Think of a time when you had to give a big presentation. Leading up to it you may have felt a little unsettled.
Then, the day of the big presentation you may have had “butterflies” in your stomach because you were nervous.
We’ve all grown up with this in our culture as a normal phenomena for how to feel before a presentation, but what is it really?
It’s part of the gut-brain connection and is what we’ll be going over in this article.
This gut-brain connection can work for us or against us. It’s important to know what works well for our gut so our mental health, and the rest of our health, stays in good shape.
This connection is so strong that if the gut isn’t working right it may even cause some behavioral problems such as anxiety and depression, which is what will be covered first in this article, followed by 2 things to do about it.
My name is Chaz and I’ve gone through years of horrible gut issues until I finally decided to take control of my eating, and therefore begin to heal my gut. I now help others with their gut problems: to get past it and get control of their own fitness.
Hopefully, you’ll finish this article and understand a little more about yourself, what controls your mental state and be able to immediately put into action what you’ve learned.
How Our Gut Affects Anxiety, Depression and Our Mental Health
To sum it up in one answer would be: The microbiome.
The microbiome is made up of trillions of bacteria harbored in our guts that processes the food we eat and breaks it down. It also controls multiple functions throughout our body.
The smart folks at the University of Colorado at Boulder define it as such: “The human microbiota consists of the 10-100 trillion symbiotic microbial cells harbored by each person, primarily bacteria in the gut”
The microbiome controls many aspects of our health and in order to do so it needs to have a beneficial balance of good and bad bacteria.
It’s normal to have good and bad bacteria in our gut. We run into problems when the bad bacteria grows in areas it shouldn’t, such as SIBO, or starts to take over the good bacteria balance.
If our gut and microbiome start to get thrown out of whack, then multiple issues could come up such as bloating, constipation, diarrhea, skin rashes, brain fog, anxiety and the mental state.
The Microbiome and Anxiety
Those who experience anxiety might be helped by focusing on improving their gut health and microbiome.
There was a systematic review done by the Shanghai Mental Health Center at Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine that examined 21 studies, containing 1,503 people, to see if altering the intestinal microbiota had any relation to anxiety.
Out of the 21 studies they found that 15 chose probiotics as the way to improve the microbiome and 6 decided on a non-probiotic route such as changing diet.
What they found was over half (52%) of the studies were effective in having a positive effect on anxiety symptoms by altering intestinal microbiota.
I think that’s incredible! Even if one study showed an improvement that would be good but 11 studies showed an improvement in anxiety symptoms by focusing on changing the microbiome. That just shows the power our guts have over just one aspect of our mental health.
Also, 7 of the probiotic studies used only one kind of probiotic, 2 studies used a probiotic that had 2 probiotics and 5 studies used at least 3 kinds of probiotics.
Probiotics are great to help with the microbiota, but there’s so many different kinds it really matters what’s used for that person’s specific needs. So we don’t know if those probiotics were even good for that person, and some still worked!
The Microbiome and Depression
The microbiome can also affect mental behavior such as depression.
There’s an article written by Nature Microbiology that looks at the results of 1,054 people from the Flemish Gut Flora Project to see how the microbiome correlates with quality of life and depression.
Something they found was those who had two depleted bacteria strands, Dialister and Coprococcus, were linked to those who had depression.
I found this interesting so I decided to check for myself to see if I had those two or not. I did this by looking at my Viome results (Viome is a company that tests the microbiome to find out what bacteria strands a person has and then gives food recommendations) and found that I was missing those two bacteria.
Makes sense for me why I’ve felt down sometimes when my gut problems were bad.
2 Ways To Help The Gut Stay Healthy
Now that we’ve examined some ways the gut can affect anxiety, depression and the mental state, the next thing to do is to look at how to get the gut to even better levels of health than it’s already at.
The 2 things I’ll go over here are not meant to be taken as nutritional advice, it’s really just what’s worked for me, what’s worked for others and what research shows has some validity.
