Your gut health plays a role in many other parts of your body—your mood, your heart, your immunity—so keeping it in good shape is important. Whether you’re feeling bloated, backed up or nauseous—try one of these 6 research-backed drinks to help improve your digestion. 

 Prune Juice

If you thought this was an old wives’ tale, guess again. Turns out prunes, and the juice they’re made into, are a great source of sorbitol—a naturally-occurring sugar alcohol that is typically not absorbed and draws water into your large intestine. And that extra water helps to keep things moving along through your GI tract. Prune juice also retains some of the fiber from the whole fruit: in a cup of prune juice, there’s about 3 grams fiber.

 Kombucha

Drinking kombucha with dinner is a great choice for gut health. And, hey, you can even put it in a fancy wine glass if you’d like.

Kombucha brings us back to probiotics. Kombucha is a type of tea that is fermented, and anything fermented is naturally a great source of probiotics.

Since kombucha is made from tea, you also get to reap all of those benefits — including antioxidant-rich and anti-inflammatory polyphenols.

 Kefir

Kefir has a consistency that’s similar to drinkable yogurt, which makes this the perfect on-the-go option.

Incredible for gut and digestive health, kefir is actually a more powerful probiotic than yogurt and can contain dozens of different strains of yeast and bacteria. Most yogurts only have a few.

That’s good gut news, since probiotics are linked to healthy weight management, mental health benefits, and general treatment and prevention of gastrointestinal diseases.

 Smoothies

Try smoothies to help improve your digestion – google image

The key to making a smoothie good for your digestive tract is to make sure it delivers a combination of soluble and insoluble fiber. Research shows that combination helps with consistency and improves gas. In fact, that combination is just as effective, if not more so, than a psyllium fiber supplement (a common OTC laxative).

Soluble fiber absorbs water and softens things, and makes it easier to pass. It’s in fruits, vegetables, seeds, and nuts. Insoluble fiber is in the skins of fruits and vegetables, as well as whole grains, and it doesn’t absorb water, but acts as ‘roughage’ in your GI tract and shuttles things through.

Want to up your smoothie for better digestion? Add a couple of kiwis: eating 2 a day for two weeks helped participants of one study boost their bowel movements without causing adverse GI symptoms.

 Chia seed tonic

Similar to how smoothies (with the right ingredients!) can be beneficial for your digestion, so can chia seeds. That’s because they deliver both soluble and insoluble fiber—and you now know that combination helps to keep your digestive tract humming along as it should. But also, chia seeds are really quite high in fiber. In a single tablespoon, there’s about 4 grams fiber, which is 14 percent of your daily recommended amount..

 Ginger tea

ginger has also been found to help with digestion – google image

Well-known for its ability to quell nausea (which is scientifically accurate, btw), ginger has also been found to help with digestion. According to a 2020 review study in the journal Nutrients, ginger helps with digestion by encouraging GI function and emptying, while also stabilizing overall GI motility so it’s not over- or under-active

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Source: Eatingwell, greatist

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