Meet Your Second Brain: The Gut... brain-gut connection...Gut Feelings–the "Second Brain" in Our Gastrointestinal Systems ...The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ..

There is a superhighway between the brain and GI system that holds great sway over humans
"There is a muscle that encircles the gut like a lasso when we are sitting… creating a kink in the tube," Giulia Enders explains in Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ. She calls the mechanism "an extra insurance policy, in addition to our old friends, the sphincters" (you have two sphincters – keep reading) and cites studies showing that squatters, with their unkinked guts, are less susceptible to haemorrhoids and constipation.Enders, a 25-year-old student at the Institute for Microbiology in Frankfurt, inside an underground public lavatory in central London. "Is there a toilet in this toilet?" she asks when she arrives. There is not, a barista tells her. The Victorian urinals, abandoned in the 1960s, have been converted into cafe with booths and stools, and no room for anything else.After a dash to a pub loo above ground, Enders talks with infectious energy about the wonder of the gut. She has been delighted to discover how many people share her fascination with a subject that can suffer for being taboo. "Even today in the taxi, I told the driver what I was doing and within about two minutes he was telling me about his constipation," she says in perfect English, which she owes to a year of study in the US. "And it's not just him. It's ladies with chic hair at big gala dinners, too. Everyone wants to talk about it."Enders first got noticed after a self-assured turn at a science slam in Berlin three years ago. Her 10-minute lecture went viral on YouTube, and now, weeks after completing her final exams as a doctoral student, she is a publishing sensation. Her book, called Darm Mit Charme ("Charming Bowels") in Germany, has sold more than 1.3 million copies since it came out last year. Rights have been sold to dozens of countries.

Her way into the gut is a lightness that some reviewers have found too childish or lacking in scientific rigour to be taken seriously. But there is something compelling and refreshing about her curiosity and popular approach. "When I read the research, I think, why don't people know about this – why am I reading about it in some paper or specialist magazine? It's ridiculous because everyone has to deal with it on a daily basis." After she explains the inspiration for her fixation (the suicide of an acquaintance who had had severe halitosis, and her own teenage skin condition, which turned out to have been caused by a wheat intolerance) Enders starts at the end of the digestive tract with what she calls the "masterly performance" that is defecation. "There is so much about the anus that we don't know," she says, reaching for a gluten-free chocolate chip cookie. "The first surprise is the sophistication of our sphincters… you know about the outer one because you can control it, but the inner one nobody knows about."
This inner opening is beyond our conscious control, releasing waste material into a sort of anal vestibule where, in Enders words, "a small taster" hits sensor cells that tell the body what it's dealing with and how to respond using the outer sphincter. This opening, and our mouths, are the recognisable and controllable ends of a system that, stretched out, would be almost as long as a bus. But it's the bits in between, and their link with the rest of our bodies, including our brains and emotions, that really interest Enders.

"Medical diagrams show the small intestine as a sausage thing chaotically going through our belly," she says. "But it is an extraordinary work of architecture that moves so harmonically when you see it during surgery. It's clean and smooth, like soft fabric, and moves like this." She performs a wavy, pulsating motion with her hands. Enders believes that if we could think differently about the gut, we might more readily understand its role beyond basic digestion – and be kinder to it. The great extent to which the gut can influence health and mood is a growing field in medicine. We speak of it all the time, whether we describe "gut feelings", "butterflies in our stomachs", or "pooing our pants" in fear, but popular understanding of this gut-brain axis remains low.

A primal connection exists between our brain and our gut. We often talk about a “gut feeling” when we meet someone for the first time. We’re told to “trust our gut instinct” when making a difficult decision or that it’s “gut check time” when faced with a situation that tests our nerve and determination. This mind-gut connection is not just metaphorical. Our brain and gut are connected by an extensive network of neurons and a highway of chemicals and hormones that constantly provide feedback about how hungry we are, whether or not we’re experiencing stress, or if we’ve ingested a disease-causing microbe. This information superhighway is called the brain-gut axis and it provides constant updates on the state of affairs at your two ends. That sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach after looking at your postholiday credit card bill is a vivid example of the brain-gut connection at work. You’re stressed and your gut knows it—immediately.

The enteric nervous system is often referred to as our body’s second brain. There are hundreds of million of neurons connecting the brain to the enteric nervous system, the part of the nervous system that is tasked with controlling the gastrointestinal system. This vast web of connections monitors the entire digestive tract from the esophagus to the anus. The enteric nervous system is so extensive that it can operate as an independent entity without input from our central nervous system, although they are in regular communication. While our “second” brain cannot compose a symphony or paint a masterpiece the way the brain in our skull can, it does perform an important role in managing the workings of our inner tube. The network of neurons in the gut is as plentiful and complex as the network of neurons in our spinal cord, which may seem overly complex just to keep track of digestion. Why is our gut the only organ in our body that needs its own “brain”? Is it just to manage the process of digestion? Or could it be that one job of our second brain is to listen in on the trillions of microbes residing in the gut?

