The Gut-Brain Connection: Food for Brain Power
Have you ever felt so nervous about something that you felt sick to your stomach?
If so, you’ve experienced the gut-brain connection in action.
In fact, you feel its effects every day, although you might only be conscious of it in moments like that.
The gastrointestinal tract can be very sensitive to emotions, with feelings like sadness, anger, and anxiety triggering gut symptoms. Even happiness can have an effect – as anyone who has ever felt “butterflies” in their stomach at the excitement of falling in love can attest.
But this isn’t a one-way street.
Your gut health also affects your brain. And when your intestines are in trouble, they can send signals to your brain. Your gut and brain communicate with each other constantly using the gut-brain axis, and a troubled gut can sometimes spur a troubled mind.
What you eat and the health of your gut overall can impact your mental health in addition to your physical health. If you’ve never thought that your belly could help heal your brain, prepare to be enlightened!
What is your microbiome?
If you’re not familiar with the gut microbiome, you can check out my article, Boosting Your Immune System by Restoring Gut Flora.
But in short, your microbiome is the diverse population of bacteria living inside your gastrointestinal tract. There are thousands of types, some good and others bad, and ideally, you’ll have them in a balance that favors the good ones and keeps the bad ones in check.
The mind-gut connection
Your gut contains an impressive number of neurons – we’re talking 500 million – that are connected to your brain via your nervous system.
This is a topic that researchers are starting to understand more and more every day, and the ramifications could be staggering. Gut health can affect problems that have long been difficult – if not impossible – to treat, like depression and Alzheimer’s disease, and we’re seeing the emergence of a new field of medicine known as nutritional psychology devoted to the mind-gut connection.
Which Foods Can Help Your Brain?
As I mentioned earlier, having a good balance in your gut flora can positively impact your mind.
When it comes to the gut-brain axis, there are three categories of food for brain health in particular that you should focus on. Let’s take a look.
1. High-fiber foods: Good news if you’re already eating a whole food, plant-based diet: foods that are high in fiber, as many whole foods naturally are, contain prebiotics that your good gut bacteria love. Prebiotics have been shown to reduce stress hormones – sign me up, please!
Fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts and whole grains are all great choices, but some of the best prebiotic foods are:
Artichokes
Onions
Leeks
Asparagus
Legumes
Oats
Garlic
2. Fermented foods: Fermented foods can impact brain activity positively, so look for whole food, plant-based choices to get that brain in good shape. Consider any of the following:
Sauerkraut
Miso
Tempeh
Vegan kefir
3. Foods rich in polyphenols: This is one category you’re going to love if you’re a fan of any of these foods:
Cocoa powder
Coffee
Green tea
Hazelnuts
Pecans
Berries, especially blueberries and blackberries
Beans, especially black and white varieties
Red wine and grape juice
That’s because these foods contain plant chemicals that your gut bacteria can digest. They raise the amount of healthy bacteria in your gut and could improve cognition. Goodbye, brain fog!
It’s not just about eating good foods, by the way. You also need to avoid foods high in sugar and saturated fats, especially processed foods, if you want to experience optimal gut health.
Being active is also essential. Studies have shown that exercising for just 20 minutes per day is enough to enrich your gut bacteria diversity and reduce inflammation.
Diet and depression
Did you know that most of your serotonin, the “happy chemical”, isn’t found in your brain? That’s what I always thought, but scientists say that 95 percent of our body’s serotonin actually resides in the gut.
Another mood-improving neurotransmitter, GABA, is also found in the gut. These two chemicals are both released from good bacteria, so there’s little question just how much your gut health affects your mood overall.
Meanwhile, imbalanced gut microbiota, which is usually related to having too much bad bacteria, has been linked to depression, anxiety, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and multiple sclerosis.
This information is starting a shift in the way mental health issues are treated. Some psychologists and nutritionists alike now believe that restoring your gut’s balance could be the future of preventing and treating such diseases.
Isn’t the human body amazing?
The bottom line
While doing complex puzzles or learning something new can give your brain power a boost, one of the best ways of improving mental health is through the gut. A whole food, plant-based diet naturally contains many of the best foods for brain health, so eating this way could give you a sharper outlook and a more stable mood.
Remember: a healthy gut is a healthy mind!