Every molecule in your brain once was on your
fork. Your gut directly impacts your mental health - from nutrient absorption, that impacts
the physical building blocks of the brain, to inflammation, which can lead to cytokines
to damage your brain, to your microbiome, which impacts your physical and mental
health. Your gut health is actually a huge contributing factor to your mental health.
So in this video you'll learn four-and-a-half ways to improve your gut health, which can
improve your mental health. So real quick, let's talk about the gut-brain microbiome axis. [Music] Okay. The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in the
body. It runs from the brain all over the body, from the eyes to the throat, down to the chest
and stomach, down into the pelvis. And it sends messages in both directions, from the brain to
the gut and from the gut to the brain. And those messages are often about whether to be stressed
or to be relaxed. When the brain is healthy and happy and when you're surrounded by friends and
feeling relaxed, the brain sends messages to the gut to have healthy hunger and fullness cues, to
digest and absorb nutrients, and to process food in a healthy way. This is the rest-and-digest
state of the autonomic nervous system. When you're stressed, on the other hand, the
fight-or-flight response essentially puts eating and processing food and pooping
on the back burner. So for example, that huge assignment at work feels like
a threat. It triggers the survival mode, and the brain cues the digestive system to
decrease hunger or, on the other hand, to hurriedly consume some carbs for quick defensive
action. So your brain directly impacts your gut. But information goes both directions. If your gut
gets really upset - maybe you're eating something you're intolerant to or you have an allergy to
a food - this also sends a message to your brain to kick on that survival response, to power up
the inflammation response, and to defend itself. So in that way the brain and the gut interact in a
mutual feedback loop. When you've just finished an amazingly delicious meal with close friends, that
satisfying feeling in your gut can trigger waves of pleasure and relaxation and send a message to
your brain to calm down. The gut also literally processes emotions. So every emotion has a brain
component and a gut component. And you'll notice this in our common language. Notice how many
emotions are described as a gut feeling: a kick in the gut, gut-wrenching, sick to my stomach,
butterflies in the stomach, etc. Right? So your gut and your brain, again, are closely connected.
During sleep and when we dream, the gut reacts to emotions and processes them. The gut literally
works through the feelings of the day. So when the brain is healthy and works through emotions,
the gut can process emotions too. And vice versa. We can help our gut be healthier by decreasing
stress and increasing positive experiences, and we can help our brain be healthier by improving
our gut health. And one of the best ways to do that is to foster a healthy microbiome. So your
gut microbiome consists of flora, like fungi, and fauna bacteria that help you digest
and absorb food and stay healthy and happy. Diet, age, medications including antibiotics
and SSRIs, stress, sleep, and exercise- these can all negatively or positively impact gut
bacteria. People with anxiety and depression have a different gut microbiome than people who
are healthy. They have a higher amount of bad bacteria that can send inflammation into the body
and the brain. Improving your microbiome diversity directly impacts your mood. So how can we do
that? Here are four-and-a-half ways to improve your microbiome. The first one is prebiotics. Most
people have heard of probiotics, but prebiotics are actually very influential. Prebiotics are
essentially dietary fiber, the fibrous bits of food that we can't digest. This is what our
gut bacteria lives on. So for example, some of the good bacteria eat fiber from carrots, and
others eat fiber from beets. To foster a healthy and varied gut microbiome, we need to be feeding
our good bacteria a wide variety of plants. And one study found that prebiotics decrease cortisol,
a stress hormone. So real quick, let's hear from Dr. Nikki Dinezza how we can improve our prebiotic
intake. There was a really neat paper a few years ago where they actually were able to give us more
of a definitive number. It seems like the number is 30 per week. If you could get 30 different
fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains in your diet, different fiber sources - if you
can hit that mark of 30 each week consistently, that is very well correlated with better microbial
health, better diversity and better richness in the gut microbiome, and better overall health
outcomes. Okay. Number two is probiotics. This is eating foods that already include good bacteria.
So this means eating fermented foods like yogurt, kimchi, kefir, and kombucha. And probiotics work
best on an empty stomach. There's also a lot of probiotic supplements and a ton of companies
offering to test your poop and sell you a customized probiotic supplement. Unfortunately
we just don't have enough data to know which types of probiotics help which types of people
yet, so I would just be a little bit wary of claims otherwise, especially claims that involve
selling you something for the rest of your life. That being said, some probiotic supplements
may be helpful at improving depression and anxiety symptoms. Okay. Number three: decrease
inflammation. Inflammation is a good thing in small doses. It's how your body fights off germs
and heals wounds. But emerging research is showing that chronic, sustained inflammation can influence
inflammation in the brain. So how do you decrease inflammation in your gut? You can start by
decreasing sugar, processed food, and saturated fats, and then you could work with a qualified
specialist to explore allergies and intolerances. Another thing to consider is the Mediterranean
diet. It's one of the most researched approaches to improving mental health. And a strict adherence
to the Mediterranean diet is associated with a 35% decreased risk of depression. Okay. Number
four: decrease your stress. The brain and the gut interact in a cycle. When you do
the work to decrease your stress levels, you can decrease inflammation, you can improve
your digestion, you can start a positive upward spiral, both mentally and physically. You - if you
don't know where to start, I've got a free course, Grounding Skills for Stress, Anxiety,
and PTSD. The link is in the description. Okay. Here's the last one. I'm not even
going to count this one as an option, but it kind of is. Fecal transplants have been
effective at restoring gut health in some people, and they've also been shown to be effective
at treating depression in a few very limited studies. Now, as I said before, emerging research
is showing that people with depression have a different gut biome than healthy people. Some
research is beginning to show that if you take poop from someone who is healthy and you
implant it into the gut of someone who isn't, that can help them. Unfortunately, we don't have
enough data to know which strains of bacteria are the most important or helpful. Okay. So there
you have it: four-and-a-half ways to improve your gut health that may improve your mental
health. Have you tried any of them, or are you thinking about it? Let me know in the comments
below. Thank you for watching, and take care. [Music] [Music]
