I see you over there. Every morning, you dutifully eat your yogurt. And maybe, just maybe, you swallow a handful of vitamins and probiotics supplements too. But are you actually feeling any better?

If not, there’s probably a very good reason! If you’re not carefully selecting your nutritional supplements and probiotics, you might need to switch things up to get the results you need. Why, you ask?

There are 3 main reasons:

Dead strains

For one, probiotics are effective when the strains are alive and kicking. Some manufacturers don’t create their products effectively, meaning that by the time you’re taking them, you’ve got a product full of dead strains.

If your gut health isn’t improving, this could be why. Probiotics are very sensitive and need to be created differently than other nutritional supplements.

Strains that don’t match you

In addition to dead strains, many probiotic options out there only give you one type of bacteria. That’s not going to cut it if you want to see good gut health. Read the labels carefully before simply tossing things into your cart labeled with “probiotics.”

You should find ones that contain many different strains of probiotics together to give you the best benefits.

Bacteria that’s not found naturally in humans

The bacteria that’s good for your gut is not the same stuff you might pick up from the dirt in your yard. Despite this, some probiotic products include those strains of bacteria which will actually harm you instead of helping you because of their potential to become pathogenic.

Don’t let this put you off from probiotics for your gut health though because you do need them. You just need to do them right. And when you’re using the right kind of probiotics for your body, there’s one more thing you’ve got to do to make them effective: get more fiber in your diet.

Turns out, Mom was right about eating more fiber for keeping things moving. It’s also good for weight management and keeping your risks for heart disease and diabetes down. Recently, it was found that fiber helps protect our gut health. We’re not talking the kind of fiber you find in the cereal aisle either. You want real, natural sources of fiber.

How does fiber work with probiotics?

If you’re eating a diet that’s low in fiber or only contains the soluble types of fiber you get from processed foods, you’re slowly decreasing the amount of fiber-loving, fiber-eating good bacteria in your gut. Don’t feel too guilty though if you’ve been slacking on getting good fiber. Your body will turn it right around fast when you start giving it what it needs. Naturally, fiber-rich foods are things like artichokes, lentils, chickpeas, bananas, avocados, strawberries, broccoli, sweet potatoes, chia seeds, and even air-popped popcorn.

By getting proper probiotics sources as well as naturally high-fiber foods in your diet, you will be the change you want to see in your gut.

It takes practice to hear to what our gut is saying it needs. Everyone is different, but I hope these few universal truths about nourishing yourself from the inside out have been helpful.