Imagine you have a plant you love. One day you notice its leaves have turned brown. Naturally, they'll soon whither and fall off. Imagine now that you call a plant expert who, after close examination of the leaves, recommends that you paint them green and attach them back to their branches so the tree can at least appear to be healthy. Everyone would agree that's crazy right? If you want to get your plant truly healthy, you can't just cover up the problem. You need to get to the root of it. (Get it?)
The message: The more we focus on treating individual symptoms, the further we get from finding the real root cause of the problem. The medical community has become specialised in treating specific symptoms and often overlooks the bigger picture. That's where the gut comes in - it's like the roots of the tree. A clean and healthy gut is essential for overall health and well-being. If we want to thrive, we need to start by taking care of our gut, just like we would take care of the roots of a tree.
The Second Brain
What would you say if I told you that the human body has not one, but two brains? Yeah it sounds mad doesn't it? Well, one of them is located in your head, while the other is in your gut. Yep, your gut has a brain too! This "second brain" is made up of a complex network of neurons that communicate with the brain in your head and play a crucial role in your overall well-being.
It's pretty cool to think that if you were to isolate all the neurons in your gut and clump them together, they would actually form a mass of neurons larger than the ones in your head. In fact, the gut brain is even more active than the one in your head when it comes to producing neurotransmitters, like serotonin.
You may have heard of serotonin before - it's the neurotransmitter that's responsible for making us feel happy and content. But did you know that 90% of serotonin is actually produced in the gut? This just goes to show how important our gut health is for our overall mood and well-being. It also goes to show how little psychiatrists know about depression when they point to the brain not producing enough serotonin as the issue.
This is my last interesting point about the gut, it's estimated that about 70-80% of the immune system is located in the gut. It's home to most of your immune cells because that is where the majority of foreign substances, including pathogens, are encountered. So if you're the type of person that's always getting sick remember, the gut plays a crucial role in immune function and overall health.
Antibiotics vs The Gut
Antibiotics not only affect our health when we take them as medicine, but they are also present in the food we eat. The food industry uses antibiotics to prevent diseases in livestock and also adds chemicals to processed foods to make them last longer on the shelf. These chemicals are like antibiotics, killing off the good bacteria in our guts that are crucial for our immune system and overall health.
There are instances in which antibiotics can be life-saving when you have some sort of acute infection, but we need to be very aware of how much antibiotics we use and the damaging effects on our gut. Whilst killing the bad guys, antibiotics also destroy the friendly stuff in our microbiome that needs to be restored. They have no mercy, they kill everything on sight. What can we do? Focus on the fact that those preservatives that keep food on the shelf longer are basically acting like antibiotics. Obviously not everyone has the luxury of going without long self life foods as they're very practical but if there's any easy wins to get rid of them, take them.
Removing Triggers
Toxic triggers are like those tempting garbage foods that everyone loves to indulge in, but ultimately result in you feeling terrible afterwards. You know the feeling - bloated, fatigued, and just straight up gross. It turns out that these foods can also cause bigger problems, like mood swings and even autoimmune reactions.
Toxic triggers are the foods that can wreak havoc on our gut, making it a breeding ground for unhealthy organisms. The most common culprits are gluten, dairy, processed sugar, caffeine, and alcohol - basically all the things we love to consume in excess. But here's the good news: once we identify our toxic triggers, we can take steps to eliminate them and give our gut a chance to heal.
By removing these triggers and replacing them with whole, natural foods, we can prevent our mood, weight, and energy from yo-yoing up and down. It's like hitting the reset button on our gut health, and it all starts with what we put on our plates.
My Geezer Science Gut Bacteria Theory
Now I'm not going to take full credit for this theory because I probably heard someone say it on a podcast. Firstly, let's talk about gut bacteria. The foods we eat create these tiny living organisms in our gut, and if you're eating a lot of garbage food, you're creating a lot of garbage bacteria. And let me tell you, bacteria is a living organism that wants to stay alive and thrive in your gut. It wants to live that good life, doing bacteria stuff like being a boss and making it rain on all the bacteria hoes.
Now, bacteria lives off of the foods that created it so it relies on you eating more of those garbage foods for its survival. But how does bacteria get you to eat more garbage?
Well, the gut and the brain are in constant communication with each other. It's like they have their own private hot line! The way they talk to each other is through a big nerve called the vagus nerve, which runs all the way from your brainstem to your abdomen. When your gut sends signals to your brain, it travels up this nerve to let your brain know what's going on. And when your brain wants to tell your gut to do something, it sends signals back down the same nerve. This constant communication is what allows your brain and gut to work together as a team, helping you digest food, regulate your mood, and even fight off infection.
But it's also how garbage bacteria gets your brain to crave garbage food. These bacteria send signals to your brain, inducing cravings for those sweet, sweet treats. But here's the kicker: the number of bacteria in the human body is greater than the number of human cells. That's right, bacteria is essentially running the show. So if you're eating a lot of junk food, you'll have a lot of junk bacteria influencing your behaviour.
This is why it's so important to limit your intake of junk food. You need to starve those bad boys to death and replace them with good bacteria. And trust me, once you do, your cravings will change. You'll start to crave foods that are good for you, and it'll be so much easier to stay consistent with your healthy eating habits.
Remember that taking care of your gut bacteria is crucial for living a long healthy life. Because at the end of the day, you crave what your gut bacteria craves. And I don't know about you, but I want my gut bacteria to crave the good stuff, not the garbage stuff. Your gut bacteria will thank you, and so will your body.
Always remember, you were born to be the hero of your story.
Free your outlaw.