Post-holiday blues? Bring your gut back into balance! PART 1

Most of us know vacation stress. Checking travel insurance at the last minute, quickly running to the drugstore for sunscreen and pills against diarrhea, saying goodbye to family, checking your car's oil and brake fluid, and finishing the very last tasks at work. But did you know that you can also expect a large amount of stress after your vacation? Add those vacation meals to that... and you feel it in your gut!

Misery... right after your vacation

After a few nice weeks on vacation, making beautiful trips and visiting cozy restaurants, everyday life is back at the door. The daily worries, the stress at work, and the thousands of tasks that, as always, are still waiting for your attention and completion. In percentage terms, most stress-related complaints actually occur more often after the vacation than before it.

Strange, but recognizable

Quite strange, because you would swear that after a vacation you can go back to work nicely rested and full of new energy. Yet that is not always true. Especially if—whether noticed or not—you were walking on your gums before you went on vacation. The underlying reason? On vacation, fewer stimuli—triggers—come at you, so the body no longer has to produce all the stress hormones to suppress complaints such as fatigue and other discomforts. Finally, you can feel how tired and affected you are. You can refuel for a while. At least; that's what you hope.

Because unfortunately. The vacation turns out to be too short, and moreover, your expectations were just a bit too high. Not so nicely rested after all, and your first working day is already in sight. Your body prepares itself again for the 'daily' fight, and this means: the production of stress hormones. You go back on adrenaline. Blood supply to the heart, brain, and muscles increases, and blood supply to the digestive system decreases. And here lies the crux. The intestinal functions are slowed down, which can cause, among other things, constipation, bloating, and that annoying nervous feeling in your gut.

Gut-brain connection

By now, there are numerous ways of thinking about our intestinal system, the interactions with the brain, the experience of stress, and the influence on the immune system. The intestines contain at least as many nerve cells as our brains. Those nerve cells enable the intestines to carry out all kinds of activities independently and communicate directly with our brains via, among other things, the vagus nerve. So our gut is actually a kind of second brain and communicates with our head.

You are what you eat? You are what your gut bacteria eat!

Balance in your gut

The intestines contain more than 100 trillion bacteria, and this entire bacterial population is called the gut microbiome. When the bacteria that are less practical for us outnumber the bacteria that are beneficial to us, a less beautiful balance arises in the intestines. You can influence that balance by eating in a good, responsible way and supplementing with a supplement if necessary. The bad gut bacteria for us like fast sugars for energy, while the beneficial bacteria for us feel most comfortable with dense, fibrous leafy greens and other vegetables that contain little sugar. So eating less refined sugar and more vegetables can bring you into a balanced state faster and speed up your gut healing process.

Reinforcements

Probiotics

These are mixtures of 'good' bacteria. They are found, for example, in fermented dairy products such as yogurt, kefir, kimchi, kombucha, and are full of them. In science, there is still no general consensus on which bacterial families now have exactly the very best, positive effects in humans; and what those effects are. However, the families Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium are often mentioned as beneficial in studies on cognitive brain functions.

Prebiotics

These are fibers that humans cannot digest themselves, but that the beneficial bacteria use as food. Gut bacteria can do that. Nuts, whole grain products, and some vegetables and fruits contain many prebiotic fibers. Also the Galacto-oligosaccharides: GOS supplements. Beta-GOS was the first on the market, and much experience has been gained with it by now. Beta-GOS is obtained from lactose (bovine). Beta-GOS is still considered the reference prebiotic. It occurs naturally in breast milk and contributes to the development of the gut microbiome by acting as a nutrient for microbes such as Bifidobacteria and some of the Lactobacilli.

And now?

Take it easy, build in rest moments, and pay attention to your eating habits. Your gut says more about your mental health and has more influence on you as a person than you would actually like. Maybe Freud was right after all, and man is only very limitedly the master in his own house... Because all those bacteria: they probably have much, much more to say!

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Also check out Part 2.