Operations of the enteric nervous system are overseen by the brain and central nervous system. The central nervous system is in communication with the gut via the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system, the involuntary arm of the nervous system that controls heart rate, breathing, and digestion. The autonomic nervous system is tasked with the job of regulating the speed at which food transits through the gut, the secretion of acid in our stomach, and the production of mucus on the intestinal lining. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, or HPA axis, is another mechanism by which the brain can communicate with the gut to help control digestion through the action of hormones.

This circuitry of neurons, hormones, and chemical neurotransmitters not only sends messages to the brain about the status of our gut, it allows for the brain to directly impact the gut environment. The rate at which food is being moved and how much mucus is lining the gut—both of which can be controlled by the central nervous system—have a direct impact on the environmental conditions the microbiota experiences.

Like any ecosystem inhabited by competing species, the environment within the gut dictates which inhabitants thrive. Just as creatures adapted to a moist rain forest would struggle in the desert, microbes relying on the mucus layer will struggle in a gut where mucus is exceedingly sparse and thin. Bulk up the mucus, and the mucus-adapted microbes can stage a comeback. The nervous system, through its ability to affect gut transit time and mucus secretion, can help dictate which microbes inhabit the gut. In this case, even if the decisions are not conscious, it’s mind over microbes.

What about the microbial side? When the microbiota adjusts to a change in diet or to a stress-induced decrease in gut transit time, is the brain made aware of this modification? Does the brain-gut axis run in one direction only, with all signals going from brain to gut, or are some signals going the other way? Is that voice in your head that is asking for a snack coming from your mind or is it emanating from the insatiable masses in your bowels? Recent evidence indicates that not only is our brain “aware” of our gut microbes, but these bacteria can influence our perception of the world and alter our behavior. It is becoming clear that the influence of our microbiota reaches far beyond the gut to affect an aspect of our biology few would have predicted—our mind.

For example, the gut microbiota influences the body’s level of the potent neurotransmitter serotonin, which regulates feelings of happiness. Some of the most prescribed drugs in the U.S. for treating anxiety and depression, like Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil, work by modulating levels of serotonin. And serotonin is likely just one of a numerous biochemical messengers dictating our mood and behavior that the microbiota impacts.

Most of us can relate to the experience of having butterflies in our stomach, or to a visceral gut-wrenching feeling, and how often are we told not to ignore our “gut-instinct” or “gut-feeling” when making a decision.

Even from our simple slang, it’s clear just how symbolically connected the gut is to our emotions. Now, there’s tangible proof to support these popular metaphors.

We all have a microbiome, and they are as unique as our neural pathways
Research has shown that the body is actually composed of more bacteria than cells. We are more bug than human! Collectively, these trillions of bacteria are called the microbiome. Most of those bacteria reside in our gut, sometimes referred to as the gut microbiota, and they play multiple roles in our overall health.

The gut is no longer seen as an entity with the sole purpose of helping with all aspects of digestion. It’s also being considered as a key player in regulating inflammation and immunity.

A healthy gut consists of different iterations of bacteria for different people, and this diversity maintains wellness. A shift away from “normal” gut microbiota diversity is called dysbiosis, and dysbiosis may contribute to disease. In light of this, the microbiome has become the focus of much research attention as a new way of understanding autoimmune, gastrointestinal, and even brain disorders.

The benefit of a healthy gut is illustrated most effectively during early development. Research has indicated just how sensitive a fetus is to any changes in a mother’s microbiotic makeup, so much so that it can alter the way a baby’s brain develops. If a baby is born via cesarean section, it misses an opportunity to ingest the mother’s bacteria as it travels down the vaginal canal. Studies show that those born via c-section have to work to regain the same diversity in their microbiome as those born vaginally. Throughout our lives, our microbiome continues to be a vulnerable entity, and as we are exposed to stress, toxins, chemicals, certain diets, and even exercise, our microbiome fluctuates for better or worse.

The gut as second brain
Our gut microbiota play a vital role in our physical and psychological health via its own neural network: the enteric nervous system (ENS), a complex system of about 100 million nerves found in the lining of the gut.

The ENS is sometimes called the “second brain,” and it actually arises from the same tissues as our central nervous system (CNS) during fetal development. Therefore, it has many structural and chemical parallels to the brain.

Our ENS doesn’t wax philosophical or make executive decisions like the gray shiny mound in our skulls. Yet, in a miraculously orchestrated symphony of hormones, neurotransmitters, and electrical impulses through a pathway of nerves, both “brains” communicate back and forth. These pathways include and involve endocrine, immune, and neural pathways.

At this point in time, even though the research is inchoate and complex, it is clear that the brain and gut are so intimately connected that it sometimes seems like one system, not two.

Our emotions play a big role in functional gastrointestinal disorders
Given how closely the gut and brain interact, it has become clear that emotional and psychosocial factors can trigger symptoms in the gut. This is especially true in cases when the gut is acting up and there’s no obvious physical cause.

The functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGIDs) are a group of more than 20 chronic and hard to treat medical conditions of the gastrointestinal tract that constitute a large proportion of the presenting problems seen in clinical gastroenterology.

