It’s important to listen to your body. We all have digestive systems of different strengths and speeds. You may be able to eat spicy food without getting heartburn, while your spouse might be kept up all night from a single slice of pizza. Listen to your digestive system, make active observations, and go with what works.

If you don’t know where to start, focus on taking away rather than making additions. If you’re struggling with regularity, for example, consider dietary elements that may be contributing constipation. Diets rich in meat and fat may have this problem, while diets abundant in vegetables and fruit will likely be just fine. Supplanting the non-plant, high-calorie foods with something natural and fiber-rich can often solve the problem without getting too complicated.

If your diet is good and you still have persistent digestive problems, it’s time to start investing in gut health on the molecular level. Taking probiotics every single day can change the flora of your digestive tract, making you more able to digest, fight off disease, and feel full of energy. Some of us have damaged gut flora from antibiotics and poor diet, and it can take time to rejuvenate these bacterial populations. If you don’t want to take expensive probiotics, consider eating bacteria-rich fermented foods, a little each day. A single dose of kombucha or sauerkraut can have as much or more living bacteria than a probiotic pill, and you can make the ferments at home for pennies.

Triphala, the ancient Ayurvedic herb, is likely effectively in improving gut health. Available from Banyan Botanicals and Gaia Herbs, the active components of triphala are not completely understood by science. However, centuries of anecdote, personal experience, and physician observation have established triphala as a standard treatment for gut health in a number of medical traditions. This is consistent with what many people experience: what works isn’t always the best understood method, but individuals seem to benefit nonetheless.

There are also many herbal remedies, like the triphala method already discussed. Numerous teas and Ayurvedic medicines have properties that can stimulate digestion and help stabilize other gut issues like dyspepsia. The simple effect of caffeine in black tea may be enough to promote regularity for most adults.

A key component in gut health is hydration. It’s hard to maintain a digestive schedule if you don’t have enough water in the system to lube up the works. Much is made of the role of fiber in digestive and gut health, but water is as important if not more so. Consult a guide about how much water someone of your age and gender should consume. Take into account your activity level, and extenuating factors like the dryness of the winter air. If in doubt, drink a little more. Spice up dull water by drinking seltzer, or using natural flavors to give it a bit more variety. Natural mineral waters can also be incredibly enjoyable, though these will likely be too expensive to be your primary hydration source.

Finally, exercise to promote the best operation of your gut. There’s something about getting the blood flowing, and having your tissues and muscles demanding sustenance, that makes our digestive systems jump into an active mode. Lots of us work from a seated position all day, and this can have deleterious effects on the gut. Simply by becoming more active, we can change things for the better.

Fortunately for your gut health, there are many things you can do to be more healthy. Practice these various methods little by little, and you should have good gut health for life.