Ever felt “butterflies in your stomach or ”trusted your gut” about an important decision? You can thank your gut brain connection for that.
What is the Gut Brain Connection?
Your brain and gut talk to each other. Anytime you get a “gut feeling” or feel a knot in your stomach, you experience this firsthand. This two-way communication is known as the ‘gut brain connection.’ The network of nerves that sends these signals is referred to as the ‘gut-brain axis.
The Gut Brain Connection & Your Health
This crosstalk between your gut and brain affects many aspects of your health, including:
- Mood
- Immune function
- Hunger and satiety
- Digestion
- Stress levels
- Behavior
- Sensitivity to pain
- Cognitive function
- Gut motility
- Metabolism
- Food sensitivities & intolerances
The health of your gut affects your brain and vice versa. For example, people with gut dysbiosis often suffer from depression and anxiety, while people with good gut health are more likely to have a healthy nervous system.
On top of that, people with digestive disorders like inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) face an increased risk of depression and anxiety.
Eating for your gut. What to Avoid?
One simple way to harness the power of the gut brain connection is to watch what you put on your plate. By choosing foods that promote gut health and limiting ones that harm it, you can improve your mood, mental health, and overall well-being.
Below are some of the worst foods for gut health. To keep your gut happy, you’ll want to limit or avoid them:
The Worst Foods for Gut Health
- Refined sugar: Cake, soda, and other sugary foods fuel bad bacteria and disrupt the balance of your gut microbiome. Sugar also increases intestinal permeability, setting the stage for a “leaky gut.”
- Alcohol: Heavy drinking can damage the intestinal lining, create inflammation, and harm your gut microbiome.
- Processed foods: Packaged convenience foods like crackers, cookies, canned soups, microwave meals, lunch meats, and other processed foods contain artificial additives and preservatives that can hurt your gut.
- Fried foods: French fries, fried chicken, and other fried foods are high in saturated fat and difficult to for the body to digest.
- Factory farmed meat: Livestock on factory farms live in crowded conditions. Because of this, they’re usually fed antibiotics to reduce the risk of disease. This can increase the risk of antibiotic resistant strains in the animals’ gut microbiome. So it’s best to go with grass fed or organic meat.
- Artificial sweeteners: Aspartame, saccharin, sucralose, and other artificial sweeteners can damage cells in the gut lining and allow bad bacteria to take over.
- Gluten: Wheat, barley, and other gluten-containing foods can cause inflammation for people with with Celiac disease or gluten sensitivity.