Heal your gut for clear skin and happier brain

Improving your gut health can have enormous health benefits – healthy weight, clear skin and happy brain are some of the major ones! This post is about some often-ignored small habits we need to work on and develop in order to have healthy digestion. These are 7 healthy habits to heal your gut and help rebuild your microbiome. This post isn’t specifically about a healthy gut diet, because this is individual, as different foods work for different people.

So let’s start with the basics. Let’s start with the one thing we need a healthy gut for. Digesting food.

But then let’s research more, what is food, really? Well, according to our highly accurate research on the Google, here’s what it is.

You see food is basically fuel. We need food to maintain life.

But Food Is Useless, Unless…

we can break it down. If we were unable to break down the food we eat to its tiny components called nutrients, it would be useless.

The body, our cells, need nutrients to function properly. They need them for energy, for the ongoing maintenance inside the body, for us to be able to walk, talk, think, do anything.

Now, if you were to just throw a piece of broccoli at a cell without breaking it down to its nutrients, a cell wouldn’t know what to do with it.

And here we are. Evolution came up with a solution (omg that rhymes), far greater than any nutritionist or pharmaceutical company could ever do. Your gastrointestinal tract, or GI tract. That system inside your body is responsible for so many things we never think of while eating those burgers at McDonald’s.

The major “to-do” of the GI tract is to take the food we buy, cook or plant, extract the nutrients from it and make those nutrients available to the body along with water and electrolytes, so your body can live.

If that’s not happening, if we’re not getting those nutrients, the body would not have anything to work with and we’d be literally falling apart.

Therefore, people aren’t that dramatic with their claims that most diseases start from an unhealthy gut (although, it’s still a little dramatic). If your gut isn’t working right, your body will not get the fuel it needs every day to maintain itself.

Some health issues that come with an unhealthy gut or digestion include (1, 2):

obesity
anxiety
depression
acne
chronic inflammation
inadequate immune function
cardiovascular disease

How to heal your gut for better skin, healthier brain and Fitness

Now let’s take a look at some basic and free things you can do to improve your gut health and ultimately heal your gut.

1. Chew

Somewhere along the way, we forgot that our mouths have a more important function than just talking and tasting food. The oral cavity is the first part of your digestive system. It’s where we break down that food using our teeth, the tongue and lots of saliva. Between 0,75-1l of saliva/day to be exact and fascinating. That saliva is an important part of the digestive process – it contains natural disinfectants (like IgA and lysozyme) and enzymes that help break down the food so that it can then be further processed in the stomach.

If you don’t chew your food and don’t break it down to a smooth consistency – the next parts of the gastrointestinal tract – your stomach, small intestine and large intestine are going to have to work harder to try to digest and absorb something from that piece of carrot you didn’t chew all the way.

Now, we're not solid with this and we don’t chew nearly enough. But once we read more on this topic we started doing it. We said we will chew each bite at least 15 times (we noticed on average we chew 4-5 times, so that’s a big step for us).

You know what happened?

We don’t want to eat so much – it gets boring.
The things that taste good when you actually chew them more than twice are fruit and vegetables. Not kidding, try to chew a cupcake 20 times. It’s disgusting.
We can’t stuff our mouth with so much food. In order to be able to chew and not choke, we need to eat smaller bites – which again helps eat less. And well, if you read this article, you already know – helps you live longer.

So if you want to improve your gut health for better skin, healthy brain and a fit body overall – we highly, highly recommend to start chewing more. Start with 10 times, then go up. Our goal is 30.

2. Try to relax

You’ve probably heard there’s a gut-brain axis and how your gut health affects your brain (here’s an article on this). While there’s undeniably a connection between your gut and your brain health, we don’t know much at this point. We mean, no, there isn’t an evil genius bacteria sitting inside your gut telling your brain what to do or what not to do.

It’s far more complicated than that. It’s not like you eat something bad, your gut bacteria changes and you start being depressed all of a sudden. After all other things happen in life besides just eating.

So what we mean by that is that stress can also affect your gut flora and it’s diversity (the bacteria inside your gut) and this, in turn, can affect your mental health. It’s much like a cycle.

So try your best to eat healthier, but also to reduce stress. Go on daily walks, spend time with people who make you happy, don’t sweat the small stuff and know everything will pass.

3. Get Moving

Another thing that can affect your gut health and your gut microbiome is exercise. It’s been shown in mice that exercise can change their gut microbiota – and these changes are different than the changes you’d get from just changing your diet. (study)

Regular physical activity has also been shown to reduce the risk of colon cancer. (study)

So stay active throughout the day, don’t sit for hours at a time and walk more.

4. Practice intermittent fasting

We talked about caloric restriction and how it can extend your life, but it turns out – eating less and spacing out your meals can help your gut heal and recover.

In fact, intermittent fasting, again, changes the diversity of the bacteria inside your colon, which can then affect your brain health, your weight and your skin. With intermittent fasting, we find the simple 16:8 hours split works best for us (16 hours fasting, 8 hours eating).

5. Sleep

Don’t go a week sleeping 6 hours a day – that’s not good. Sleep is probably the most important thing you can do for your body to heal. It’s a restorative process. It’s important for your immune system (which is also related to longevity), for repairing the damage that happens to our bodies throughout the day. And your gut and the microbiome are not an exception to that. Here are 7 things you can do to sleep better.

6. Stay hydrated

And when we say that we mean drink water, but also consume more water-containing foods, obviously – fruits and vegetables. Because you might be drinking water, but if you’re also consuming dehydrating foods like coffee, chocolate, soy sauce, fried foods – you’re not doing yourself, your gut and skin health any favor.

So make it a point to eat more foods that hydrate, like cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli – pretty much most vegetables and fruits you know.

7. Choose the right diet for you

When it comes to digestion, you’re the only one who can figure out which diet works for you. Some people need more fiber, while others don’t do well on so much fiber. Some people feel great following a vegan diet, others like the paleo diet. Both are known to positively affect the bacteria inside your gut. However, this doesn’t mean that you need to do either of these diets to be healthy.

In general, animal products do affect the gut microbiome negatively, while plants affect it positively.

Something else you want to look into is consuming prebiotic and probiotic, fermented foods like sauerkraut, yogurt and kimchi.

Practice these habits and be mindful of how different foods affect your body. When you notice something isn’t working for you – don’t keep consuming it. Not worth it. Eat more of the food that makes you feel alive.

Originally published in January 2019, last updated in October 2025.

Heal your gut for clear skin and happier brain