What’s health got to do with it?

A post on the microbiome.

There’s a new magic solution floating among health fixated social media who’s only concern is your microbiome, but there’s no way this can be a cure-all, right? Well, first things first – there’s actually truth behind this phenomenon. Yes, most of us have heard that a healthy microbiome is the key to avoiding obesity and can, at base-level, understand how this is possible. What’s interesting is that the benefits of a healthy microbiome are being shown as going beyond the digestive system. Recent studies have linked the microbiome to mental and cardiovascular health.

Benefiting from your microbiome means keeping it healthy and healthy gut microbiota means diverse gut microbiota. So how do you diversify the little guys in your tummy? Most suggestions include consuming probiotics, prebiotics, and fermented foods. What seems to be the most important tip is to avoid being predictable. Switching up what you eat everyday can lead you to a diverse, and therefore, healthy microbiome.

Reading these tips, I was reminded of a dear old trend that left the nation in a frenzy running frantically towards the nearest Whole Foods – kombucha. Kombucha is a fermented beverage, which means a “yes, drink me” on the checklist for a diverse microbiome provided by aforementioned research. While we aren’t sure if kombucha positively effects human health, we have seen some correlation in positive effects of consuming things that have been fermented. The most interesting is a correlation between fermented products producing lower cortisol levels (which works to indicate stress) which would seemingly help to convey the microbiome as helping with mental health. With this being said, greater research is needed to understand and validate these effects, but for now I say keep drinking your kombucha if you’d like.