"The story of how microbes interact with your mind is nothing short of astonishing." Scott Anderson, The Psychobiotic Revolution
Broken Record Alert!
For my non-American friends, we refer to a "broken record" as saying the same thing over and over much like a vinyl album that keeps skipping. (Why don't we just call it a "scratched record"?)
Over and over you'll hear me reference The Psychobotic Revolution by Scott Anderson and discussing the gut-brain axis will be no different. Is it information you absolutely can't find anywhere else?
No.
But it is packaged in a way that is so easy to read. Does it make us non-medical types a little more medical? Yes. It's a comprehensive take on gut health from top to bottom, literally.
The Gut-Brain Axis Explained
The gut and brain communicate in 3 ways:
The Nervous System
The Immune System
The Endocrine system
The nervous system relays information to and from your brain. It uses chemicals called neurotransmitters to do the talking and it operates in short-fire, rapid bursts of information.
Gut bacteria also make the same neurotransmitters; dopamine, serotonin, and GABA. The brain and gut are hard-wired together by the vagus nerve and send signals back and forth along this 2-way highway.
These neurotransmitters have anti-depressant properties and are likely the main way your gut influences your mood.
The immune system (which we discussed last week) is responsible for the balancing act of killing pathogens at a moment's notice and giving the identical-looking healthy cells a pass. This is a pretty important part of the gut-brain axis and it also acts in a fast-paced manner.
The endocrine system is interwoven into this gut-brain axis, bridging a gap of sorts between the immune system and the brain. Just as the vagus nerve connects the gut and brain, the endocrine system uses a series of organs to send alarm signals from the immune system to the brain.
The Hypothalamus (a kidney bean-sized chunk of nerves in the brain), the pituitary gland, and the adrenal gland make up the HPA axis. Inflammation is detected and the HPA axis releases hormones to deal with the stress. This response is instrumental in mood regulation. Focusing on this axis is another way to fix depression and anxiety.
The Gut-Brain Axis Examples
Gut-brain axis examples can be as simple as food poisoning, anxiety, or even depression. An example of this referenced in Psychobiotic Revolution was a public health crisis in Walkerton, Ontario where the public drinking water was contaminated with unsanitary farm runoff.
This made people sick and created severe gastric health issues. What accompanied the physical ailments was an alarming rate of anxiety and depression amongst the citizens.
We see this in other areas of research where cases of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) are often linked with anxiety or depression. As is often the case with the gut-brain axis, figuring out which condition is causing the other remains a mystery. It's a chicken and egg question as to which brain is controlling the other, your brain up top or your brain down below.
The Gut-Brain Axis- A Personal Story
One of the most fascinating parts of this gut health journey for me has been learning about all the different ways our guts touch seemingly every part of our bodies. The brain connection is one that still boggles my mind.
I got started with gut health because I had to. I didn't have time to get educated. That would have to happen down the road. This is precisely why I'm such an advocate of GETTING STARTED, then getting educated, and lastly getting good.
There is enough smoke around the positive effects of gut health to not require waiting on the fire before you act.
Having the benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing. I've battled depression in the past. It ranged from feeling bluesy to a full-blown "can't get out of bed" depression. Both types occurred with a gut that was wrecked, ravaged, and cancerous.
The gut rebuild started in earnest in June 2019 once I was physically healed from cancer surgery. I did have a post-op bout with depression and I treat that a bit differently since cancer resection surgery has an association with depression.
But I noticed with every month, I gained mental momentum doing the right stuff. I felt better, my weight was dropping, and my mood was as positive as I've ever had. But isn't that when things are always tested?
The next series of months would test my ability to manage stress, and crisis, and stave off the susceptibility to get down...really down.
Beginning in March 2020, I had a pretty hard bout with Covid. I had a sick Mom who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a month or so before my colon cancer in 2019 and the fight continued into 2020. But the disease was winning. My Dad died suddenly in April of 2020 as I was driving over to see him for the first time in 6 weeks (thanks Covid).
My Mom came to live with us and we had in-home hospice care for her before she passed in July of 2020. A close Uncle would die from Covid just days before my mother-in-law died, both in January of 2021.
I don't bring this up to bring you down. And I don't want to intimate for a second that I didn't struggle to keep moving forward some days. But after learning in painstaking detail how a healthy gut can help your mood, I often wonder how things would have looked during this period with a dumpster fire for a gut.
Much less knocked me down before. This is another reason why fortifying the gut defenses is crucial for being prepared for life's inevitable storms. Failure is not an option.
Next week- expanding the fermented horizons and trying something new!
Thanks for reading,
Jeff
