How your gut health changes with the seasons: Prepping your body for Autumn

School is starting up again and that means summer is winding down. Back-to-school shopping, corn-eating, and soccer season are all in full swing. But schedule changes aren’t the only things happening. There are changes happening within our bodies as well — especially in our guts. Today we are diving into the research on how our gut health changes with the seasons. More specifically, changes in the gut during autumn.

None of this is all that surprising when we realize that our gut changes from day to day and truly from hour to hour. Our gut health changes to fit our needs — so long as we are supporting it how it needs. 

There are a few main factors that affect our gut health seasonally:

• Sunlight and our innate sleep/wake cycles
• Food availability
• Water intake
• Temperature/weather
• How sedentary or active we are
• Exposure to different pollens and seasonal bacteria

But how do these things affect our gut specifically? And how do we know they are affecting our guts?

We are so glad you asked!

How seasonal changes affect our guts

Gut health is delicate and resilient all at the same time. There are so many different things that can affect it — positively or negatively. But it still works hard to maintain homeostasis. 

Sunlight and our innate sleep/wake cycles

One of the biggest complaints about autumn is less sunlight. Our window of daylight has begun to shrink and that means more dark hours in the day. If we think back to being cave people, this just meant more sleep/rest time. But in our current world, we still need to be active during the dark times of the day. 

Our internal clocks and circadian rhythms are meant to work alongside the sunlight availability. So our sleep/wake cycles and our digestive clocks are set for a certain time. Unfortunately, these presets aren’t exactly convenient for our electricity-driven clocks. 

So our bodies start wanting to wind down and have more recovery time, but we don’t give it that. This adds some stress to our microbiomes, digestion, and bodily health. 

Food availability

Food availability has two parts to it:

1. Foods that are in season
2. Many foods that we have in our routine diet is not available OR it is not as highly nutritious as it should be

Foods that are in season change with the seasons. That sounds redundant but it needs to be stated. We eat the things we want or that we think are healthy. But we often don’t take the time to change those up with what is naturally available during that season. 

We have summer fruits and vegetables and winter ones. They each have different protective aspects to them to help support our health during that season. So where summer fruits and veggies can help us have protection from UV rays and help to keep us hydrated. Winter fruits and veggies help to support our immune and digestive systems. In traditional Chinese medicine, autumn is the time of year for supporting your digestive system. 

The autumn foods like squashes, pumpkins, apples, and other hearty produce help to keep our bodies full, nourished, and prepared for the cooler weather coming. 

Strawberries at this time of the year lack flavor, color, and nutrition. But pumpkins, apples, pears, and squash are all full of flavor, color, and nutrition. These are the foods you want to stick to so that you’re supporting your health and avoiding unnecessary chemicals while you’re at it.

Water intake

When it’s hotter outside we drink more water. In the winter we tend to fall off and drink less water. During spring and fall we can fall anywhere in between depending on the weather. 

But water intake is so important year-round. Water helps to support every cell in the body and is an important component of digestion. So although we tend to drink less water, we need to be vigilant about making sure we are drinking enough of it to support our cells — especially if we aren’t resting as much as our bodies require. 

Temperature/weather

Autumn means that the weather is changing and the temperatures are cooling down. This is actually a good thing for the gut. Hot temperatures can cause less healthy bacterial strains to grow more. Have you ever noticed a loss of appetite in the summer? This is actually the cause of it. 

In the fall, our bodies are looking to intake some more food because of the decrease in sunlight we get. So the foods are heartier and our appetites grow so we are able to pack on some extra meat for the colder months. 

These changes tell the bacteria in your gut that they need more food to prepare for this time of year and so the bacteria do what they need to so your health is completely supported. 

How sedentary or active we are

Back to school season makes us feel like our bodies aren’t winding down. But internally, they are prepping for the winter months. As the leaves change so do our guts and activity levels. Fall is a season of preparing for rest. And while you may get bursts of energy here and there, you may also feel more restful. Depending on your activity levels, your gut changes to match what your body needs. Exercise is great to support a healthy microbiome, but you may notice some differences for the fall and winter months with your abilities. 

