That Gut Feeling: How Gut Health Can Affect Your Overall Mood
Your gut microbiome can influence many things — including emotional behavior, pain perception and how your stress system responds.
Having a healthy gut has been increasingly popular in recent times — you’ve heard it everywhere, whether in the medical sector, food industry, or pop culture.
According to BMC Medicine, gut health is a prominent concept in Asian medicine, which recognizes the abdomen as the location of the soul. In contrast to the medical perspective of the Western world, where gut issues are regarded as relatively taboo until recently.
One of the most Googled questions related to health is “how to get rid of stomach pain?” Accompanied with that is “I think I ate something bad, what should I do?”
Although going to your doctor is the best solution to your gut problems, prevention is always better than cure.
It’s surprising that a large number of people don’t care or are even aware of the importance of gut health. Especially when having good gut health can positively affect a person’s mood.
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What is gut health?
A UC Davis Health expert describes gut health as the function and balance of bacteria in the many parts of the gastrointestinal tract.
Ideally, organs such as the esophagus, stomach, and intestines all work together to allow us to eat and digest food without discomfort, but that’s not the case with people who continuously disregard their gut health.
Why is gut health important?
Infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi are fended off by good bacteria and immune cells in a healthy gut.
A healthy gut interacts with the brain via nerves and hormones, which aids in the maintenance of overall health, well-being, and mood.
Benefits of a healthy gut can include improved mood, a robust immune system, heart health, brain health, sound sleep, and proper digestion. It may even help avoid specific cancers and autoimmune diseases.
How can gut health affect a person’s mood?
Gut bacteria produce neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, norepinephrine, acetylcholine, and GABA which are important for mood, anxiety, focus, reward, and motivation. Our brains’ reactions can be influenced by our gut microbiota.
An example given by Dr. Siri Carpenter of the American Psychological Association is the manufacturing of about 95 percent of the body’s supply of serotonin by gut bacteria which influences both mood and GI activity.
The human gut contains more nerve cells than the spinal cord or peripheral nervous system combined.
Yes, our huge intestines include brain cells!
This explains why antibiotics that disrupt the gut microbiome can have neuropsychiatric side effects, interact with psychotropic medicines, and/or affect our mood.
This also explains why mental disorders are so common in irritable bowel syndrome individuals.
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How to improve your gut health
Examine your dietary habits
Researchers suggest taking a look at the food we eat first before trying any other gut-related therapies like probiotics and prebiotics to improve our mood and health.
It’s not a secret that fruits and vegetables are the best sources of nutrients for our body, including our second brain that affects our overall mood — the gut.
They also suggest eating whole foods and avoiding processed foods that are proven to cause inflammation and disease.
Here is a list of food that is good for your gut:
- Yogurt
Health professionals are paying close attention to naturally fermented foods these days because they are proven to help improve your gut microbiome.
Aside from being a fermented food, yogurt is also high in probiotic microorganisms, which help to strengthen the digestive system.
2. Kombucha
Just like yogurt, kombucha is a fermented food that is high in antioxidants and probiotics or live bacteria.
Drinking kombucha can provide benefits like better health of intestinal cells, improve immune function, and aid in food digestion.
Four ounces of kombucha can be safely consumed one to three times a day according to The Centers for Disease Control.
3. Mangoes
Another tasty treat to add on food to eat to improve gut health are mangoes. Mango pulp contains prebiotic dietary fiber that helps feed good bacteria in the gut.
Mangoes contain compounds like amylase and dietary fiber that can help you avoid constipation. Amylase compounds can aid in the digestion of other foods by breaking down tough carbohydrates.
4. Garlic
Garlic has been utilized in medicine for thousands of years. It is abundant in inulin, a form of non-digestible carbohydrate that nourishes your digestive system’s good bacteria.
A study from National Center for Biotechnology Information shows that garlic negatively affects some of the bad bacteria in our guts while leaving the healthy bacteria alone.
5. Collagen
Collagen is good for gut health because it contains high amounts of the amino acids glycine, glutamine, and proline, which are good for both the stomach and the intestinal tract.
According to Healthline, a daily intake of collagen of 2.5–15 grams appears to be both safe and effective. The amount you should consume is based on the supplement and the reason you’re taking it.
Improve your sleep
Sleep deprivation has been linked to an increased risk of obesity, which puts you at risk for gastrointestinal issues.
As already established, your overall gut health can affect your mood. Sleep and mood are interrelated; little or poor sleep can lead to irritation and stress, whereas adequate sleep can improve well-being.
Chronic insomnia can raise your chances of developing a mood disorder like anxiety or depression.
Get moving
Exercise, like other areas of health, is the most effective strategy to lose weight and maintain healthy body weight to avoid digestive disorders and have a healthier gut.
The composition of your gut microbiome can be altered by exercise. If you need another reason to exercise, an overall improvement of mood and a healthier gut might do the trick.
Reduce Stress
Bowel urgency and diarrhea can be side effects of stress. It is because stress can cause enhanced motor function in the large intestine while the stomach slows down.
Stress can impair brain-gut communication. This can make pain, bloating, and other stomach problems more prominent.
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Signs of good and bad gut health
A fully functioning gut is a healthy gut, which means the microbiome has a nice balance of good bacteria and bad bacteria.
The majority of the symptoms of a healthy gut are digestive in character.
Here are some signs of a worsening or bad gut health:
- Abdominal discomfort
Some gut bacteria strains produce more gas naturally than others.
More of these super-gas-producing strains could lead to more fermentation, which would trap gas in the gut and cause bloating.
2. Irregularities in the toilet
“A good rule of thumb is to notice when you typically go number two and if your routine is disrupted for a few days or weeks, there may be something wrong,” says Renee Palta DO, PIH Health Gastroenterology
3. Mood
Your gut microbiome has a significant impact on your mental health and how you deal with stress.
Researchers are discovering evidence that gastrointestinal irritation may send signals to the central nervous system (CNS) that cause mood disorders.
Although the specific mechanisms are unknown, there is evidence that some hormones produced in the gut, generally known as gut peptides, regulate gut-brain transmission, and the other way around.
Signs of good gut health:
- Normal gassing after meals
Passing out gas after a meal shouldn’t be disruptive and painful.
Excess gas, on the other hand, may suggest that something is wrong with your gut. While everyone’s baseline is different, notice if your amount of gassiness changes, or if gas causes discomfort or suffering.
2. Regular bowel movements in the morning
Everyone has a different picture of what mornings should look like — some people start their day with coffee or a quick scroll on TikTok but one thing they should all have in common is a bowel movement, says gastroenterologist Mark Pimentel, MD, associate professor of medicine and gastroenterology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
“People often don’t know what ‘normal’ is when it comes to bowel movements, but you should — in an ideal world — wake up in the morning and have one,” he continues.
3. Optimal energy levels
The body won’t be able to break down our food and absorb nutrients for cellular energy production if our gut health is impaired, leaving us fatigued and low on energy.
As stated before, gut bacteria, both good and bad, can communicate with your brain and have a significant impact on your mood and energy levels.
“It’s almost unthinkable that the gut isn’t playing a critical role in mind states,” says gastroenterologist Emeran Mayer, MD, director of the Center for Neurobiology of Stress at the University of California, Los Angeles.
When you consider the gut’s complex ability to interact with the brain, as well as its critical role in protecting the body from the dangers of the outside world, it’s easy to see why.
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