A healthy gut is extremely important as it affects digestion, immunity, and metabolism. Gut health also plays a role in mental health, sleep, and the risk of certain diseases.
It is noteworthy that what you eat, what medicines you take, and how often you exercise can all change your gut microbiome. A 2022 study published in the Gastroenterology Clinics of North America journal revealed that chronic gastrointestinal disorders are prevalent in youth worldwide. “The chronicity of these conditions often results in their persistence into adulthood.”
“So what used to be an adult only problem has recently turned into a problem of young adults battling acidity. A lot of young adults in their 20s have been coming to our outpatient clinics. It’s about one in four of these people suffering from gastritis or acidity like symptoms. This acidity or the sudden rise of change in the demography can be attributed to four factors one of the is the lifestyle, lifestyle of food the change is food habits that has happened over the last decade or so which involves lot of fried food, spicy food, artificial used flavours, sweeteners, all this had made a dramatic change in our gut micro-bacteria and also in the prevalence of infection which is again a very important factor and a leading cause for gastric cancer as well, Dr. Sanil Parekh, Consultant – Gastroenterology, Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital, Mumbai told Financial Express.com.
Dr. Parekh also revealed that rising stress has also contributed to gut issues among young adults.
“Changing lifestyle, increasing academic demands, children pursuing higher studies are at a higher stress level than what it used to be before. Stress has a direct correlation to our stomach with something called as the gut-brain axis and any increase in stress levels causes a directly proportional release in our feeling of acidity and gastritis symptoms,” he said.
“…Obesity is almost like a pandemic now and that also majorly plays a role in GERD and gastritis like symptoms,” he said.
Now what can we do to avoid this? Eating the right food, eating timely meals, small frequent meals with small gaps. We have to make sure that we don’t overeat, he said.
“I always tell my patients that you should target only 60% of your stomach capacity. Avoid caffeine. Coffee is a major risk factor. It causes your esophageal sphincter to be loose and thus causes reflux symptoms. Soda and a high FODMAP diet are also responsible for this feeling of gas what the patient commonly describes. Other factors are exercise, physical activity, you should make it a point to walk after meals, you should not lie down after eating. We also have to understand that fatty food, fat takes the most time to digest and it stays in the stomach causing a feeling of bloating and a sensation of gas,” Dr. Parekh said.
We always prescribe a good Mediterranean diet with dry fruits, nuts, legumes, fruits, he emphasised.