Many people don’t think about the brain-gut connection, but you’ve most likely felt it. If you’ve ever felt like you had butterflies in your stomach, this is an example of the mind-gut connection. This unique sensation suggests that your brain and your gut are connected.
Additionally, many recent studies show that gut health and mental health have strong links. The system your brain and gut use to communicate is the gut-brain axis, and this post will break down everything you need to know about the brain-gut connection and which foods are beneficial for improving your health.
The Four Main Connection Points Between the Gut-Brain Access
As we mentioned, the gut-brain axis serves as the communication network for the brain and your gut. There are several exciting ways that these two organs have connections, and they include both biochemical and physical ones.
Connection One – The Nervous System and the Vagus Nerve
Did you know that there are around 100 billion neurons in your brain? Neurons are naturally-occurring cells found in your central nervous system and in your brain that direct your body on how it should behave. In your gut, there are around 500 million neurons, and they connect straight to your brain using your nervous system. One of the biggest nerves that connect these two organs is your vagus nerve, and this nerve can send signals in both directions.
In one animal study, scientists found that stress can stop signals your vagus nerve sends out, and this can influence gastrointestinal problems. One study involving humans also showed that people with Crohn’s disease or irritable bowel syndrome had a lower vagal tone. This lower tone told the scientists that these people had reduced vagus nerve function.
In another study, scientists who conducted tests using mice found that if they fed them a probiotic, the probiotic could lower the amount of stress hormone that was present in the mice’s blood. When scientists cut the vagus nerve, they noted that the probiotic had no effect on the amount of stress hormone present. All of these studies suggest that the vagus nerve is critical in the gut-brain access, and it has an important role to play in how your body regulates stress.
Connection Two – Neurotransmitters
There are chemicals in your body called neurotransmitters that bridge the gut-mind connection. Neurotransmitters are critical to gut health and anxiety links because their main function is to control emotions and feelings. For example, there is a neurotransmitter called serotonin. This particular neurotransmitter helps control your internal body clock while making you feel happier. Your gut is also responsible for creating a larger amount of this neurotransmitter in the cells.
There are trillions of microbes in the gut that are responsible for creating gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA. This is a neurotransmitter that helps control feelings of anxiety and fear, and it’s a key link between gut health and anxiety.
Scientists performed a study using mice and found that introducing specific probiotics to their bodies could boost how much gamma-aminobutyric acid their gut produced. When they produced more of this neurotransmitter, it reduced depression and anxiety-like behaviours. This points to a connection between gut health and anxiety. When the neurotransmitter levels are low, you may feel more anxious or depressed.
Connection Three – The Immune System
The mind-gut connection extends to your immune system. First, it’s important to note that the microbes in your gut play a critical role in inflammation and your immune system by helping control what your body excretes and what passes into your body to use as fuel. If your immune system is on full alert for a prolonged period, it can easily lead to inflammation. Inflammation is a key factor in many different brain disorders like Alzheimer’s disease and depression.
For example, certain bacteria will produce an inflammatory toxin called lipopolysaccharide. If a larger amount of this toxin leaves your gut and gets into your blood, this can lead to inflammation. One of the most common reasons this happens is due to a leaky gut. If you have this condition, your body allows too much lipopolysaccharide and bacteria to pass through the intestinal wall and into your bloodstream. When this happens, you have an increased risk of developing different brain disorders like schizophrenia, dementia, and depression.
Connection Four – Microbes Produce Chemicals That Impact Your Brain
It may surprise you to learn that the microbes in your gut can produce chemicals that directly impact how your brain functions. For example, gut microbes will produce a high number of short-chain fatty acids like acetate, propionate, and butyrate. The microbes make these acids by digesting fibre, and these acids play a key role in impacting your brain function. One big way is by reducing your appetite, allowing you to feel full.
Butyrate is another short-chain fatty acid that has a central role in helping to create a barrier between your blood and your brain. The blood-brain barrier works to protect your brain against circulating pathogens or toxins that could cause infection. At the same time, this barrier lets vital nutrients through to nourish your brain.
Another important function of gut microbes is that they work to help metabolize amino acids and bile acids that can produce more chemicals that have an impact on brain function. The liver is responsible for making bile acids, and bile acids help your body absorb dietary fats. One study showed that social disorders and stress reduce how much bile acids your gut microbes produce, and it also has the more severe impact of altering the genes involved in the production of these gut bacteria.
The Effects of Negative Emotions and Stress on Your Gut
Since there are different brain-gut connections, it makes sense that stress and other negative emotions like depression, anxiety, anger, sadness, and fear can all impact how your digestive system works. All of these things can slow down or speed up how your GI tract moves, and this impacts how well your body moves food through it.
