’re 3rd party tested and have the NSF Safe for Sport qualification. They use completely clean ingredients that support a healthy microbiome. 
  4. Exercise daily. Exercise doesn’t need to be hours of grueling, sweaty work. 20-30 minutes per day of mild intensity is all you need to positively improve your gut balance and energy levels while decreasing your disease potential. 

And that’s about it! You can do things that help manage stress levels too if that seems to be a major influence in your energy levels, but these are the basics that really contribute to a better gut and more energy!

Check out some of our other gut health information here!

Exercise Motivation

Altering the Microbiome for Weight Loss

High Fructose Corn Syrup and Gut Health

Resources:

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