Our guts and our brain are connected via the vagus nerve. It is the largest nerve in our body and it is constantly sending signals, it’s like a superhighway, we call it the gut-brain connection.
The vagus nerve connects to a part of the brain called the amygdala which is responsible for processing our fear and anxiety. What is key in understanding the importance of our gut health and this connection is that 90% of the messages go FROM our gut to our brain.
A healthy gut is essential for brain and mood regulation. If your gut is out of balance the signals going to your brain will be negatively impacted.
Serotonin – The Happy Hormone
Serotonin is vital to our mental health as it stabilises our mood. It’s often referred to as the ‘happy hormone’, and low levels of serotonin are directly linked to low mood. Many anti-depressive medications work by increasing the body’s natural levels of serotonin.
90% of our supply of serotonin is found in our guts. A key reason why poor gut health can negatively affect our mood.
Sleep
Our bodies have a natural sleep wake cycle. Serotonin is produced as part of that cycle and is at it’s highest in the morning, and melatonin, which helps us sleep, is highest at night. This is a finely balanced relationship and we need to make sure that both are working efficiently.
Ensuring we have darkness at night stimulates melatonin production. Blue light devices such as laptops and mobiles, and watching TV late into the night, all negatively affect the production of melatonin. And our ability to sleep.
The best way to boost your levels of serotonin in the mornings is to ensure you are exposed to natural daylight.
If you’d like to know more about gut health, serotonin and immunity read my blog here.
Pain and Inflammation
Poor mental health is directly linked to chronic pain and inflammation. It makes sense that if you are constantly in pain then it will have a negative effect on your mental health. Indigestion, bloating, diarrhoea, constipation are all common digestive complaints associated with poor gut health, and the sufferers experience chronic low level pain for extensive periods of time.
Identifying foods that cause these symptoms and eliminating them from the diet can have significant positive impact on gut health.
What are you eating?
Highly processed foods are full of toxic ingredients that our bodies simply do not process correctly. High in fat and sugar they are shown to cause inflammation in our guts. Thus impacting the quality of the signals of the vagus nerve, from our gut to our amygdala, directly affecting the health of our brain.
A study in 2017 entitled ‘SMILES study’ showed that patients found clinically significant improvements in their mental health when following a Modified Mediteranean Diet.
This diet provided daily:
- 9 portions of fruits and vegetables
- 60ml olive oil
- 1 portion raw nuts
- 5-8 portions whole grains
- min. 2 portions oily fish per week
- low fat dairy and lean meats
- low alcohol and caffeine
- no processed or refined foods or sugar
What can you do?
Do some of the points explored above resonate with you?
Here are a list of simple things that you can do to improve your gut health. Choose just one that you think will have the most impact. Do it until it becomes habit, then chose another.
Don’t try to make all the changes straight away as this is likely to cause you more anxiety and have a negative effect on your mental health. Small cumulative changes, that are manageable, are much better as you are much more likely to stick to them.
- Remove your mobile devices from the bedroom
- Stop using blue light devices (laptop, phone, ipad) 2 hours before bed.
- Avoid caffeine after lunch.
- Add fruit or vegetables to every meal
- Eat the rainbow – aim for a colourful plate of food for every meal
- Reduce processed food
- Reduce sugar and sweeteners
- Take a walk in the morning
- Swap white bread and pasta for wholegrain
- Add fermented foods such as kefir yoghurt or sauerkraut to your diet
If you have enjoyed this article, why not listen to episode 46 of my podcast on gut health?
