Every few months, a new gut health trend seems to hit social media — sea moss gel, bone broth, Coconut Cult’s probiotic mousse, fibremaxxing…the list goes on. Maybe you keep on scrolling…or maybe you pause, watch a few videos, and wonder: What if that creator is really onto something?
After all, gut health is top of mind for many people right now as public awareness of its impact on your overall well-being increases. “The health and the function of your gut impacts your body in ways that go beyond whether or not you had a good poop today,” Desiree Nielsen, a recipe developer with a focus on plant-based nutrition, said. It’s been linked to everything from lower stress to better mood, for starters.
But caring for your gut doesn’t necessarily mean heeding every health craze or TikTok fad. In fact, it often means not doing that, according to experts. “There is no regulation on the internet, so anyone can say anything,” Lisa Ganjhu, a gastroenterologist at NYU Langone Health said. “But that doesn’t always mean that they’re correct.” Repeat after us: Follower count doesn’t necessarily equate to medical expertise.
Still, the sheer volume of information out there can make it difficult to separate fact from fiction. To cut through the noise, we went straight to the source: asking Nielsen, Dr. Ganjhu, and other gut health experts about the most common gut health myths and misconceptions they encounter in their work — and why they aren’t true. Here’s what they had to say.
Believe the hype.
1. You *have* to poop at least once a day.
While it can be a squeamish topic for some, there’s no way around it: Your bathroom habits can be an important measure of your overall gut health. What’s coming out is often a clue to what’s going on inside—but the frequency can vary from person to person.
Because of these natural differences in GI rhythms, missing a day (or two!) doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong, according to Dr. Ganjhu. When it comes to bowel movement regularity, one size doesn’t fit all, Craig Gluckman, an assistant professor of medicine at UCLA Health with a focus on oesophageal and gastrointestinal motility disorders, said. For some people, “normal” might mean pooping as much as three times per day. For others, it might mean as little as three times per week.
What to do instead: Consider *your* pooping frequency baseline first and foremost. “If you fall in that [normal for you] range and have no other symptoms — you feel great, you don’t often feel sluggish or bloated or have digestive pain — then I would say you’re probably doing okay,” as long as you’re drinking an adequate amount of water and eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, Nielsen said. Besides, she adds, it’s also normal “to have some variation from time to time.” (If a change persists for more than two or three weeks, though, it’s a good idea to loop in your doc.)
2. Stress and spicy food cause ulcers.
Sure, you (and your gut) might not feel great after scrambling to meet a deadline or going to a town on a plate of Buffalo wings, but rest assured that neither is eating a hole in your stomach lining, according to Dr. Gluckman. Contrary to popular belief, most stomach ulcers—which can cause cause symptoms like dull or burning stomach pain, nausea or heartburn — can actually be blamed on one of two things: an infection with a strain of bacteria called Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), or misuse of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), a category that includes common painkillers such as ibuprofen and aspirin.
While many people are infected with H. pylori and don’t experience any symptoms, around 15% will go on to develop an ulcer in either their stomach (known as a gastric ulcer) or a portion of the small intestine called the duodenum (known as a duodenal ulcer). Meanwhile, NSAIDs can be dangerous if taken over a long period of time or in high doses because they can irritate your stomach lining.
What to do instead: Feel free to continue to enjoy spicy food without worrying about ulcers — but consider how else it could affect your digestive health. While spicy food can have health benefits like lowering bad LDL cholesterol and increasing your metabolism, it can also cause digestive irritation in some people, including symptoms like heartburn, stomach pain, stomach cramps, and, most famously, diarrhoea, so people who have conditions like IBS, IBD, and gastroesophageal reflux disease might want to be wary. And both stress and spicy food can actually make the symptoms of stomach ulcers feel worse, Dr. Gluckman said (not to mention slow down the healing process), so it’s probably best to avoid them if you do develop the condition.
3. Bloating is always a sign that something’s wrong.…
“Occasional bloating is really normal,” Emily Van Eck, an Austin-based dietitian nutritionist, said. Most of the time, that familiar feeling of fullness is simply a reaction to food making its way through your digestive tract, not evidence of a food intolerance or other health condition. Sure, the resulting sensation isn’t exactly pleasant, but that doesn’t automatically make it cause for concern. For most people, bloating “is going to happen from time to time, and it’s nothing to worry about,” Van Eck said.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that all bloating is normal, all the time. It can be a sign of a digestive condition like lactose intolerance, celiac disease or irritable bowel syndrome, and even some non-digestive conditions like ovarian cancer. If your bloating is “really painful and really persistent, it’s definitely worth checking in with the doctor” about potential underlying causes, Van Eck said.
What to do instead: Remember that seeing an increase in the size of your belly after a snack or meal is pretty standard. Some items are naturally tougher on your gut than others, especially healthy high-fibre options like fruits and vegetables. When you eat beans, lentils and other legumes, for instance, they are broken down by bacteria in your colon — a process that generates gas as a byproduct. (Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts are infamous in this regard.) Slowly increasing your fibre intake rather than piling it on all at once can help alleviate the impact. And perhaps try a fart walk after your meal?
4. …and swearing off certain foods can cure it.
If you automatically assume that your gas and bloating are abnormal, as we covered above, you might wonder if a specific food or food category is to blame — and if going cold turkey on well-known allergens like gluten and dairy could help. Logical as that approach may sound, Van Eck strongly discourages it: “That line of reasoning is just so problematic,” she said.
