Make friends with your gut

Gut inflammation is one of those phrases that sounds clinical and distant, but if you’ve ever dealt with ongoing bloating, unpredictable digestion, food sensitivities, fatigue, or that vague “my gut just isn’t happy” feeling, you already know what it looks like in real life.

Girl sitting on bed, clutching stomach.

I see this a lot and experience it myself. People don’t usually say, “I have gut inflammation.” They say things like: “My stomach is always off.” “I react to foods I used to tolerate.” “I’m tired of guessing what will set me off.” “My digestion feels fragile.”

From an Ayurvedic perspective, this makes a lot of sense. Ayurveda doesn’t start with a diagnosis label; it starts with function. How well are you digesting, absorbing, and clearing what you eat? How stable is your internal environment? How much heat, dryness, heaviness, or stagnation is showing up in your system?

In Ayurveda, digestion is driven by something called agni, often translated as “digestive fire.” Think of agni less as a flame and more as your whole digestive capacity: stomach acid, enzymes, bile, gut motility, and even your metabolic “spark.” When agni is steady, food gets broken down, nutrients get absorbed, and waste moves out efficiently. When agni is disturbed, things start to back up, ferment, or irritate the system.

Inflammation, in this lens, often shows up as too much heat, too much reactivity, or too much irritation in the gut. Not always dramatic. Sometimes it’s subtle: a burning sensation, loose stools, urgency, skin flare-ups, or that wired-but-tired feeling after eating.

One of the simplest Ayurvedic ideas I find incredibly useful is that digestion is sensitive to qualities. Hot, cold, dry, oily, heavy, light, sharp, dull. Your body responds to these qualities every day, whether you think in Ayurvedic terms or not. If your system is already running hot and irritated, piling on more heat, spice, coffee, alcohol, or rushed meals is like throwing gasoline on a smoldering fire. If your system is dry and irregular, cold smoothies and raw salads don’t usually bring things back into balance, even if they’re “healthy.”

This is where Ayurveda can be surprisingly practical. Instead of asking only, “What should I eat?” it also asks, “How is my system right now, and what qualities would calm it down?”

When I’m thinking about gut inflammation from this perspective, I usually look at a few big patterns.

First: heat and sharpness. This often looks like acid reflux, burning sensations, loose or urgent stools, irritability, or feeling overheated easily. Food-wise, this can be made worse by a lot of coffee, alcohol, spicy food, fried food, or constantly eating on the run. Cooling doesn’t mean ice-cold. It means choosing foods and habits that are soothing and steady: warm but not spicy meals, well-cooked vegetables, simple grains, gentle spices like fennel, coriander, and cardamom, and regular meal times. Boring? Maybe a little. Calming? Often, yes.

Second: dryness and irregularity. This can show up as constipation, gas, bloating, variable appetite, or that feeling that digestion is just… unpredictable. From an Ayurvedic view, dryness and movement need to be grounded. That usually means more warm, moist, cooked foods; more soups, stews, and porridges; a bit more healthy fat; and fewer cold, raw, or grab-and-go meals. It also means eating in a calmer way. Digestion doesn’t love multitasking.

Third: heaviness and stagnation. This can look like sluggish digestion, feeling weighed down after meals, lots of mucus, or a sense that food just sits there. Here, the issue isn’t too much heat; it’s too little digestive spark. Gentle stimulation can help, but “gentle” is the key word. Think warm meals, simple spices like ginger or black pepper in small amounts, and portions that leave you satisfied but not stuffed. Big, heavy, late-night meals are almost always a problem for this pattern.

What I like about this approach is that it doesn’t require you to believe in anything mystical. You can test it in your own body. Eat a rushed, spicy, greasy meal when you’re already stressed and see how you feel. Then compare that to a simple, warm, well-cooked meal eaten slowly. Most people notice a difference immediately.

French fries and a milkshake.

Another piece that matters more than we admit is how we eat. In Ayurveda, the state of your nervous system is part of digestion. If you’re eating while standing, driving, scrolling, or working, your body is not prioritizing digestion. You can have the “perfect” food and still get poor results if your system is stuck in fight-or-flight. Slowing down, sitting down, and actually tasting your food isn’t just mindful eating fluff; it’s a real digestive strategy.

A quick note on healing and expectations. Ayurveda doesn’t promise overnight fixes, and neither do I. If your gut has been irritated or inflamed for a long time, it usually takes time and consistency to calm things down. The goal is to reduce irritation, support digestion, and create conditions where the gut can do its job more comfortably.

If you want a few simple, low-drama places to start, here are some that I use myself and with clients:

1) Eat most of your meals warm and cooked for a few weeks and see what changes. Soups, stews, roasted vegetables, rice, oats, simple proteins. This alone often reduces digestive stress.

2) Simplify your spice cabinet. If your gut feels inflamed, focus on gentle spices like fennel, coriander, cumin, and a little ginger. Go easy on chili, cayenne, and heavy garlic-on-everything phases.

3) Create a pause before meals. Even 3 slow breaths before you eat can shift your nervous system enough to help digestion work better.

4) Keep meals regular. Skipping, grazing all day, or eating very late at night tends to destabilize digestion, especially when things are already sensitive.

5) Notice patterns instead of chasing rules. Which foods feel calming? Which ones leave you irritated, foggy, or uncomfortable? Your body is usually pretty honest if you listen.

I know “gut inflammation” can sound intimidating, especially if you’ve been dealing with symptoms for a long time. But one of the things I appreciate about Ayurveda is that it gives us a way to work with the body gently, through daily choices, instead of always feeling like we’re fighting it.

Woman chopping vegetables in kitchen.

If this way of looking at digestion resonates with you, I write a lot about how to apply these ideas in real life, with real food, and real schedules. And if you want help making sense of your own digestion patterns, that’s exactly the kind of work I do at Nutriveda 🌿