Doing This 1 Thing Every Week Is The Secret To Whipping Your Gut Health Into Shape

Attaining a healthy gut microbiome has long been all the rage in the wellness world, but now it seems everyone else — including countless TikTokers — has become obsessed. However, despite all of the reels, articles and advice we regularly encounter, many of us aren’t exactly sure what the term even means.

“It’s a scientific description of those trillions of microorganisms that live in our gut,” Megan Rossi, a Ph.D. and registered dietitian who is known in some circles as queen of gut health, recently told us — Raj Punjabi and Noah Michelson, co-hosts of HuffPost’s “Am I Doing It Wrong?” podcast.

“It’s not just bacteria — it’s also the chemicals they’re producing,” the founder of London’s The Gut Health Clinic said. “So it’s that collection of the environment and all those microbes.”

That little party, she explains, is mostly in the lower section of our gastrointestinal tracts — specifically the last 5 feet of our 30-foot-long digestive tract. Keeping it healthy can have huge benefits, not just for our guts but for our entire body — and even our mental health.

Even though many of us have probably heard that “good bacteria” and “bad bacteria” can be found in our guts, Rossi wants us to reframe that binary. “Very few [bacterium] are actually inherently bad. It’s more about the environment they’re in as well as their dominance…. If we treat them well, they will then look after us.”

So how do we improve the health of our gut microbiomes?

Doctors and researchers are learning more every year — Rossi herself has authored more than 50 international peer-reviewed scientific papers on the topic — but one thing is certain: Eating as many plants as possible — ideally 30 different kinds per week — is key.

“When it comes to gut health,