While FGID’s were once thought to be partly “in one’s head,” a more precise conceptualization of these difficulties posits that psychosocial factors influence the actual physiology of the gut, as well as the modulation of symptoms. In other words, psychological factors can literally impact upon physical factors, like the movement and contractions of the GI tract, causing, inflammation, pain, and other bowel symptoms.

Mental health impacts gut wellness
In light of this new understanding, it might be impossible to heal FGID’s without considering the impact of stress and emotion. Studies have shown that patients who tried psychologically based approaches had greater improvement in their symptoms compared with patients who received conventional medical treatment.

Along those lines, a new pilot study from Harvard University affiliates Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center found that meditation could have a significant impact for those with irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease. Forty-eight patients with either IBS or IBD took a 9-week session that included meditation training, and the results showed reduced pain, improved symptoms, stress reduction, and the change in expression of genes that contribute to inflammation.

Poor gut health can lead to neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders
Vice-versa, poor gut health has been implicated in neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. Disturbances in gut health have been linked to multiple sclerosis, autistic spectrum disorders, and Parkinson’s disease. This is potentially related to pro-inflammatory states elicited by gut dysbiosis-microbial imbalance on or inside the body. Additional connections between age-related gut changes and Alzheimer’s disease have also been made.

Further, there is now research that is dubbing depression as an inflammatory disorder mediated by poor gut health. In fact, multiple animal studies have shown that manipulating the gut microbiota in some way can produce behaviors related to anxiety and depression. (Maes, Kubera, Leunis, Berk, J. Affective Disorders, 2012 and Berk, Williams, Jacka, BMC Med, 2013).

Our brain’s health, which will be discussed in more depth in a later blog post, is dependent on many lifestyle choices that mediate gut health; including most notably diet (i.e., reduction of excess sugar and refined carbohydrates) and pre and probiotic intake.

The brain-gut connection has treatment implications
We are now faced with the possibility of both prevention and treatment of neurological/neuropsychiatric difficulties via proper gut health. On the flip side, stress-reduction and other psychological treatments can help prevent and treat gastrointestinal disorders. This discovery can potentially lead to reduced morbidity, impairment, and chronic dependency on health care resources.

The most empowering aspect to the gut-brain connection is the understanding that many of our daily lifestyle choices play a role in mediating our overall wellness. This whole-body approach to healthcare and wellness continues to show its value in our longevity, well-being, and quality of life: that both physical and mental health go hand-in-hand.

www.mindful.org/meet-your-second-brain-the-gut/

Taken in: France / Île-de-France / Paris / Quartier Saint-Gervais (show map)

Taken on: November 27, 2023

Tags:

neurologist

Giulia Enders

pathways

inflammation

immunity.

microbiota

diversity

stress

toxins

chemicals

enteric

nervous

neurotransmitters

electrical

impulses

psychosocial

factors

trigger

symptoms

obvious

physical

cause

pain

meditation

training

dysbiosis-microbial

imbalance

brain-gut

connection

Giulia

Enders

Gut

feeling

brain

intestine

intestinal

tract

bowel

belly

button

body

superhighway

system

tube

energy

viral

microbiome « less

Sets appears in: • Parisian 's Dream • Forceds Perspectives

Groups appears in: • Paris • ART DISTRICT more » • Germany • Shadows - read group description and rules • Artistic Photography • All Collages • States of Consciousness • !Catchy Colors • Sculpture • Urban Fairytales • Sculptures • Art After Art • Lubitel • Statues • Creative Photography • Imagination • MoMA • Art makes you happy! • RISD • ANYTHING ALLOWED!!!!!! • ART / REAL • Poetic Photography • ! ART & PHOTOGRAPHY ! All artistic works welcome • ~Elegance~ • Shadows - Ombre • PIC POEMS • ART BULLY • urban poetry • soulful journey • Imaginative Traveller • pure street • Royal Group - Have a Good Light ! • Urban Walls • Street Art Anywhere • Art of Body Building • *FLICKR's PRO PHOTOGRAPHERS* [No AI or SL] • Art Team • URBAN ART :: • All Things Dark and Disturbing • Sony Camera Club • Wicca Magic • art vitamins • Miami Art Basel • Street art - Art Urbain • The Street Art • UK - Photography • Your view through the camera lens • Universal Art • digital is the devil • Shadow's Club • UK Streetphotography • ❣ BOSTON ᴹᵃˢˢᵃᶜʰᵘˢᵉᵗᵗˢ STRONG ❣ • The End of Faith • Specialistz™ • Photo Artistry • MYSTIC FANTASTIC VIVID COLOR - (opted out of 60/30) • World of Artistic and Photography Artists - (Admin Invited Only) « less

Camera: Sony ILCE-7RM2, f/18.0, 1/125 sec, 35mm (=52mm), ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Sony ILCE-7RM2
Aperture:	f/18.0
Exposure Time:	0.008 sec (1/125)
Focal Length:	35mm (35mm equivalent: 52mm)
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	-1.3 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	ILCE-7RM2 v3.30
Show full info

Stats: 145,280 views / 7 comments