What one system in your body can single handed affect your brain, your mood, your immunity, your skin, your hormones, the quality of your sleep?
Your digestive system!
Hippocrates proclaimed that all disease begins in the gut. A few weeks ago we discussed the importance of maintaining a healthy gut and microbiome in order to boost the immune system and stay healthy this winter. To read more about that click here.
But the truth is – digestive health is important for just about every system in your body.
When I speak about digestive health I mean the health of the entire digestive – from the mouth all the way down to the other side.
Digestive health is the ability to properly take in, break down and assimilate what your body needs, and let go and release what it doesn’t need. Smooth functioning of all these tasks is the cornerstone of good health.
In fact, in Chinese medicine, there are schools of thought that treat all diseases by first treating the digestion. Think about it. Your digestive tract is literally at the center of your body.
Thousands of years ago Chinese doctors observed that the way to treat brain and mood disorders is by treating digestion.
And modern medicine is now confirming this. The gut-brain axis is a hot topic of discussion.
The concept of gut-brain axis means that there is a two-way communication between the central nervous system and the enteric nervous system. The enteric nervous system refers to the independent nervous system that controls your gut. It is sometimes referred to as your second brain.
You know what a gut feeling is? Well it really does exist! Your second brain in your gut actually works independently from the brain in your head.
While these two brains can and do act independently of each other – they also communicate with each and influence each other. The emotional and cognitive centers of the brain are connected with the nervous system that controls the gut.
Your two brains—the one in your head and the one in your bowel—must cooperate.
Conscious and unconscious fears can cause chaos in the gut in addition to misery in the head—everything from nausea to cramps, from diarrhea to constipation.
And the opposite is true. Poor digestion can play an important role in disorders like brain fog, ADD/ADHD, depression, anxiety and more.
And if you think about it – in a certain sense the digestive organs and the brain do just about the same thing. They are both involved in: taking in material from the outside, breaking it down and assimilating it into you. Each system needs to determine what is useful and what needs to be eliminated.
Improving your digestive system is helpful not only for your digestive comfort but for your cognitive and emotional health as well.
How can you evaluate the health of your digestive system?
Signs of something amiss in your digestion can include:
Gas and bloating
Constipation
Diarrhea
Heartburn
Food Intolerances
But symptoms like these can also point to digestive unrest:
Sleep issues
Fatigue
Mood Disorders
There are many ways to improve digestion – we’ll start to discuss that next week.
