Gut health¹ refers to the absence of gastrointestinal symptoms, such as abdominal pain or diarrhea, and disease (e.g. Inflammatory Bowel Disease.)
The concept of gut health has recently garnered a lot of mainstream attention, but there is yet to be a concrete definition. Typically, gut health includes:
- Absence of gastrointestinal disease or symptoms
- Absence of undesirable local conditions, such as increased intestinal permeability, mucosal inflammation and deficiency
- Good function of processes linked to the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, such as the digestion and absorption of food
- Balance of microbes living in the GI tract – the microbiome