If you didn’t know already, gut health is incredibly important for your overall health as a man. In fact, it’s so important that some doctors claim your gut health determines how healthy the rest of your body is —  including your brain performance, testosterone, how well you age and more. 

See, when your gut health is out of whack, it causes inflammation, which then causes your cortisol levels spike. When your cortisol levels spike, your testosterone levels drop. Also, because poor gut health causes your cortisol levels to increase, it also causes a host of other issues like brain fog and difficulty concentrating, feelings of anxiety and accelerated aging. 

And that’s just the beginning. Poor gut health can also lead to autoimmune diseases, type 2 diabetes, obesity and acid reflux. 

The bottom line is, if you want to thrive as a man, you need to achieve optimal gut health. In this article, I’m going to show you exactly how to do that. 

Practice Intermittent Fasting

Every time you eat, you put your gut to work.

Hours after you eat, your gut is still working trying to digest the food you ate a few hours ago. 

The more often you eat, the more exhausted your good gut bacteria get. 

And that’s when gut health starts to collapse. 

But that’s why intermittent fasting is so important. When you intermittent fast (refrain from eating for a preferable 16-hours or more), your gut bacteria get a much needed rest from breaking down foods in the digestive tract. This also gives the gut bacteria time to focus on “cleaning house,” and preserving the good bacteria while eliminating the bad. 

Research from an in-vitro study also shows that intermittent fasting activates a gene that strengthens the gut barrier and protects the gut from harmful microbes and toxins that are responsible for unwanted health issues. 

So here’s what I recommend. Each day, give yourself a 16-hour fasting window (which includes when you sleep) where you only drink water and coffee. Then, keep all of your eating within an 8-hour feasting window. You’ll consume 2-3 meals within that window. As a side benefit, intermittent fasting has also been shown in studies to boost testosterone levels by 180%.

Avoid Taking Antibiotics Unnecessarily

Taking an antibiotic as a last resort when you’re sick is fine. 

However, making antibiotics a regular part of your life can be a disaster for gut health. The reason is because antibiotics wipe out bacteria in the body (and gut). However, they don’t just pinpoint the bad bacteria. Antibiotics wipe out bacteria without any partiality, both good and bad. 

This means that when you take an antibiotic regularly, it wipes out the good bacteria in your gut. This massacre is so bad, that some studies report it can take your gut up to 6 months to restore the good strains of bacteria that were killed off with the antibiotics. 

If you can, stop using antibiotics unnecessarily. If you’re on an antibiotic but are unsure if you still need to be on one, talk with your doctor about it. The CDC recently reported that 30% of antibiotics that are prescribed are done so unnecessarily. 

Exercise Regularly

We talk about the benefits of exercise around here all the time. 

Exercise boosts testosterone, improves overall health and wellness, helps you shed fat and build muscle, and generally increase confidence. But if that wasn’t enough to convince you that you need to exercise on a regular basis, maybe this will:

Exercise improves gut health. 

A university-backed study from Cork, Ireland found that people who train regularly have a larger variety of good gut bacteria than those who don’t. Plus, generally speaking, when you train, you naturally want to make better health choices for your body. I know that for me, if I skip a week in the gym, I’m more likely to settle for eating garbage food than on those days I’ve trained. 

Get on a training program, stick with it and fix your gut health. 

Sleep Better

Studies show it doesn’t take long for a lack of sleep to affect your gut health.  

The relationship between sleep and gut bacteria is increasingly seen as a two-way street: Our microbiota seems to have an effect on how we sleep. In turn, sleep has an effect on the health and diversity of the important bacterial world that lives in our gut.

In the study I mentioned above, a group of Swedish and German scientists investigated the impact of insufficient sleep on the presence of good and bad bacteria in the gut. It was a small study that included nine healthy, young, normal weight men. None of the participants suffered from any sleep disorders, and all had regular sleep patterns and regular eating patterns. However, after only two nights of partial sleep deprivation, their health started to fluctuate. The scientists found:

• A significant decrease in types of beneficial bacteria
• Changes to the composition of microorganisms in the microbiome that are linked specifically to obesity and type 2 diabetes
• A significant decrease in insulin sensitivity

So like I said before, if you want to fix your gut, you need to make sure you’re getting somewhere in the ballpark of 7-8 hours of sleep. If you aren’t getting enough quality sleep right now, create a sleep calendar and plan when you’ll go to bed and when you’ll wake up each day with your goal being to plan for 8 hours of sleep per night. 

Also, if you want a supplement that’ll reduce stress and help you stay cool, calm and collected throughout the day (while improving sleep) check THIS out.

Fine-Tune Your Diet With Man Greens 

There are two things you want to do when it comes to your diet and fixing gut health. 

First, studies suggest that you want to avoid foods that will cause inflammation in your gut — like processed foods, artificial sweeteners, and an excess amount of simple sugars. Unfortunately, these taboo foods for gut health are very common in Western eating habits, which is definitely one of the reasons our society struggles with obesity, diabetes and a slew of other health issues — all of which can stem from poor gut health. 

These inflammatory causing foods:

• Decrease the number of good bacteria and fungi
• Create less diversity of the gut microbiome
• Cause alterations in their interactions and functions
• Cause the formation of digestive plaque

Second, studies suggest you also want to eat foods that are high in antioxidant compounds that reduce inflammation. Some great examples of antioxidant, anti-inflammatory foods are turmeric, spinach and moringa oleifera — which are all ingredients I’ve included in my testosterone boosting and cortisol lowering greens powder, Man Greens. With just a single scoop of Man Greens you can protect your gut, reduce inflammation, while boosting testosterone at the same time. 

Check out Man Greens by clicking HERE. 

Now What?

So there you have it, man.

If you want to fix your gut health, put everything I’ve mentioned in this article to practice and you’ll be well on your way. 

Also, don’t forget to check out Man Greens. Not only does it contain ingredients that’ll help fix your gut health, but it’ll also boost testosterone, libido, performance and lower cortisol and inflammation at the same time. 

Check out Man Greens for yourself by clicking here. 

• Chad