According to recent scientific studies, your gut is considered your body’s “second brain” – literally the third branch of your central nervous system.
The good bacteria in your microbiome benefit so much more than simple digestion of your food and it’s critical to care for this delicate ecosystem properly.
The Brain-Gut Connection
There are more than 100 million nerves in your gut that communicate with every other organ and system function inside you. It has the same neurotransmitters, neuron signaling, and chemicals as your brain. In fact, more than 95% of your serotonin is found in your belly.
Ignoring your gut directly affects immunity, mood, energy, and brain cognition. Letting your gut deteriorate (as so many today do) through bad nutrition and poor lifestyle habits is like banging your hardworking brain against the wall again and again.
Needless to say, the results aren’t good.
Your gut and brain share a “complex bidirectional communication system that not only ensures the proper maintenance of digestion but is likely to have multiple effects on affect, motivation, and higher cognitive functions, including intuitive decision making,” according to research from the University of California.
They work together to ensure all your systems are functioning properly so if one goes down, the other is directly impacted.
How Your Microbiome Benefits from Bacteria
Some bacteria are necessary for you to live.
Think of them as two roommates. One roommate is great – s/he cleans up after themselves, watches the place when you’re away, and helps you repaint your living room. Then there’s the other one. S/he leaves a mess on every surface, damages your belongings, eats all the best things in your kitchen, and skips out on paying rent.
A smoothly running gut depends on having more “good” roommates than “bad” ones.
A proper balance ensures the good bacteria eat the bad bacteria (and the waste products they generate) that you pick up from food, your environment, and the air you breathe.
These microbes (good or bad) outnumber your human genes by many trillions. They have as much (if not more) influence over your health as your own genetic material!
They determine how you break down food, absorb the nutrients from your foods, use those nutrients throughout your body, expel toxins, fight pathogens, preserve energy, and balance hormones.
Good gut flora can be the perfect symbiotic relationship that you control through diet and lifestyle. Preserving your microbiome benefits every cell in your body.
How Your Diet Affects Your Gut
It’s so much more than extra padding in the middle or being overweight.
The diet and habits of most (not all, but most) people in developed nations is statistically pro-inflammatory. We eat and drink and do things that trigger an immune response that rages out of control. Your bowel is particularly susceptible to inflammation.
Once the inflammation becomes chronic, it slowly spreads, inflaming your cells and organs at an alarming rate and making you sick. Your entire body is under constant attack.
Unchecked inflammation has been linked to…
- Allergies
- Metabolic syndrome
- Obesity
- Autoimmune disease
- Diabetes
- Heart disease
- Mental illness and behavior disorders
- Cancer
- And so much more!
To live longer and stronger you must rid your body of pro-inflammatory habits and foods such as smoking, excess alcohol consumption, hydrogenated oils, refined sugars and flours, and processed foods (anything in a bag, box, or drive-through).
Instead, replace these carcinogens with whole fruits and vegetables, coconut and olive oils, various herbs, teas, wild salmon and other fatty fish, grain-fed meats and dairy (in moderation), and beneficial probiotics such as Greek yogurt and sauerkraut.
5 Quick Tips to Preserve Your Microbiome Benefits
- Make drastic changes to your diet and lifestyle habits
- Get at least 8 hours of quality sleep per night
- Lower the stress in your life
- Drink more water
- Exercise for 15 minutes every day (and build up to 30 per day)
Learn More Right Now!
The link between the gut and brain are fascinating and scientists have barely scratched the surface of the importance of a beneficial microbiome.
My book “Fire in the Belly” outlines everything we know so far. This is valuable information you can’t afford to miss. Learn how you can preserve gut and brain health right now.
Your “good” roommate will thank you.