Every molecule in your brain once was on your fork. Your gut directly impacts your mental
health - from nutrient absorption, that impacts the physical building blocks of the brain,
to inflammation, which can lead to cytokines to damage your brain, to your microbiome,
which impacts your physical and mental health. Your gut health is actually a
huge contributing factor to your mental health. So in this video you'll learn four-and-a-half
ways to improve your gut health, which can improve your mental health. So real quick,
let's talk about the gut-brain microbiome axis.
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The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in the body. It runs from the brain all over the body,
from the eyes to the throat, down to the chest and stomach, down into the pelvis. And it sends
messages in both directions, from the brain to the gut and from the gut to the brain. And those
messages are often about whether to be stressed or to be relaxed. When the brain is healthy and
happy and when you're surrounded by friends and feeling relaxed, the brain sends messages to the
gut to have healthy hunger and fullness cues, to digest and absorb nutrients, and to process food
in a healthy way. This is the rest-and-digest state of the autonomic nervous system.
When you're stressed, on the other hand, the fight-or-flight response essentially puts
eating and processing food and pooping on the back burner. So for example,
that huge assignment at work feels like a threat. It triggers the survival mode,
and the brain cues the digestive system to decrease hunger or, on the other hand, to
hurriedly consume some carbs for quick defensive action. So your brain directly impacts your gut.
But information goes both directions. If your gut gets really upset - maybe you're eating something
you're intolerant to or you have an allergy to a food - this also sends a message to your brain
to kick on that survival response, to power up the inflammation response, and to defend itself.
So in that way the brain and the gut interact in a mutual feedback loop. When you've just finished an
amazingly delicious meal with close friends, that satisfying feeling in your gut can trigger waves
of pleasure and relaxation and send a message to your brain to calm down. The gut also literally
processes emotions. So every emotion has a brain component and a gut component. And you'll notice
this in our common language. Notice how many emotions are described as a gut feeling: a kick
in the gut, gut-wrenching, sick to my stomach, butterflies in the stomach, etc. Right? So your
gut and your brain, again, are closely connected. During sleep and when we dream, the gut reacts to
emotions and processes them. The gut literally works through the feelings of the day. So when
the brain is healthy and works through emotions, the gut can process emotions too. And vice versa.
We can help our gut be healthier by decreasing stress and increasing positive experiences, and
we can help our brain be healthier by improving our gut health. And one of the best ways to do
that is to foster a healthy microbiome. So your gut microbiome consists of flora, like fungi,
and fauna bacteria that help you digest and absorb food and stay healthy and happy.
Diet, age, medications including antibiotics and SSRIs, stress, sleep, and exercise- these
can all negatively or positively impact gut bacteria. People with anxiety and depression
have a different gut microbiome than people who are healthy. They have a higher amount of bad
bacteria that can send inflammation into the body and the brain. Improving your microbiome diversity
directly impacts your mood. So how can we do that? Here are four-and-a-half ways to improve
your microbiome. The first one is prebiotics. Most people have heard of probiotics, but prebiotics
are actually very influential. Prebiotics are essentially dietary fiber, the fibrous bits of
food that we can't digest. This is what our gut bacteria lives on. So for example, some
of the good bacteria eat fiber from carrots, and others eat fiber from beets. To foster a healthy
and varied gut microbiome, we need to be feeding our good bacteria a wide variety of plants. And
one study found that prebiotics decrease cortisol, a stress hormone. So real quick, let's hear from
Dr. Nikki Dinezza how we can improve our prebiotic intake. There was a really neat paper a few years
ago where they actually were able to give us more of a definitive number. It seems like the number
is 30 per week. If you could get 30 different fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains
in your diet, different fiber sources - if you can hit that mark of 30 each week consistently,
that is very well correlated with better microbial health, better diversity and better richness in
the gut microbiome, and better overall health outcomes. Okay. Number two is probiotics. This is
eating foods that already include good bacteria. So this means eating fermented foods like yogurt,
kimchi, kefir, and kombucha. And probiotics work best on an empty stomach. There's also a lot of
probiotic supplements and a ton of companies offering to test your poop and sell you a
customized probiotic supplement. Unfortunately we just don't have enough data to know which
types of probiotics help which types of people yet, so I would just be a little bit wary of
claims otherwise, especially claims that involve selling you something for the rest of your life.
That being said, some probiotic supplements may be helpful at improving depression and
anxiety symptoms. Okay. Number three: decrease inflammation. Inflammation is a good thing in
small doses. It's how your body fights off germs and heals wounds. But emerging research is showing
that chronic, sustained inflammation can influence inflammation in the brain. So how do you decrease
inflammation in your gut? You can start by decreasing sugar, processed food, and saturated
fats, and then you could work with a qualified specialist to explore allergies and intolerances.
Another thing to consider is the Mediterranean diet. It's one of the most researched approaches
to improving mental health. And a strict adherence to the Mediterranean diet is associated with a 35%
decreased risk of depression. Okay. Number four: decrease your stress. The brain and
the gut interact in a cycle. When you do the work to decrease your stress levels,
you can decrease inflammation, you can improve your digestion, you can start a positive upward
spiral, both mentally and physically. You - if you don't know where to start, I've got a free course,
Grounding Skills for Stress, Anxiety, and PTSD. The link is in the description.
Okay. Here's the last one. I'm not even going to count this one as an option,
but it kind of is. Fecal transplants have been effective at restoring gut health in some people,
and they've also been shown to be effective at treating depression in a few very limited
studies. Now, as I said before, emerging research is showing that people with depression have a
different gut biome than healthy people. Some research is beginning to show that if you
take poop from someone who is healthy and you implant it into the gut of someone who isn't,
that can help them. Unfortunately, we don't have enough data to know which strains of bacteria are
the most important or helpful. Okay. So there you have it: four-and-a-half ways to improve
your gut health that may improve your mental health. Have you tried any of them, or are you
thinking about it? Let me know in the comments below. Thank you for watching, and take care.
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