Understanding the Important Relationship Between Your Gut and Your Brain

While your gut and brain are housed in different parts of your body, they maintain more than just a historical connection. They remain physically connected too.

The vagus nerve, also known as the “wanderer nerve,” originates in the brain stem and travels all the way to the gut, connecting the gut to the central nervous system. When it reaches the gut, it untangles itself to form little threads that wrap the entire gut in an unruly covering that looks like an intricately knitted sweater. Because the vagus nerve penetrates the gut wall, it plays an essential role in the digestion of food, but its key function is to ensure that nerve signals can travel back and forth between the gut and the brain, carrying vital information between them. Signals between the gut and brain travel in both directions, making the brain and gut lifelong partners.

The central nervous system produces chemicals such as dopamine, serotonin, and acetylcholine that are critical for regulating mood and processing thought and emotion. Serotonin, a key chemical deficient in the brains of depressed and anxious people, plays a major role in regulating the gut-brain axis. Serotonin is one of the most buzzed-about brain chemicals because of its role in mood and emotion, but did you know that more than 90 percent of serotonin receptors are found in the gut? In fact, some researchers believe that the brain-serotonin deficit is heavily influenced by the gut.

The gut has a profound effect on fight or flight, particularly through the regulation of the hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline

The gut also plays an important role in cortisol release and is instrumental in making sure the body responds to stress effectively

In order to correct those chemical imbalances and restore order to brain and body, you might assume that we would need a barrage of sophisticated, carefully engineered pharmaceuticals. And to a degree, you’d be right! Most drugs used to treat mental conditions do seek to alter these chemicals to return the brain to a healthy state

Modern mental health medications can be a godsend to patients who struggle with a variety of disorders, and I don’t want to downplay their importance as a therapy in many circumstances. But what sometimes gets lost in discussions about mental health is a simple truth: the food you eat can have just as profound an effect on your brain as the drugs you take.

If normal gut bacteria are not present, production of neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, glutamate, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) — all critically important for the regulation of mood, memory, and attention — is impacted.

All it takes is two hours’ worth of psychological stress to completely change the bacteria in your gut.

The brain can also affect the physical movements of the gut (for example, how the gut contracts), and it controls the secretion of acid, bicarbonate, and mucus, all of which provide the gut’s protective lining. As a result, food is not properly absorbed, which in turn has a negative effect on the rest of the body since it’s not getting the nutrients it needs.

Source; https://thriveglobal.com/stories/understanding-the-important-relationship-between-your-gut-and-your-brain/

#Physicalhealth #Mentalhealth #gut #Anxiety #Depression #Stress

Things I've learnt from this article;

• The stability of the brain contributes to the stability of the gut and vice versa.