Exposure to different pollens and seasonal bacteria

Autumn brings the falling leaves, hay, and other pollen and mold changes. This can cause some people to experience seasonal allergies acting up this time of year. 

Seasonal allergies are an act of your immune system to combat environmental changes. With the immune system taxed or working harder, it stresses the gut microbiome a little more than it should be. Your gut houses the majority of your immune system so when it needs to fight environmental changes, it has a harder time doing its daily, necessary tasks. 

How do we know seasonal changes affect our gut?

In the Western world everything is so updated it’s hard to imagine that in other corners of the world there are still people who live primitively. But the fact that we have people in tribes who still live this way we are able to see the differences in our health when comparing lifestyles. 

The Hadza and the Hutterites are groups of people who still live the hunter/gatherer lifestyle. They do not grow any food and truly live off the land. Because of this, we are able to see how their guts work with the seasons better than those of us living a more contemporary lifestyle. 

When studying stool samples of the tribes scientists found some really interesting information. 

1. Gut bacterial diversity changes with the seasons. 
2. Certain species of bacteria completely disappear during certain seasons and reappear after those seasons come to an end. 
3. Eating foods with the seasons allows them to extract more nutrients from their food. It also allows their digestive systems to handle more difficult forms of fiber better than Western world diets. 
4. Microbial changes to the gut microbiome of the tribe are predictable. Every year the same changes happen at the same time and reverse at the same time. This is really fascinating since in the Western world gut health seems to be so unpredictable.

Some of these observations have been replicated in a sample group from Ukraine. The Firmicute to Bacteroidetes ratio changes with the seasons. In summer it is 3.3 times higher than in the winter, with autumn falling at 1.9 times higher than the winter. So we do retain some of these changes, though they don’t appear to be quite as drastic as the changes seen in our tribal counterparts. 

Another study showed that in patients with IBD seasonal changes in symptoms went along with these gut changes. This is something that patients and doctors alike should keep in mind when symptoms flare up. More flare-ups were seen in the winter. 

The following bacterial types were found to be higher in autumn than in spring or winter in IBD:

• Actinobacteria

• • TM7

• Actinomyces

• TM7-3

Patients with Crohn’s disease specifically experienced less symptoms in autumn when their TM7-3 levels were higher. 

These groups truly seem to have the ideal when it comes to gut health. So how can we take advantage of their lifestyle while continuing our own so we too can have predictable gut health?

How to make your gut healthier during seasonal changes

Getting in tune with your internal clock is the best way to improve gut health. Some of the best suggestions we have for improving your gut health to deal with seasonal changes are:

1. Try to get in sync with the sun. Sleep or at least wind down to rest while it’s dark. Be awake and integrate movement during the light hours. 
2. Limit the use of technology especially during dark hours. The lights given off by tech negatively impact our circadian rhythms. So limiting your use of them will allow for better sleep.
3. Spend more time outside. This allows your body to tap into the changes in temperature to let your gut know it needs to change as well. The direct sunlight helps to prevent disease and support your cells and gut.
4. Get exercise daily, but observe and respect your energy levels. Different seasons = different energy levels. Respect those while still moving your body. Try lower impact exercises like walking, qi gong, or yoga on days you don’t have as much energy to still move your body but not in an overwhelming manner. 
5. Eat seasonally! This one is probably the most obvious, but it’s 100% worth reiterating. Feeding your gut the things that are seasonal expose you to new nutrients, minerals, and vitamins that your gut wouldn’t normally have. You also get varying amounts of fiber which help to get your gut on the right track. Eat the foods that are in season in your area for that time of the year. If you have dietary restrictions, work with your doctor on how to incorporate seasonal foods while still respecting those restrictions.

Seasons don’t have to be times of stress, and as long as we are living at one with nature we are able to support our bodies in the most simple way possible. 

Get some ideas of recipes for seasonal fruits and vegetables on our blog!

Resources:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8552956/

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4654

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24618913/

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aan4834

https://bmcmicrobiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12866-020-01786-8

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0283880