These emotions can make your digestive system very sensitive to pain signals like bloating, and this makes it much easier for bacteria to slip through the gut lining and encourage your immune system to send an inflammatory response. This can negatively impact the different bacteria that reside in your gut. Strong emotions and stress can worsen or contribute to a broad range of gastrointestinal conditions like irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, food sensitivities or allergies, and gastroesophageal reflux disease.
Any negative changes that happen in your gut can feed back to your brain, and this creates a never-ending negative feedback loop. Research shows that changes to your gut bacteria and an increase in the inflammation levels in your gut can have a huge ripple effect through your body, which may contribute to depression, cardiovascular disease, fatigue, and anxiety.
This is something that you don’t want to happen. However, there are steps you can take and foods you can add to your diet to help improve the connection points of your brain-gut access.
Foods to Help Improve the Brain-Gut Connection
Did you know that there are several foods that you can incorporate into your diet to help balance and improve your gut health and mental health? While you don’t have to add them all, it’s good to consider rotating a few out to get the benefits, and they include but are not limited to:
- Fermented Food – Certain fermented foods contain a host of healthy gut microbes like lactic acid bacteria that can positively alter your brain activity. You could try to add small servings of cheese, kefir, sauerkraut, and yogurt to your diet a few times a week to boost your lactic acid bacteria count.
- High-Fibre Food – Prebiotic fibre is so important in maintaining good gut health, and it helps with your overall digestive health by ensuring food efficiently moves through your system. Vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and whole grains all contain loads of prebiotic fibre that feed your gut bacteria. Prebiotics are also instrumental at reducing your stress hormone and anxiety levels.
- Leafy Greens – Leafy greens like kale or spinach are great sources of dietary fibre. They come loaded with vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin K, and nutrients like folate that can improve your digestion by giving your gut bacteria something to eat.
- Low-Fructose Fruits – Fructose is fruit sugar, and it can cause bloating or gas. Berries and citrus fruits like grapefruit and orange have lower fructose levels. Bananas are another fruit that is low in sugar and high in fibre.
- Omega-3 Fatty Acids – You’ll find a large amount of omega-3 fatty acids in oily fish. The brain also has high levels of these fatty acids. Having a good amount of omega-3 fatty acids in your system can reduce your chances of developing brain disorders and increase good bacteria levels in your gut at the same time.
- Polyphenol-Rich Food – Polyphenols are plant chemicals. The main role of these plant chemicals is to serve as a food source for your gut bacteria. They can improve cognition while boosting the number of good bacteria you have in your gut. Examples of foods rich in polyphenols include coffee, olive oil, cocoa, and green tea.
- Tryptophan-Rich Food – Finally, you want to add foods to your diet that have high tryptophan levels like cheese, eggs, and turkey. This is an amino acid that your body will convert into a serotonin transmitter. It can help reduce depression and anxiety symptoms by boosting your mood and helping you relax.
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The Mind-Gut Connection, Probiotics, and Prebiotics
Now that you know that your gut bacteria can impact your brain health, you may realize that it makes sense to try and change your dietary choices to help improve your brain health. First up is probiotics. Probiotics are a type of live bacteria that can give you several health benefits if you eat them. If you’re looking for probiotics that directly impact the brain, look for a class called psychobiotics. There are several human studies that show certain psychobiotics can help to improve symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress.
Another study showed the link between gut health and mental health by giving a probiotic called Bifidobacterium longum (as found in our Tonic Probiotic 50 which you can get from our online shop) to people who had irritable bowel syndrome and moderate or mild depression and/or anxiety. Over the course of a six-week study, one group got the probiotic while the other group got a placebo. At the end of six weeks, researchers found that the group that got the probiotic reported significant improvements in their irritable bowel syndrome symptoms.
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On the other hand, you have prebiotics. Prebiotics are fibres that your gut microbes work to ferment. They can also have an impact on your overall brain health. One study split 45 volunteers up into groups. One group got a placebo while the other group got one of two prebiotics. They took it once a day for three weeks. At the end of the three-week study, they found that the group that took the prebiotic called galactooligosaccharide had a much lower amount of the stress hormone cortisol in their blood.
Wrapping It Up
Many people don’t think that gut health and mental health have anything in common, but turns out that there is a lot of research saying otherwise. The gut-brain axis encompasses both the chemical and physical connections between your brain and your gut. There are also millions of neurons and nerves that connect your gut and your brain. Chemicals your gut produces and neurotransmitters can impact how your brain functions.
We found out that altering which types of bacteria you have in your gut can have a positive impact on your mental health. Probiotics, fermented foods, omega-3 fatty acids, and other polyphenol-rich food could work to improve your gut health by feeding the good bacteria. In turn, this can help make your brain-gut connection healthier and stronger.
