Back To Basics – Gut Health<>Mental Health
By Lisa Shanken
July 18, 2023
Sometimes it’s important to get back to basics and revisit the foundational elements of our work. Recently, I read a great article that did exactly this by explaining why the gut has a tremendous impact on the rest of our body.
This article, published in National Geographic, does an excellent job of providing the science behind the gut’s importance, in a very digestible way (all puns intended :-)). If you have any interest in improving and/or preserving the health of your body, this article is a must-read!
Some of the highlights worth emphasizing include:
- The gut is its own microbiome that is essential to your health and it is similar to its own “mini-ecosystem,” hosting a community of trillions of microorganisms.
- The microorganisms (aka microbiota) in the gut help breakdown, digest, and process the foods we eat, but an imbalance of these microbiota can lead to various health problems like Diabetes, mood and mental health disorders, and neurodegenerative illnesses such as Parkinson’s, Autism, and Alzheimer’s.
- A “balanced” gut looks slightly different for everyone, so there is no one size fits all formula.
- The gut provides 90-95% of the body’s serotonin, which affects mood, sleep, and digestion.
- The microbiota in the gut are like a self-contained “pharmacy,” that get absorbed into our blood
- The gut has its own nervous system, “aka the enteric nervous system,” and can function independently of our brain.
- What you eat and how you treat your body directly impacts your gut microbiome
Read the article to also learn how to maintain and/or improve the health of your gut, which leads to improved mental, physical, and overall health!
Lisa Shanken
My passion is to help you live your healthiest and most harmonious life, but in a way that’s realistic and practical for you as a unique individual on this planet. My philosophy is all about “balance,” never a diet since a diet is not sustainable for life, aka Kill The Diet.
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