Does Gut Health Influence your Mood and Our Top 3 Tips to Improve Them

Does gut health affect mood?

Absolutely! 

You likely can recall situations where you perhaps had an upset stomach with bloating or constipation or diarrhea and, besides feeling sick, your mood felt off. This would be especially noteworthy if it lasted longer than a day or two or was more chronic in nature. I’ve known several people who spent years of their lives going to the bathroom every “few days” thinking it was normal. They also recall feeling mood imbalances.

This is not a coincidence. This is due in large part to the communication pathway between your gut and your brain. It’s called the gut - brain axis and it is key when it comes to delivering messages between the two systems and the rest of your body. This axis is bidirectional but research shows that it is mostly afferent, meaning the gut seems to influence the brain more than the other way around.

An effective way to understand why this might be happening is to recognize that both the gut and the brain are influenced by both our central nervous system (CNS) and our enteric nervous system (ENS).

Our CNS includes actions which we can control such as having a bowel movement and many we do not such as breathing and heartbeat. Our ENS is concentrated in the nerves of our gut wall. Both nervous systems control our digestion as they take cues and signals from one another. They interface via our vagus nerve which innervates both.

The vagus nerve is often called the wandering nerve and is like a net that has been cast over your head and drapes down your body to include your torso and pelvis etc. It is quite concentrated in your head, neck and torso region meaning lots of innervation there. 

Our vagus nerve can only operate in a “rest, digest and repair” state or our calm state. So, many of us cannot toggle between appropriate alert and active, and calm and reparative - we are stuck in alert and hypervigilance. This makes proper digestion next to impossible. Without proper functioning of your digestive tract, you suffer in any manner of ways including gut dysfunction and mood issues.  

Our enterocytes, which are cells that line the gut wall in our intestines, cannot produce optimal amounts of neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, because they are likely inflamed and not receiving optimal nutrients. Serotonin is associated with a sense of well being and a good mood. It is also highly associated with our gut’s motility. If your gut cannot produce optimal amounts of serotonin – yes, the majority is produced in the gut – then, both mood and motility suffer. This is just one example of how gut dysfunction influences your mood.

Your gut knows when something is “off,” as the typical signals and cadence of normal digestion is out of sync or perhaps not happening at all. This begins to not only affect the act of digestion but the cellular health of our gut. The messages begin to be shared with our brain and there you have it - both gut and mood dysfunction. They usually exist in a forward feeding cycle because we are not aware of their relationship and the impact our choices have on all of it.

Now that we know the basics of how this happens, here are 3 tips to start to heal your gut and your mood for good.

1. Do some somatic healing work - our bodies store our experiences in each and every cell in our bodies. That’s often why you develop gut and digestive issues in the first place. We can choose to engage in stress management by tapping into our logic or thinking brain or let our body’s sensation guide us. Both are useful as each will help to rewire those neural pathways that keep us stuck. Allowing the body to lead the way can be quite healing, if accessible to you. Remember, it takes awareness and practice. It starts with identifying that you are feeling stress in your body. Some examples to try are: 

• Intentional breathwork
• Yoga or movement such as intentional shaking or dancing
• Co-regulation with a trusted partner such as a long meaningful hug 

       2. Eat a whole foods, nutrient dense diet. Make the choice to eat real food - vegetables, fruits, well sourced protein and some healthy fats for good measure. You cannot go wrong if you “eat the rainbow”. Experiment. Cook. Have fun. 

       3. Prioritize sleep. Sleep is necessary to heal. Period. If sleep is an issue for you, cultivate awareness as to why that may be. Most of us do not give ourselves the transition time necessary to get good sleep. Start with turning off your phone (and household wifi!) 1-2 hours before bed. Your nervous system needs the break - desperately. And yes, wifi and EMF interfere with our ability to rest, digest and repair. Mitigating exposure is as necessary as eating.

If it sounds like a lot, it is. And that’s just a taste of the tools that can be accessible to you if you so choose. 

But, learning about our body and mind is the key to healing. Take an honest inventory of the choices you are making - no judgment. Once you can think and link how your choices and actions are affecting you, it becomes much easier to implement incremental changes for the better.