1. Gluten Free
Gluten free is one of those polarizing topics in culture today. Some live by it and some say how silly it is because they’ve eaten bread their whole life and they’re fine.
Gluten is a protein found in some grains such as wheat, rye, barley and other similar grains. It’s what helps make bread fluffy, stretchy and hold together.
It may be a problem for people for numerous reasons, but the biggest is for gut diseases (such as celiac), or if we hit what Dr. Tom O’Bryan calls “The Oral Threshold.”
The oral threshold, as Dr. O’Bryan explains, is when our immune system is fed up with accepting wheat in the body - it can happen at any age.
When this happens the immune system’s antibodies identify gluten as a harmful substance and create a response to it in the intestines. The response could be gas, bloating, diarrhea or more. Continual exposure can turn to an allergy, and even more exposure can turn to a disease.
That’s why gluten is such a problem for some people today and not others.
Going gluten free is one of the biggest things I’ve done for myself to help heal my gut to where it is today, but it’s really a personal choice for people and what they choose to do with their body.
When I grew up I always ate bread, cereal, poptarts and all the gluten. And I loved it! Then in my early 20’s I started having really bad gut problems and couldn’t figure out what was going on; I now realize I hit my oral threshold moment then. It wasn’t until I finally gave up gluten that my gut started to heal and feel normal again.
2. Eat Natural Unprocessed Food
Eating real food is the key to health.
We all know processed food isn’t the best for us...but it is delicious. Which is why people continue to eat it, companies continue to make it and thus we continue to have deteriorating health due to it.
Processed food can contain multiple harmful chemicals, GMO’s and may be processed in a way that’s not good for our health.
This is a worldwide phenomenon, but also very specific to the U.S.A. Vani Hari gives a good example of how our processed food in America made by the same companies sell higher quality brands overseas.
One example is Heinz Ketchup, the ingredient list for the U.S.A. has corn syrup, is full of GMO’s and has “natural flavoring” - which is always an unknown of what’s in there. The ingredient list for Heinz in the U.K. has none of those!
Now, my first point about going gluten free is in alignment with my second point unless you’re buying gluten free products not just gluten free food. If you’re buying gluten free products, such as bread or baking mixes, that’s okay to do as long as the bulk of what you’re eating is natural foods. Don’t get me wrong, I love my gluten free pancakes! But I eat them only once or twice a month. You can also check out the companies you’re buying the products from more to see if they’re a trusted brand for using healthy ingredients.
Conclusion
The gut is vital to our overall health for so many reasons and science is now showing us that it may have an effect on anxiety and the mental state. Which is why it’s so important to eat for good digestion and do everything possible to strengthen the gut to ensure it’s healthy.
The gut affects our mental state through our microbiome. The microbiome is made up of trillions of bacteria and other microscopic organisms that regulate multiple functions in the body, digest our food and keep us protected against harmful foreign invaders to the body.
If we can keep the microbiome strong then we just may be able to keep our mental state sharp and reduce our anxiety levels.
To keep the gut healthy it’s important to remember to eat natural and unprocessed foods. And if it’s right for you, a gluten free lifestyle may be just the thing.
For next steps, I encourage you to question everything you eat. I’m not advocating eating perfectly all the time, that’s really not possible because we’re human and will succumb to our food urges sometimes. Heck, I love my dark chocolate. I’m saying to question what you eat to see if you think it may be hurting or harming your gut. Just start there.
Thank you very much for reading, if you liked this article you can check out more of what I do at www.thefitnesswrangler.com where I write about how to live a gluten free life, share good gluten free products, ways to keep the gut strong and fitness tips for keeping control of one’s health.
Cheers to empowering our guts!
-Chaz
"I’m the creator and content editor behind The Fitness Wrangler and welcome you to the site! I am a Certified Personal Trainer (NASM), train clients at a local gym in Tampa, FL and have been lifting weights/working out since I was 17 years old. I’ve dealt with horrible gut issues the past several years, put on unwanted weight and suffered through various diseases. I’ve managed to get my gut under control, lost 30 pounds and am finally getting my health back."