HH377: The Gut-Brain Connection

Welcome back to another episode of health hack as I continue the series on the importance of understanding gut health. And today I want to dive into the gut brain connection, which I did allude to in the last episode, and the fact that our gut brain axis is connected via the vagus nerve. And this is something that wasn't known for many, many, many years in our medical history, in terms of, you know, what we learn through our medical system and Big Pharma, etc. However, as I've said, Hippocrates knew this 1000s of years ago. This isn't really anything new, and our key neurotransmitters are produced in the gut. 95% of serotonin, our feel good hormone, and dopamine, is also produced in their gut. In our gut, the motivation hormone, and obviously these influence our mood, our levels of anxiety, as well as our cognitive function, and if our gut isn't healthy, it can't be producing these neurotransmitters at a level at which we can thrive. And so if you are feeling like you're dealing with a lot of anxiety, that you're dealing with depression, etc, rather than going to the doctor and getting an SSRI to support your body producing serotonin. Why don't you instead look to your gut health and look to improving your gut health. Perhaps your gut isn't healthy because of yeast overgrowth, because of bacterial overgrowth, and other imbalances like that in the gut. And when we address healing the gut and bringing the gut back into balance, and we have a good balance between the good bacteria and the bad bacteria, so that we can get your body back to producing serotonin on its own, and then you don't have to have those drugs for the rest of your life, and you don't get the side effects from taking those drugs, because Your body's doing what it's supposed to do, and it's a matter of, let's start by healing the gut before we go to drugs. And it is the role of our gut bacteria to be producing these neurotransmitters, and we do need to have a healthy balance of gut bacteria in our gut for us to thrive on all levels, from mental health to our energy levels to our immune system functioning well, etc, and stress and sleep negatively impact those and I will be talking about that in more detail, in another or in several other episodes. So do keep coming back so you can continue learning about the importance of gut health. And I really love working with clients who embrace Holistic Health, embrace the fact that the body can heal itself, and step into choosing to heal their gut as part of the process of improving their mental health, of reducing their fatigue. And it's really empowering to see people step into and work with their body and understand how their body works so that they can create the results that they want in their health. And yes, it does take some effort. It does take some lifestyle changes. However, there's no negative side effects, and that, in and of itself, is worth the effort of creating the change so that we can rebalance the gut and you get to thrive.