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Maintaining a healthy gut is an important part of ageing well. The bugs in your gut impact on both your physical and mental health. The food we eat can help support our gut to have a wide variety of bugs. Importantly, it’s never too late to make changes!
Here are our top tips for keeping your gut healthy.
Eat high fibre foods every day
Eating plenty of foods high in fibre will help with maintaining regular bowel motions. It can also help to manage cholesterol levels and diabetes. Aim to include foods high in fibre at every meal:
- vegetables (eat the skin if you can!)
- beans and legumes
- wholegrain breads and cereals (like oats, breads, pasta, or brown rice)
- nuts and seeds
- fruit.
When you cook and cool pasta, rice and potato, the amount of resistant starch (a type of fibre) increases, even when it’s reheated. A perfect reason to cook a little extra to reheat for your next meal.
Slowly make changes
If you increase your fibre intake, go slowly! Making lots of changes quickly can cause issues (like bloating, gas or constipation) to get worse, or may trigger new symptoms.
- Choose a breakfast cereal with oats (such as muesli or porridge).
- Swap from white bread to a multigrain, wholemeal or hi-fibre option.
- Add lentils to a soup, kidney beans to a mince dish or a bean mix to salad.
- Snack on a handful of unsalted nuts, a piece of fruit or wholegrain crispbread with cheese.
- Try adding an extra vegetable to each meal.
Drink plenty of fluid
Drinking plenty of fluid is another key part of keeping your bowel healthy and preventing constipation. Aim to drink at least eight glasses of fluid each day.
Move your body
Keeping active will help to move waste through your bowel. Try to move for at least 30 minutes each day.
More information
See the Healthy Ageing factsheets Eating well to age well and How to prevent constipation.
