Gut-Brain Simplified: The Science Behind Your ‘Gut Feelings’

Have you ever wondered why the intuitive feelings of foresight are called ‘gut feelings’?

Very frequently we experience feelings in the gut, be it the butterflies in the stomach or something with greater perspective. While the direct source of these feelings remains to be your brain, your gut does indirectly participate in causing those feelings and many more. In fact, your gut participates in carrying out a lot of your activities and causing a lot of your moods.

This active participation of the gut in functional activities is attributed to the gut-brain, an axis, system, or network that is immensely sensitive to the other and intricately bound together by the nervous and endocrine systems.

To ensure that this system works in the favor of our health, let’s find out more about it in this blog.

Understanding The Gut-Brain: How Does It Work?

To understand how the gut-brain works, we need to first break down the system to what it really is. Quite true to its name, gut-brain refers to the connection that the gut makes with the brain, the consequence of which, is experienced in several physical and emotional processes in our bodies.

Biologically nomenclated as the gut-brain axis, it is like a typical communication network bi-directionally connected through physical and biochemical means. It is this connection that causes physiochemical changes in our bowel systems simply due to some alterations experienced in the brain and vice versa.

The Nervous Connection Between Gut and Brain

Like every other part of your body, your gut is connected with your brain through a well-defined nervous system composed of hundreds of billions of neurons.

One of the most significant nerves is called the vagus nerve, also known as the modulator of the gut-brain axis. It is the major neurotic pathway that facilitates the connection between the emotional and cognitive areas of the brain to the intestinal functions, so much so, that the effects can be seen right from the mood to reflex actions like coughing and sneezing, from decision making to vital organ functions like heart and respiratory rate.

Besides the nerves, there are crucial neurotransmitters including catecholamine and serotonin that oversee emotions and feelings via the gut-brain axis. Additionally, norepinephrine, epinephrine, and dopamine are also being studied for their effects on gastrointestinal health and the innate immune system.

How Is The Gut-Brain Axis Different From The ‘Brain In Gut’?

If you have been reading up about how your gut plays a role in your health, mood, and functioning, you must have come across a confusingly similar concept, which in its own way, is revolutionizing medicine. The brain in your gut is actually the Enteric Nervous System (ENS) and is a separate entity that primarily affects digestion, absorption, breakdown of enzymes, and blood flow. The Gut-brain axis, on the other hand, is the connection between the CNS and the ENS. Unlike the gut-brain axis, the brain of the gut is independently functional.

How The Gut-Brain Axis Works: The Role Of Gut Microbes On Brain Activity

Now the main factor that instrumentalizes the connection, control, and effect between the gut and the brain is the microbiome. The trillions of microbes that reside in our gut react with the neurotransmitters, thereby effectively changing their chemical composition that leads to consequences. The most common way this works is through the Short Chain Fatty Acids (SCFA) that these microbes produce. In the short-term, SFCA’s effects can be seen as reduced appetite and other minor alterations. However, different microbiome activity affects the brain differently. For instance, the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease is being researched to be originating in the gut and spreading to the brain and the premise of its study lies in the microbial activity with the gut-brain axis.

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Nutritional Psychiatry and The Gut-Brain

With as much moderating potential centered in the gut, science can’t help but explore the nutritional implications on the gut-brain axis and its healthy maintenance. In fact, food-mood interventions have become a normalized complementary treatment to various allopathic medications primarily because of its interaction with the microbes in the gut.

What’s crucial is to understand the ratio of good and bad bacteria that our gut requires for the sound functioning of the gut-brain axis. Healthy gut bacteria, for instance, can accelerate the production of vitamins and minerals, assist in training the immune system, and even support detoxification. Interestingly, the positive reverberations felt on mental health is not just like side effects of actively working physical systems but also directly through the bulk of serotonin receptors located in the gut. This is also why antibiotics and antidepressants indirectly have adverse effects on the gut, oftentimes leading to patients experiencing side-effects like nausea, diarrhea, and more.

The question of the hour then becomes, how to maintain an effective balance of microbes in the gut? The answer is having a balanced diet rich with prebiotics and probiotic foods. Probiotics are the good bacteria that check all the right boxes in terms of breaking down food compounds inside our body whereas prebiotics is food compounds themselves that stimulate certain activities of bacteria by creating conducive conditions, physically and chemically, inside the gut.

Top Nutritional Food Groups For Your Gut-Brain

The good news is that as long as you maintain a balanced diet, you intentionally or unintentionally maintain a thriving environment for good microbes.

Here’s a checklist of 4 major groups of food items you should include in your diet:

Fermented Foods

That fermented foods are packed with probiotics is no news. They are the reason why our batter turns into puffy idlis, dhoklas, or cabbage crisps up into kimchis. However, the process of fermentation brings a world of difference because any food item that you pick off the shelf and is not naturally fermented is highly likely to have already killed the probiotics. Probiotics in fermented foods like yogurt and sauerkraut are excellent for brain health.

Omega 3 Fatty Acids

These are foodstuffs that do not contain probiotics but are tremendously beneficial for the diversification and multiplication of good bacteria inside the gut. Including fish and other forms of seafood is, therefore, a great way to keep your gut-brain axis functioning smoothly.

Polyphenol Rich Foods

Foodstuff like nuts, berries, cloves, and chocolate are known as mood foods for they can instantly reduce stress and lift the mood. What’s not known is that they take action through the gut. Cocoa, an excellent source of polyphenol, is also attributed to slowing down aging in the same manner.

High Fiber Foods

You must be aware that fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains are high in fiber content. But did you know that the fibers that these contain, are actually prebiotics? Now we know there’s a good reason for calling ‘healthy food’ your gut’s best friend.

Providing good nutrition to the gut is pivotal in the advancement towards a healthier lifestyle. It plays a preventive role in many health complications, however, greater exposure in the gut-brain axis and its nutritional area is paving the way for medicative roles in treatments as well.

For now, a great example is how antidepressant foodstuff like lettuce or turnip is recommended for patients dealing with irritable bowel syndrome. While the medication directly deals with our brain, they indirectly calm the symptoms in the gut.

Several such breakthroughs can be found in the future leading to revolutionary cross-functional treatments.

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