Did you know that drinking alcohol can affect your gut microbiome? 🦠
When you drink alcohol, especially binge drinking and high alcohol content drinks, you are destroying the beneficial bacteria in your gut and causing gut inflammation. Just one night of a heavy episode of drinking can damage the mucous cells in your stomach causing inflammations and lesions.
In addition, alcohol delays the emptying of your stomach contents which makes food sit longer in your gut causing abdominal discomfort. Alcohol inhibits digestive enzymes and juices which makes it more difficult for your body to break down, digest and absorb nutrients from your food. So partially digested food can cause excess fermentation in your gut — Beer 💩 anyone?
So how do you heal the gut? Recent research shows that a 3 weeks abstinence from alcohol can help facilitate a complete recovery of the gut barrier. But it takes even long for your microbiome to get back to normal. Either way, a good start is to reduce your alcohol intake first to see how that can help improve your gut!
