3 Ways Our Happiness Is Effected By Our Gut! -

We need to break something to you…NO ONE IS HAPPY ALL THE TIME!

No matter how their Instagram feed looks. Unfortunately, we have been fed the illusion that we should always be happy, live life to the full and quit whining. This is very damaging, we are humans, not machines and WE WILL have our struggles, our moments of despair, it’s completely normal. The image shouldn’t be that of perfection but the truth.

Know this though, it is also our responsibility to act upon it. We can allow ourselves the sadness, let it sit for a while but learn how to respond. Most fixes just take ‘doing something’ to help ourselves.

There are tools we can use to help us feel good and prepare us for those days when we want to shut the world out and bury ourselves into our duvet. In our previous blog, we discuss one of the powerful tools to help prepare us for days like these.

Although, there is one component that is often overlooked by some medical professionals. The reason I know this is because of my personal experience.

After many trips back and forth to various medical professionals, scans, and blood tests, I was told that everything was normal. However, being sick and running to the toilet every 5mins and looking like I was 6 months pregnant was not my idea of “normal”.

I decided to do my research and discovered interesting facts about gut health. When I began applying what I had learned, I was surprised by what I found.

My mental health transformed and the science is there to back it up!

That is right, the science shows that the gut and brain are connected through the vagus nerve, also known as the gut-brain axis.

From our brain stem to our colon, our gut sends little signals called neurotransmitters up the vagus nerve and to our brain. I guess you could say it is like the gut and brain texting each other (wouldn’t you love to see those messages after a night out).

Now, you can imagine the kind of messages it is going to send to the brain if our gut is damaged. We know that feeling after a dodgy kebab or when we binge on chocolate and feel completely sluggish afterwards.

Another great example of the gut and brain connection is when we are shaking with nerves, often quoting it as having ‘butterflies in our stomachs.’ That is the neurotransmitters sending signals up and down the vagus nerve.

Fascinating!

Ok, but how does this relate to mental health?

Did you know that approximately 90% of our serotonin is made in the gut?

Serotonin is our happy hormone and is sent to our brain via the vagus nerve. If that is the case, then that would explain how my mental health transformed when I began taking better care of my gut.

*Disclaimer: We are not gut health experts or medical professionals. This is all from our personal experience and we have attached my research at the end of this blog.

Let’s discuss 3 things I learnt during my research on gut health…

1. There are approximately 100 trillion microbes in our gut!

Gut microbes in a gut through a magnifying glass cartoon

In our gut, we have a community of fungi, bacteria, viruses and their genes that live naturally in our gut called our microbiome.

The microbiome is there to fight off infections, protect us and help digest food. They are our little army of soldiers.

There are approximately 100 trillion microbes in our gut (that is a lot of microbes). We must take good care of them.

The diversity of our microbiome is extremely important for our brain health as our gut bacteria have a profound effect on our brains.

2. Approximately 90% of Serotonin (our happy hormone) is made in the gut!

One book that has been a lifeline when it comes to health and healing our gut is Ben Greenfield’s ‘Boundless‘.

In this book he references Dr David Perlmutter who explores in great detail in his book Brain Maker: The Power of Gut Microbes to Heal and Protect Your Brain – for Life, he explains, “These hundred trillion bacteria that live within your gut are so intimately involved in your brain at a number of levels. They manufacture neurochemicals, for example; things like dopamine and serotonin. They manufacture important vitamins that are important to keep your brain healthy. They also maintain the integrity of the lining of your gut.”

It’s safe to say, those hundred trillions of bacteria in our gut need to be protected at all costs.

However, loading our gut with bad bacteria kills off the good soldiers that are there to protect us.

When this happens, there is less serotonin being made in our gut which can lead to serotonin secretion being minimised and not getting as much to the brain as you possibly could.

This can cause depression, anxiety, stress and so much more.

3. Our gut can change our mood!

That is right. We may be irritable because our gut is sending unhappy messages to our brains.

For years, medical practitioners and researchers thought that irritable bowel, constipation, diarrhoea and so on were part of the causes of depression and anxiety.

However, recent research has shown that this isn’t necessarily the case. In actuality, it can be the other way around.

This is why our gut is often called our second brain. Scientists call this the ‘ENS’ (enteric nervous system).

At the moment, we know that it is unable to think on its own, unlike the brain in our head. However, it does send messages back and forth to the brain. The ENS can cause big mood shifts which is often the case with those suffering from bowel problems.

With this understanding, it became clear why my mood and mental well-being transformed when I fixed my gut.

Looking back, I was very irritable when suffering from constipation and bloating. My mood would drop and my self-talk became very negative.

By putting the right tools in place, my gut began to heal. Not only did the aggressive bloating and bowel irritations lessen but I felt happier, my self-talk became more positive and began feeling less stressed and irritable.

Summary

Understanding the gut can be a minefield and it is something that still overwhelms us when we try to learn too much in one go.

Start with changing one thing at a time, one step at a time. A very useful tip we like to suggest would be to start with eating less and less ultra-processed foods, eventually aiming to completely cut them out, they’re simply no good.

These highly inflammatory foods are not only harmful in the long term for our bodies’ ecosystem but are also designed to make us overconsume them, so we keep spending our money.

Keeping our foods as natural as possible is the first step to keeping our gut happy.