You know I’m all about that gut health. Gut health is a huge indicator of overall health.
When our digestive system isn’t working properly, it affects every single system in our bodies from cardiovascular to immune. It’s been said that up to 90% of all diseases can be traced in some way back to the gut and health of the microbiome.
But did you know that the gut has a huge impact on the brain? The Gut-Brain connection is more powerful than we ever could have imagined.
I love talking about the gut-brain connection because when most people think of the gut, they think digestion. Don’t get me wrong, the connection there is real, BUT the gut is about way more.
The biggest change that I noticed when I began to nourish my gut with the right foods, supplements, and lifestyle techniques? A better mood. I was just happier. The negative thoughts and hyper reactivity that seemed to rule my life at one point began fading away.
Embryologically, the gut and the brain start out at the same point, and then one goes up and one goes down. When two cells start from the same place, they always retain a memory for each other. Kinda magical, right? ✨
The microbiome and the gut have direct communication to the brain via a bidirectional highway, what we call the gut–brain axis. They’re constantly speaking to each other in so many different ways. Even more interesting? This communication mostly originates from the microbiome up to the brain, not from the brain to the microbiome. There are 400 times the amount of messages coming from the microbiome to the brain than from the brain to the body. The gut runs the show here. We now have the ability to significantly strengthen, enhance, and improve that flow of communication, both improving both the gut microbiome and the brain.
To understand why a gut imbalance (like dysbiosis, which is an imbalance in the gut flora – think more bad bugs and fewer good bugs) triggers problems like leaky gut and affects your mood, remember your gut’s inner lining is incredibly thin, only one cell-layer thick. This is thinner than your fingernail! The gut is really our inner guard from the outside world in a sense. Everything that we put in our mouths, meal after meal, day after day, affects our gut. It does a lot of work.
When that gut lining becomes damaged by things like stress, antibiotics, a poor diet, food sensitivities, etc., inflammation rapidly spreads from your gut to the rest of your body. This area is referred to as the blood-brain barrier (BBB), the barrier between the brain’s special circulation and the rest of your body. Inflammation in your gut triggers inflammation in your brain. Brain inflammation can then lead to what people feel as depression.
When you balance your gut with the right healthy bacteria, you help nourish your brain too (bye, anxiety and just feeling “blah”!). Allow the wrong bacteria to take over, and inflammatory metabolites and signals cross the BBB, stunning the brain and creating behavioral and emotional problems.
And this is all without even mentioning the fact that your immune system is responding to all of this noise too. 70% of your immune system lies in your gut, which includes the secretion of inflammatory signals that also affect your brain, and you become chronically inflamed, leading to depression, erratic behavior, and even memory problems. High stress alone will affect your ability to retain memories.
You simply can’t work to better your brain without setting up the right environment to do so. Your brain functions best when its not jammed by toxins, dysbiosis, and stress. To fix your brain, you have to start with the gut.
Need help? Start my free 3 Day Gut Reset today.
