Gut health glossary

This is when your stomach feels full and uncomfortable. It will probably look swollen and you may have stomach pain or wind. 

Bloating usually happens when you’re gassy and it should pass with time. It’s usual to be bloated sometimes, for example when you’ve eaten certain foods or around your period. 

However, if you’re bloated often, you should speak to your GP as it could be a sign of a food intolerance, another medical condition, or a problem with your digestion.  

You’re constipated if you struggle to poo or you don’t do it often. Everyone is different, but about 3 times per week is considered normal.¹

Constipation might mean your poo is hard in consistency or difficult to pass when you do go. 

This can happen for several reasons, but the first steps to helping constipation are to drink plenty of water, increase your fibre intake, and make sure you’re moving your body throughout the day. 

Digestion is the process of breaking down food and turning it into nutrients for the body to use. 

The mouth turns food into a bolus (a ball of wet food) that passes down the oesophagus (gullet) and into the stomach. Stomach muscles squeeze to move it along and enzymes turn it into a thick liquid.  

The small intestine absorbs most of the food’s nutrients into the bloodstream. Then, the remaining food passes into the large intestine (colon) as waste, ready to be excreted out when you go to the toilet.   

The digestive system is the group of organs responsible for digestion. They include the mouth, the oesophagus, the stomach, the small intestine, the large intestine (colon) and the rectum.

A protein that helps to speed up chemical reactions in living organisms.  

In our bodies, they can be responsible for processes like digestion. Our saliva, stomach, and pancreas all produce enzymes.  

They can also be used for other processes outside of the human body, such as fermenting food; enzymes are the reason that beer brews and bread dough rises. 

This stands for “fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols”!  

These are short-chain carbohydrates (sugars) that the small intestine can’t absorb very well. Some people find they have digestive issues, like cramping or bloating, after eating foods with FODMAP in. 

For this reason, people might eat a diet that’s “low FODMAP”, meaning it’s low in these types of carbohydrates.  

A metabolic process, caused by enzymes, that breaks down molecules (like glucose) without air. 

It’s also a popular and ancient way of preserving foods: sauerkraut, miso, and kombucha are all examples of fermented food and drink.  

You might think of your stomach as your gut, but it can refer to any organ in your digestive system.  

“Gut health” is the health of all these organs. If you have poor gut health, you might experience symptoms like bloating, cramping, diarrhoea, or constipation.  

This stands for irritable bowel syndrome and is a common digestive disorder. About 10-20% of people in the UK are thought to experience it.¹

Symptoms can include chronic bloating, cramping, constipation, and diarrhoea. IBS can “flare up” or calm down, but it’s generally a lifelong condition.  

A proposed condition where your gut lining allows partially-digested food or toxins into your bloodstream. The gut is supposed to be permeable enough to let water and nutrients through, but nothing else.  

There are many potential symptoms of leaky gut, but they can involve bloating, digestive issues, fatigue, headaches, joint pain, and far more. 

However, it’s still widely debated in medicine as it has many different symptoms and is linked to several different chronic conditions. 

A microbiome is a diverse community of microorganisms that live in one area.  

In the context of your body, it usually refers to your gut microbiome – which has over 100 trillion microbes living there. But other areas (like your skin) have their own microbiome, too.  

The more diverse the microbiome, the more functions it can perform. 

Compounds in food that encourage the growth of beneficial bacteria in the body. Put simply, they are a source of food for probiotics.  

Unlike probiotics, prebiotics aren’t alive. They’re a dietary fibre that we can’t digest, so they feed our gut microbiome instead.  

These are the byproducts of probiotics. In other words, the probiotics eat prebiotics and then produce postbiotics! 

Although they’re not alive like probiotics, they can still benefit our bodies. Some postbiotics are linked to controlling blood sugar and helping to support the immune system.^3,4

Some examples of postbiotics include lactic acid and butyrate.  

You might have heard these called “good bacteria” or “friendly bacteria”. They’re living microorganisms that are thought to help restore the natural balance of bacteria in your gut. 

There’s some evidence that probiotics can help reduce symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)⁵.  

More research is still needed into exactly how probiotics can help our bodies, but they’re generally considered safe to take for those with a healthy immune system.

1. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/constipation/ 
2. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg61/chapter/introduction#:~:text=IBS%20most%20often%20affects%20people,between%2010%25%20and%2020%25. 
3. https://www.diabetes.co.uk/news/2017/apr/postbiotics-could-be-used-to-treat-obese-people-with-prediabetes-98240647.html 
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8761849/ 
5. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/probiotics/