The Best Breakfast For Healing Your Gut & Having The Best Poop Of Your Life

Low-carb diets are trendy once again (remember the days of the Atkins diet?), but that means too many people are now leaving an important food out of their diets: oats.

Whether you used to eat oats or never got into oats in the first place, you're missing out! And with gut health becoming more and more of a health concern lately, there's even more reason why you should be including oats in your diet. Oats are nutritional powerhouses. They contain healthy unsaturated fats, protein, dietary fibers, disease-fighting phytochemicals, vitamins, and minerals. However, the one nutrient that really makes oats stand out is fiber.

𝛽-glucan, the main dietary fiber found in oats, is a soluble fiber commonly known for its ability to help lower cholesterol levels1. In fact, the FDA states that just 3 g of soluble fiber each day2 can help reduce your risk of heart disease by lowering cholesterol levels and blood pressure. To put that into a usable perspective, 100 g of oats has anywhere between 2.5 g and 8.5 g of 𝛽-glucan, which means just 1 cup of cooked oats may provide 1 g to 3.4 g of soluble fiber.

Remember how we said that 𝛽-glucan is a soluble fiber that helps to keep you regular? Well, just to give you an idea of how powerful it can be: A study4 in a nursing home was performed to see if dietary fiber could replace routine use of laxatives in times of constipation, which is a common problem in residents of nursing homes. The fiber group received 7 to 8 g of oat bran supplementation daily. Not only did laxative use significantly decrease by 59 percent in the fiber group, but it actually increased by 8 percent in the control group. In addition, body weight and overall well-being was reported as remaining the same throughout the study.

In other gut studies, patients with ulcerative colitis who consumed oat bran daily (60 g/day) experienced a significant decrease in abdominal pain or reflux over the course of 12 weeks. Oats have also consistently shown to be well-tolerated in patients with celiac disease5 or other inflammatory bowel disorders (up to 100 g/day).

Oats are good for keeping you regular, increasing the amount of good bacteria in your gut, and lowering your risk of heart disease, but the benefits don't stop there.

Research shows that oats may improve immunity, reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes, improve insulin sensitivity, and they're definitely good for your waistline7—out of 38 different foods in a study on satiety, participants ranked oats No. 3 overall in terms of satiety and fullness, and No. 1 in the breakfast food category.

Fact: Eating oatmeal isn't the only way to enjoy oats!