INNATE Blog

Did you know that the brain and gut are intricately linked? If you did, have you ever considered the importance of this connection? By considering the multi-faceted functions of the gut, it becomes clear that our food can determine our mood- both for better and for worse. Give me 5 minutes and read this article: by the end, it is my hope, that you will be able to use your diet to help your mental health.

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The undeniable importance of the gut is being highlighted more and more in scientific discourse; some even refer to it as our first brain. This may seem unrealistic, but if we consider the fact that our body contains 40 trillion bacterial cells, weighing 1-2kg, in comparison to 30 trillion human cells, it becomes somewhat more plausible. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4991899/) For instance, we can conclude that an individual is composed of more bacteria than human cells and most of this bacteria is found in the gut. What is more is that there are 100,000 more species of microbes in the gut, than there are people on earth. So, perhaps it is not surprising that the influence of this incredibly complex system extends far beyond just dealing with nutrients.

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One area I would like to delve into is the link between the gut and mental health. I’m sure I am not unique in the way an uncomfortable stomach makes me more despondent and agitated. Or, in the other direction (brain 🡪 gut), have you ever considered why nerves create a physical feeling of butterflies in your tummy? Both examples demonstrate the relationship between the brain and the gut (the gut-brain axis) in our day-to-day lives. This connection is also firmly underpinned by scientific understanding. Let us consider serotonin. It is the hormone which is essential in stabilising our mood, controlling our appetite, instructing our pain sensitivity and regulating sleep- all of which contribute to our overall well-being. And how does this relate to the gut? Well, 95% of the body’s serotonin is stored in the gut. Suddenly ‘Tummy Loving Care’ is not just a catchy slogan, but a way to live life. 

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The significance of the gut and our mental well-being must be understood in connexion to the brain; the information from the gut is fed to the brain, which then reacts neurologically to create an emotion. This link is largely due to the vagus nerve. I do not think it is a coincidence that the longest nerve in the nervous system, the vagus nerve, runs from the gut to the brain. Furthermore, this nerve is the main component in the parasympathetic nervous system (the rest and digest state). The vagus nerve must be stimulated to move the body out of the sympathetic nervous system (the function for fight and flight). Thence, it seems foolish to try and discuss our emotional well-being in separation to the gut. 

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Owing to this intimate connection, a troubled gut can be the cause, or product, of an unfavourable emotional state, such as anxiety or depression. Simply put, we can deal with anxiety through our gut. This is empowering since we all share the ability to form our gut health and thus the information it feeds our brain. The most significant influence on our gut and its microbiome’s make-up, falls back to our diet. It seems that our food shouldn’t just be considered nutritionally, but also emotionally. For instance, foods than inflame our Gastrointestinal tract place stress on our gut’s microbiome. This is then conveyed to the brain and can increase the permeability of the blood-brain barrier, allowing damaging toxins into the brain; leading to consequences such as an increase of anxiety levels.Therefore, our gut health isn’t just useful to avoid having a painful stomach, but also directly effects our neurochemical composition, which moulds our emotional well-being.

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It goes without saying that nutrition is an unbelievably complex area, made even more complicated by the unique microbiome found in each individual’s gut. Hence, we all react to the same nutrients differently. In light of these complexities, I am not going to try and prescribe a universal diet to create a healthy gut. Instead, I propose that we bring awareness to the effects of different foods, both physically and emotionally. Remove the backstory of your meal, ignore the marketing telling you how certain foods should make you feel and isolate the meal to the physical substance. Then truthfully consider the way different foods make your body feel. One way to track the impact of our foods is through video-journaling . By documenting our emotional and physical response to food we can then spot patterns in our diet, thus seek out the foods that help and hinder our well-being. This may seem excessive, but let us not forget the gut-brain axis connects our diet to neural activity, invoking emotional responses. So, why not use our food to tackle our mood? We eat anyway, so we may as well try and eat for our emotional well-being, as well as our physical.

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Overall, the body is an extraordinarily complex entity with many different parts. Yet, all the various sections are designed to work in absolute harmony for the good of the body as a single entity. It is perplexing how such a multi-faceted system can work in unity, but it does (at least it should do). Therefore, I see our purpose as facilitating this harmony by recognising, and thereby utilising, such connections like the gut-brain axis. I do not believe we are fundamentally designed to be depressed, so perhaps we need to look back to the foundations of the body to find the tools we innately have in order to combat such difficulties. Using our diet to help our emotional states seems like a tool that we are yet to fully expound. 

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