Most day-to-day bloating isn’t caused by a food intolerance, so an elimination diet probably won’t benefit you much. What’s more, imposing limits on the types of food you can eat can actually hurt your gut health in a few different ways — reducing diversity in your gut microbiome, for one. “What your gut really wants is the widest variety of foods possible,” and an elimination diet by definition doesn’t allow for that, Van Eck said. Over time, restricted eating can even cause nutritional deficiencies that could compound your digestive woes. In short, “blanketly avoiding certain food groups” is more likely to be harmful than helpful, Dr. Ganjhu said.
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What to do instead: Try more established strategies for addressing digestive woes (like exercising, drinking water, massaging your stomach, or switching up the position of your body). Really, “the most cleansing thing you can do for your bowel is to drink water and hit your fibre targets,” Nielsen said. Just pace yourself when it comes to the fibre. If your body isn’t acclimated, a sudden influx could actually exacerbate your symptoms, so you’ll want to “build your fibre tolerance up slowly,” Nielsen said. And if your gas and bloating persist despite these changes? Then it’s time to talk to your doc about testing for allergies, intolerances, and other conditions that could be interfering with normal digestion. As a general rule, “the best way to get your health care information is really through your doctor or your health care provider,” Dr. Ganjhu said.
5. Everyone should be taking a supplement for gut health.
You know that saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?” Well, it applies perfectly to gut health, according to Dr. Ganjhu. Taking digestive supplements can be helpful for certain people under certain circumstances, but that doesn’t mean that everyone should take them all the time. “If you don’t have to think about your gut and it’s happily plugging away, you don’t need to do anything,” Dr. Ganjhu said.
Plus, keep in mind that “there’s a lack of regulation” around the supplement industry, Nielsen said. Some supplements can contain ingredients not listed on the label, including prescription drugs. (And yes, this is true for those labeled “organic” or “natural” as well, according to Dr. Gluckman.) The FDA doesn’t assess any supplements for effectiveness before they go to market, meaning there’s no guarantee that they’ll have the intended effect (or that they even contain exactly what’s printed on the label).
What to do instead: Use GI-friendly food items (like fibre and fermented products) to give your gut a leg up. Otherwise? You’re messing with your gut health for no good reason — and it could backfire on you. Take probiotic supplements as an example: With every capsule, you’re introducing a bunch of new bacteria into your gut microbiome, potentially throwing off the existing balance and causing the exact issues you’re trying to avoid, like bloating, gas and constipation. Excessive vitamins or supplements “can potentially be extremely harmful,” Dr. Gluckman said.
6. Vitamins and other supplements can replace real food.
You can buy a supplement for pretty much anything these days: fibre, fish oil, melatonin, creatine, colostrum, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E — all the way through the end of the alphabet. With so many nutrient-packed pills, capsules and gummies at your fingertips, you might naturally start to wonder if you even need to bother eating healthy — and you wouldn’t be alone. “People will often reach for a supplement instead of examining the lifestyle factors that could actually be the root cause” of any digestive symptoms, Nielsen said.
Tempting as it might be to toss back some psyllium husk powder rather than choke down a bunch of broccoli, however, supplements aren’t a perfect substitute. In fact, research indicates they can’t fully replicate the health benefits. Evidence suggests that most vitamins and minerals in supplements aren’t as well absorbed as those in food, according to a 2019 article published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. What’s more, a 2019 study in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine found that diets adequate in vitamin A, vitamin K, magnesium, zinc and copper were associated with a lower risk of premature death — but only if those vitamins came from food rather than supplements. Compared to food, supplements are also more likely to cause a vitamin overdose — which can come with its own health implications — because they are so much more highly concentrated.
What to do instead: Focus on the basics — and put down the pill bottle: “No supplement is going to replace good healthy living — eating a healthy, whole diet rich with fruits and vegetables, managing your stress [and] sleeping well,” Dr. Ganjhu said.
7. Detoxing is essential.
To some extent, the concept of “detoxing” makes intuitive sense. “We live in a stressful, polluted world,” and we aren’t “always eating all the things we should,” Nielsen said. But if you think you need to do a juice cleanse or water fast to “purge” harmful substances from your body — which, to be clear, almost always just means signing up for a bout of prolific pooping — you’re probably not giving evolution enough credit. “Our bodies are really quite miraculous. They know how to handle our food and digest it,” Van Eck said. “Your liver, kidneys and lungs do all of the detoxing you need.”
Not only is detoxing not necessary, it’s likely to do more harm than good. In fact, it’s “actually the opposite of what you would want to do,” Nielsen said. Most cleanses do one of two things, according to UT Southwestern Medical Center: expelling fluids from the body or irritating your GI tract, causing it to release its contents. Either way, you could end up worse than you started — dealing with electrolyte loss and dehydration in the case of the former, or struggling with diarrhoea in the case of the latter.
What to do instead: Prioritise foods that support your body's natural detoxification processes (like beets, broccoli sprouts and Brazil nuts) — and skip the green juice cleanse that influencer in your feed is always pushing. When you’re not eating any solids, you’re “eliminating a lot of the normal physiological triggers for motility,” Nielsen said, referring to the contractions that break food down into smaller particles so it can advance through the digestive tract. By sticking to liquids exclusively, “you’re also eliminating that normal stimulus for the gut to move, which could make things feel much worse once you start eating solid food again,” Nielsen said. Cue the bloating, gas, and constipation that might be sending you to social media in search of a quick fix in the first place.
This article originally appeared on SELF.
