To be honest, I don’t really think about my gut health.
I mean, I spare some thoughts for my heart, and my lungs, but brain, but never my gut. Because you know, it’s not that important. I mean, what does it actually even do for our lives? Ok, admittedly, stuff about digesting food, but that’s all, right?
Wrong.
I’ve been so wrong. The gut is so interconnected with the rest of our bodies, it’s not even funny.
Like if someone shot down the captain/marshal/lieutenant (I don’t know military talk) the rest of the soldiers would panic. That’s what the gut is to the rest of the body. But, I won’t talk about the link of the gut with the rest of the body for now, I’ll just talk about the link of the gut with the BRAIN.
I’m sure you’ll agree with me that the brain is pretty darn important, and at the forefront of our concerns when it comes to our health. So it’s a pretty good link to start with.
There have been numerous studies in recent years that show the strong link between gut health and brain health.
So today we’ll be discussing those researches and how important gut health can be with regards to impacting brain health.
Let’s dive in!
Gut Brain Link Question 1: Are the gut and the brain even connected?
There are approximately 100 billion neurons in the human brain. That is a whole bunch, yes (Source: Healthline).
And your gut contains 500 million neurons, which are connected to your brain through nerves in your nervous system.
The vagus nerve is one of the biggest nerves connecting your gut and brain. It sends signals in both directions.
For example, in animal studies, stress inhibits the signals sent through the vagus nerve and also causes gastrointestinal problems.
Similarly, one study in humans found that people with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or Crohn’s disease had reduced vagal tone, indicating a reduced function of the vagus nerve.
So this means problems in the stomach cause communication problems between the gut and your brain.
An interesting study in mice found that feeding them a probiotic reduced the amount of stress hormone in their blood.
And what does that mean?
Alright, stress hormones are produced by the bacteria in our gut. And these hormone problems impact our brain function. Improving gut health (through the probiotics) meant a reduction of stress hormones which in turn improved brain functioning.
There is definitely a link between our gut and our brain. But let’s explore that even further.
Gut Brain Link Question 2: So what can our gut microbiome do for our brain?
Bacteroides, Bifidobacteirum, Faecalibacterium, Ruminococcus– these are the names of some of the 100 trillion bacteria who are living and working in your gut. These microscopic critters, collectively known as the microbiome, help our body to digest food, process nutrients, make vitamins B and K, and produce immune molecules that fight inflammation and heal wounds. That is a lot of work that our gut is doing for us already. But the most impressive role of this busy workforce may be, surprisingly, in the brain. (Source: UW Medicine). http://depts.washington.edu/mbwc/news/article/the-gut-microbiome-and-brain-health
A healthy microbiome is a diverse microbiome. A rich community of varied species protects against one dominating and causing trouble in our gut and beyond. When this balance in our microbiome is undone, it has shown to be linked with inflammatory bowel disease, autism, and blood cancers. Researchers are now discovering that a disrupted microbiome, in certain contexts, may contribute to Alzheimer’s disease and related conditions that cause dementia.
Recently, NIH-funded research conducted at the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center examined the microbiomes of people with Alzheimer’s disease. They found that people living with Alzheimer’s disease have a unique, and less diverse, community of gut microorganisms than their healthy counterparts. Specifically, the microbiomes of people with Alzheimer’s disease showed specific increases and decreases in common gut bacteria, especially decreases in Bifidobacterium, an important inhabitant of the healthy human gut.
The authors suggest that the unique microbiome of people with Alzheimer’s disease could be contributing to the progression of their disease, through the gut-brain axis.
Such findings in human and mouse models point to the tantalizing prospect that restoring healthy gut bacterial composition could prevent or slow the development of Alzheimer’s in at-risk populations.
The human gut microbiome impacts human brain health in numerous ways. They influence memory, mood, and cognition and are clinically and therapeutically relevant to a range of disorders, including alcoholism, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and restless legs syndrome. Their role in multiple sclerosis and celiac disease is being studied. (Source: Journal of Medicinal Food) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4259177/
So all these researches are trying to identify if there is indeed a link between gut health and brain health. And a lot of them look promising.
What does this mean for us then? If the link is proven to be strong, this is good news! Because this means that brain problems can be solved through the gut. And if we improve our gut health, we can possibly live healthier lives.
Gut Brain Link Question 3: What do we do that hurts our gut microbiome?
1. Not eating a diverse range of foods. Which is understandable, because today, 75% of the world’s food supply comes from only 12 plants and five animal species. It’s not a lot to work with, but we should start mindfully adding a variety of different foods to out diet.
2. Lack of Prebiotics in the diet
3. Drinking too much alcohol
4. Antibiotic use
5. Lack of regular physical activity
6. Smoking
7. Not getting enough sleep
8. Too much stress
I’m sure many of us are guilty of at least one thing on this list, I know I definitely am. Which brings us to the next question:
Gut Brain Link Question 4: How exactly we can improve out gut microbiome?
This is pretty simple; we basically need to reverse the list above.
Eat a more varied diet. Limit alcohol and smoking. Move more, sleep properly.
And include probiotics into your diet.
Kefir is a simple, natural and inexpensive way to incorporate probiotics into your diet daily to restore health to a damaged microbiome.
And it is one of the most powerful sources of live probiotics on this planet, so it’ll be a waste to not make full use of it.
Taking it will have positive impact to your mood, your brain health and yes, (although more studies need to be made to confirm it) even your memory.
You can read more about the benefits of kefir here.
If you prefer watching a video, here is a breakdown of the gut brain link. Enjoy!
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