The Mind-Gut Connection: How the Hidden Conversation Within Our Bodies Impacts Our Mood, Our Choices, and Our Overall Health

by Emeran Mayer

The language that signals your brain to stop eating when you’ve eaten enough and feel hungry again when your stomach is empty includes hormones that can stimulate or turn off your appetite, the latter being called satiety hormones.

hypothalamus, which is the master regulator of our eating behavior.

As the earliest symptoms of constipation develop in the gut, is it possible that Parkinson’s disease begins in the gut and gradually makes its way to the brain? Could Parkinson’s disease be a gut-brain disorder?

microbiota of Parkinson’s patients had reduced levels of Prevotella bacteria compared with the microbiota of healthy people.

Prevotella flourish in the guts of people who eat a plant-based diet, and are reduced in people who eat fewer plants and more meat, milk, and dairy. We

Plant based food

A typical Mediterranean diet contains at least 5 servings of vegetables, 1–2 servings of legumes and beans, 3 servings of fruit, 3–5 servings of grains, 5 servings of plant fats (olive oil, avocado, nuts, and seeds), consumption of seafood 2–4 times per week, and red meat not more than 1 time per week.

state of optimal health, a condition that has been defined as complete physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social well-being, with peak vitality, optimal personal performance, and high productivity.

“Life is a waste without humor—living is all about happiness and laughter,”

If there is one personal characteristic that stands out among all of them, it is their curiosity and excitement about all things in life, their positive view of the world, and their unwillingness to be bogged down by negative people or events.

All these individuals seem to have a high degree of resilience—an ability to return to a healthy steady state after unanticipated events in life have thrown them off balance.

predisease states can be viewed as the consequences of the wear and tear on the body (the so-called allostatic load), which increases over time when a person experiences repeated minor stressors or is under constant, chronic stress.

diet can interact with our gut microbiota to cause similar inflammatory states, a situation called “metabolic toxemia.”

One important factor is your genetic makeup and the way these genes are modified through the influence of early life experiences, good and bad. The activity of your immune system is also important, as are your eating habits, lifestyle, and environment

lactobacilli and bifidobacteria.

Early life—from before birth to age three—is a particularly crucial period for the shaping of the gut microbial architecture.

Improving Your Health by Targeting the Gut Microbiome

Cut down on animal fat in your diet. All the animal fat in the typical North American diet, regardless if it is visible or hidden in many processed foods, is bad for your health. It plays a major role in increasing

High animal fat intake is also bad for your brain health.

Maximize your gut microbial diversity.

in addition to eating moderate quantities of meats low in fat, mainly from fish and poultry, increase your intake of food items that contain multiple prebiotics in the form of different plant fibers, a combination of food items that we know today leads to greater gut microbial diversity.

Avoid mass-produced and processed foods and maximize organically grown food.

Michael Pollan gives in his recent book, Food Rules.

Buy only things in the market that lo...

Keep in mind that pesticides used to grow GMO foods may not directly harm our human bodies, but they are likely to affect the function and health of our gut microbes and their interactions with the brain.

Eat fermented foods and probiotics.

people have been eating naturally fermented, unpasteurized foods for thousands of years, and you might want to include some of them in your regular diet. Such products include kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha, and miso,

fermented milk products, including kefir, different types of yogurts, and hundreds of different cheeses, provide probiotics

recommend selecting low-fat and low-sugar products that are free of emulsifiers, artificial colorin...

If you consume fermented dairy products, such as probiotic-enriched yogurts, you are also feeding your own microbes an important source of prebiotics (such as the milk oligosaccharides we discussed in the previous chapter), and if you’re eating fermented vegetables, you’re feeding your gut microbes ano...

Eat smaller portions. This limits the calories you consume, keeping the amount in line with your body’s metabolic needs, and simultaneously reduces your fat intake.

Fast to starve your gut microbes. Periodic fasting has been an integral part of many cultures, religions, and healing traditions for thousands of years, and prolonged fasting may have positive impact on brain functions and well-being.

Don’t eat when you are stressed, angry, or sad.

Enjoy meals together. Just as negative emotions are bad for your gut-microbe-brain axis, happiness, joy, and a feeling of connectedness are probably good.

After scanning your body and becoming aware of how you feel, try to switch to a positive emotional state and experience the difference this shift has on your overall well-being. Various techniques have been proven effective at this, including cognitive behavioral therapy, hypnosis, and self-relaxation techniques, as well as mindfulness-based stress reduction.

Become an Expert in Listening to Your Gut Feelings Mindfulness-based stress reduction can also help you get in touch with your gut feelings and reduce the negative biasing influence of thoughts and memories on these feeling states. This sort of mindfulness helps relieve disorders of the gut-brain axis.

Mindfulness meditation is typically described as “nonjudgmental attention to experiences in the present moment.”

In order to become more mindful you will have to master three interrelated skills: learn to focus and sustain your attention in the present moment, improve your ability to regulate yo...

Keep Your Brain (and Your Gut Microbiota) Fit Of course, there is unequivocal evidence for the health-promoting effects of regular exercise, and no recommendations to achieve optimal health could come without the inclusion of regular physical exercise.

It will shift us away from being passive recipients of an ever-increasing number of medications to taking responsibility for the optimal functioning of our brain-gut axis by becoming ecological systems engineers with the knowledge, power, and motivation to get our gut-microbiota-brain interactions functioning at peak effectiveness, with the goal of optimal health.

EMERAN A. MAYER, MD, has studied brain body interactions for the last forty years, with a particular emphasis on brain-gut interactions.