Experts have proven that gut inflammation can affect how you feel. Most of the studies that have connected gut health with mental health have focused on gut health and depression. However, others have focused on other conditions, such as anxiety, and found similar results.
So if you’re suffering from depression, anxiety, or stress, bettering your gut health may offer some relief. One of the best ways to do this is to change your diet to one that excludes inflammatory foods. Before you can do that, you need to know the different foods that cause gut inflammation.
Read on to learn more about the foods that cause gut inflammation and how to get inflammation out your body.
What Is Inflammation?
Before understanding gut inflammation, it’s critical to have an understanding of inflammation in general. In a nutshell, inflammation refers to the ways that your body reacts to an irritant. Several things can be irritants, including germs and chemicals.
Your body does this by sending white blood cells to attack the irritant. These produce chemicals in an attempt to protect your body. Unfortunately, these chemicals can irritate your nerves and cause pain or leak into your tissues and cause swelling.
Other symptoms of inflammation vary, but common ones are fever, redness, and loss of function. However, you may not experience any symptoms. You may also experience symptoms but not notice them.
What Is Gut Inflammation?
Gut inflammation happens when an irritant interacts with your guys, and your immune system reacts to it. You’ve probably experienced diarrhea, stomach pain, and/or other symptoms after you’ve eaten something bad for you. These symptoms usually occur as the result of gut inflammation.
However, as the article above about depression and gut inflammation explained, neurological inflammation symptoms are possible. Some experts working on the study theorized that inflamed guts can affect your mind. This may be done without the usual gut inflammation symptoms.
Foods That Cause Gut Inflammation
Keep in mind that what counts as gut inflammation foods for one person may not count for another. Some foods are universally unhealthy. However, individuals can also experience gut inflammation because they are allergic to a certain food item.
That being said, you may not necessarily need to exclude all these foods from your diet. You may just want to try an elimination diet with the common allergens. That is, you should exclude one allergen from your diet for a while and see if it improves your depression.
Dairy
Lactose intolerance and dairy allergy are two different things. Lactose intolerance just means that your body can’t digest the chemical lactose. With a dairy allergy, your body will have an inflammation response to milk proteins.
The symptoms between the two can be similar. You can experience nausea, cramps, bloating, and other symptoms with both of these diseases. However, you will only experience rashes, swelling, and hives with a dairy allergy.
Just like with the gluten allergy, however, your symptoms may not be noticeable. And scientists have also found a link between lactose intolerance and depression.
Gluten
Gluten is a protein that exists in many grains such as wheat, barley, rye, and many others. While it causes no real health concerns in most individuals, some are slightly too severely gluten intolerant. A severe gluten allergy is usually referred to as Celiac Disease.
As the gluten intolerance levels vary, it can sometimes be hard to tell if you’re gluten sensitive. Symptoms can be as mild as fatigue and temporary cognitive dysfunction or brain fog. You may think that these symptoms are the result of something else.
Yes, you might even have depression due to a gluten intolerance issue. Eliminating gluten from your diet may be what improves your mood.
Alcohol
Scientists have found that too much alcohol can disrupt the natural balance of bacteria in the gut. To make matters worse, alcohol can increase the number of bad bacteria in the gut and decrease the number of good bacteria. This can result in inflammation and then follow up with several health problems commonly associated with alcohol.
Does this process cause depression, though? Most studies focus on the fact that those who are already depressed drink a lot. However, there is research that has confirmed that drinking alcohol can make your depression worse.
Proper gut functioning is associated with better mental health. Poor gut function is associated with poor mental health. Considering that alcohol interrupts proper gut functioning, it is reasonable to assume that alcohol can cause depression.
Greasy Foods
Greasy foods can be defined as foods that are cooked in too many oils. Most junk and fast foods, like hamburgers, fries, and chips, fall into this category. While these may taste good, they can have devastating effects on your gut health.
Greasy foods are another category of food that can interrupt the bacterial balance in the gut. Studies have shown that greasy foods will increase the number of destructive bacteria in your gut over time. Again, an imbalanced gut causes mental health issues.
They also seem to cause the endocrine cells along the lining of the gut to fall asleep. As these cells signal to the body when the stomach is full, their dysfunction means that those who eat greasy foods will keep feeling hungry. This will increase the number of greasy foods they eat and cause even more problems to appear.
Therefore, you should eat some healthier snacks instead.
Try Out the Aluva Life Greens Gut Health Pack
So how do we get inflammation out of your body? In sum, you may need to give up some of your favorite foods to get rid of your mental health issues. However, with better mental health, it should be easier to live without the foods that cause gut inflammation.
Also, consider using our health products. The Aluva Life Greens Gut Health Pack includes high-quality ingredients like aloe vera, cayenne pepper, Japanese matcha, and more. Check it out here to get started on your journey.