Spice Up Your Gut Biome

By Dr. Sean Wells, DPT, PT, OCS, ATC/L, CSCS, NSCA-CPT, CNPT, Cert-DN

In prior blog posts, and definitely within our board-approved continuing education courses, we have discussed the gut microbiome at length. It is an amazing array of bacteria, fungi, and archaea that help to produce compounds, integrate with our immune responses, and may be linked to certain diseases. While all of this seems promising we have to be honest that the literature regarding what exact mechanisms and species that are linked with disease states still remains to be seen. 

However, we do know that promoting the amount and diversity of the gut biome content is a positive thing. Best recommendations for this would include eating a variety of foods, consuming fiber, enjoying foods rich in probiotics (e.g. miso, fermented foods), and avoiding broad-spectrum antibiotics when possible. Another fun, recent finding is that another food additive may help boost the gut biome: spices!

In the r...