Good Food, Good Mood: The Gut-Brain Axis

As a quick summary, the gut is not just the stomach. It starts at the mouth and ends with your bottom, and it includes your entire digestive system. Within our gut we have a microscopic community of good bacteria, fungi, and viruses, which help us to regulate several bodily functions such as response to stress, our mood, and our gut mobility.

Things such as stress, infection, medication, exercise and not eating enough fibre can negatively influence our microbes, and therefore negatively impact how our body functions.

As research develops, we are discovering more and more links between our microbiome and our overall well-being, including our mental health.

Our gut and our brain communicate via our vegus nerve, which connects all of our major organs together. This is called our gut-brain axis and explains the term ‘gut feeling’.

Our vegus nerve is the main structural component of our parasympathetic nervous system (our rest and digest system). This is the opposite system to the sympathetic nervous system (our fight or flight system).

Our nervous systems communicate by sending signals through chemical hormones called neurotransmitters. They’re things like serotonin, dopamine, and GABA.

Did you know that 70% of our immune system resides in the gut?

Our gut microbiome educates our immune system from the day that we are born. They are able to maintain balanced immunity by signalling when pathogens enter the system.

When we don’t have a diverse microbiome fed by lots of fibre, our immune system can be compromised. If our microbiome is starved, they begin to use a backup fuel called mucin which is the protective layer that coats the inside of our gut. This can cause the gut to become permeable, lead to leaky gut, and allow food and other molecules into the bloodstream.

This could lead to chronic inflammation in the gut, and neuroinflammation in the brain, which has been linked to a risk of a range of mental health conditions.

Thanks for reading. As always, we'd love to hear from you. Let us know if this has helped to make you feel a little sunnier inside.

Love,

LEON x