Gut and Mental Health: 7 Things you May Not Know About the Gut-Brain Connection
During my late teens and early 20s, mental and gut health challenges slowly became daily burdens in my life. The first time I experienced anxiety, I startled awake in my dorm room with my heart racing in the middle of the night, wondering if I was having a heart attack. Other times, I would sometimes experience a deep sense of foreboding, like something really bad was about to happen, and I would frantically ask my friends or partner to change plans.
By my 30s, I had frequent diarrhea and cramping attacks, which were inconvenient when I wasn’t near a bathroom. I would go through periods where I was nauseated a lot. And I couldn’t sort out why it was happening. And my worry compounded my digestive symptoms. I could see some overlap between my mental and gut health symptoms, but I didn’t really realize until later how my mental and gut health were deeply connected.
As I studied functional nutrition, it suddenly all fell into place: the health of our gut is totally connected to our mental health status.
Here are some aspects of the mental and gut health connection you may not know about that may help you understand what you are up against, and to create a plan.
1. The Gut and Mental Health -Microbiome Connection
Your gut is home to a community ecosystem of microorganisms, made up of bacteria, yeasts, and even some types of parasites. When in balance, this ecosystem helps you maintain your digestive function, create and absorb nutrients, and maintain an effective barrier against pathogens, or bad guys. These microorganisms communicate by chemical signaling messages, which can be actually transmitted from gut to brain. In this way, your gut tells your brain if you’re feeling well, or if you’re feeling stressed. This is the source of a “gut feeling”.
Healthy microbiome residents, like certain kinds of Bacillus bacteria, are responsible for creating certain essential nutrients via fermentation in the colon, such as B vitamins, vitamin K2, vitamin A, and antioxidants. Some of these nutrients help maintain good gut barrier function, and prevent toxins from unwelcome microorganisms from getting to and affecting your brain.
If you have populations of unwelcome, pathogenic bacteria, their chemical messages and waste exhaust communicate with your brain via the vagus nerve and can contribute to anxiety and depression symptoms. Collections of digestive symptoms are often a sign that gut infections may be present. Because the gut microbiome is so important to brain health, it’s important to address any hidden infections as a part of your plan to resolve your mental health challenges at its roots.
2. Regular Bowel Movements are Essential to Gut and Mental Health
If you aren’t pooping regularly, toxins and exhaust from bacteria can increase and affect your mood and mental health. For example, elevated methane gas from bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine can create severe brain fog, anxiety, depression, headaches, irritability, and fatigue. Moving the bowels if constipated may help reduce mental health symptoms. (See 9 Ways to Get to the Bottom of Chronic Constipation for additional help and resources).
3. The Thyroid- Gut and Mental Health Connection
Thyroid imbalances are closely related to your gut health and mental health. A majority of T4 hormone (made in the thyroid gland) is converted to T3 (the usable hormone) in the gut. In this way, emergent thyroid problems may be a digestive disturbance at the root, and can often be cleaned up with an elimination diet and adrenal support.
If your body notices too little thyroid hormone, your brain and thyroid gland may try to make up the difference by releasing more Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH), leading to too much hormone. Too much thyroid hormone, and you may experience anxiety. Too little thyroid hormone, or low levels of T3 and T4, and you will likely feel depressed. Supporting your thyroid function by supporting your gut function can be a really important part of balancing any mental health concerns.
4. The Gluten- Gut and Mental Health Connection
Many authors have noted the presence of mental health symptoms with the consumption of gluten. Grain Brain by Dr. David Perlmutter, Why Isn’t My Brain Working by Dr. Datis Kharrazian, The Autoimmune Fix by Dr. Tom O’Bryan, The Paleo Diet Cure by Chris Kresser, L.Ac., Healthy Gut, Healthy You by Dr. Michael Ruscio, and many more explain how consuming gluten foods breaks down gut barrier function which allows toxins to reach your brain and affect your moods and mental well-being.
As partially digested gluten (and other) proteins make it to the brain through a leaky gut, they can cause inflammation in the brain and contribute to mental health symptoms, including anxiety, depression, brain fog, poor memory, and even schizophrenic episodes. There was some very interesting research done in state hospitals in the 1960s removing gluten from the diets of schizophrenics. The patients experienced noticeably improved symptoms, and symptoms got worse with the reintroduction of gluten. If you are experiencing gut and mental health challenges, you might consider a gluten elimination diet. You can read more in 6 Reasons to Quit Gluten If You Have a Chronic Illness.
5. The Importance of Good Digestive Function for Gut and Mental Health
Many of our mood-supporting and regulating amino acids and neurotransmitters, like GABA or 5-HTP, or serotonin are in part made from protein foods in our diet. For your body to have access to the amino acids that build neurotransmitters, they must be chemically broken down from protein with hydrochloric acid in your stomach. If your body is low on stomach acid, then you can become deficient in aminos important for your mood regulation. Further, even if you can break down the proteins, if your gut function is compromised by bacterial overgrowth, yeasts or parasites, you may not be adequately absorbing the aminos you need either. Supporting your belly for robust digestive function is important for your mental health. You can read more in Have You Skipped These 9 Digestion Tips in Your Quest to Heal?
6. The Stress- Gut and Mental Health Connection
I hope by now you can begin to understand how important good digestive function is to support gut and mental health. High stress levels work against this process, and not only decrease our mood, but deplete our ability to maintain a positive mood. Stress also decreases our digestive efficiency, by slowing down digestion. To make matters worse, staying stressed out burns through large quantities of amino acids, which can further deplete your stores. Coupled with a compromised digestive system, you can see a self-reinforcing feedback loop worsening your mental health state. To make sure your stress isn’t wrecking your gut and mental health, it’s imperative to focus on effective stress relief practices, such as breathing, yoga, meditation, or simply doing something you love.
7. The Importance of Fat for Gut and Mental Health
In a world that has mistakenly villianized dietary fat, our mental health has suffered. Not only does too much carbohydrate-rich food feed the bacteria and other microorganisms that can destabilize your gut and therefore your mood, your body need fats to make your hormones. Your hormones help keep your moods in check, help you feel motivated, confident, and relaxed. As women begin to experience perimenopause, for example, levels of progesterone decrease, which can increase feelings of anxiety and stress. This process often collides with increased family and career demands, leading to a confluence of events that can precipitate a mental health crisis. If this woman also happens to be eating a low-fat diet, she will feel far worse than a woman who is consuming healthy fats. Make sure that you are including healthy fats (olive, avocado, coconut, ghee, or butter) and are avoiding industrial seed oils (cottonseed, soy, canola, safflower oils) in your diet, and are supporting healthy fat digestion with stomach acid and enzyme support.
Conclusion: What does all this amount to?
To work on resolving anxiety or depression at its root cause, it’s important to consider what exactly is going on in the gut, the interface between your gut and your food, and to work to balance and correct it. In most cases, the gut is a significant contributor to mental health symptoms, and must be balanced. This work is done by managing stress, adjusting the diet to reduce inflammation, removing infections, and repairing the gut barrier function and leaky gut. It can take some time, but the mental health improvements, without medication, are worth the effort for those that want to avoid medication.
If you are experiencing gut and mental health symptoms, know that you are not alone and that there is a lot you can do to heal yourself from the inside out! When you’re ready for a some support and action in crafting a plan to investigate your root causes and heal, schedule a free 30-minute phone call with me here. Together, we’ll assess where you are, and what your next best steps would be. I look forward to talking with you.
