To help you understand the gut-brain connection, let's make it visual. Imagine a bustling factory that lives in your stomach – weird, I know, but bear with me. This factory is filled with tiny workers that are super small but massively important. They are the ones that help decide whether you feel happy, calm or anxious. These tiny workers are not just there to digest food – they are sending vital information to your brain, every minute, of every day.
Welcome to the world of your gut microbiome. It is a thriving universe of bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms that live within your digestive system. For years, we thought the gut’s main job was to break down food and absorb nutrients. But recently, scientists have discovered something far more interesting - your brain and your gut are constantly in conversation with each other.
This connection is called the gut-brain axis and is one of the most exciting frontiers in modern health. The state of your gut can directly shape your mental health, mood, how you sleep, your energy levels and even how clearly you think!
The gut: A factory that is run by tiny microbes
Your gut is like a sprawling, nine-metre-long factory. Food comes in, gets sorted, broken down, packaged and shipped out. But what makes this factory truly exceptional is its tiny workforce, trillions of bacteria (many of them friendly) who keep things going smoothly.
These microbes:
- Help digest the food that the body can’t break down
- Make essential vitamins like B12 and Vitamin K
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Train your immune system
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Produce feel-good chemicals like serotonin that help your mood
Around 90% of your serotonin (the neurotransmitter that helps regulate mood, sleep, and anxiety) is made in your gut. Yep, the same chemical targeted by many antidepressants is actually being created in your stomach. But here’s the catch: the quality of your microbial workforce depends on how well you treat them.
How the gut-brain connection works
The brain is the control tower of your body. This command centre is constantly scanning for updates from your gut. Is there any inflammation? Is the gut wall strong? Are the microbial workers happy and balanced or stressed and under attack?
To stay in sync, the brain and gut use a dedicated information superhighway called the vagus nerve. This long, winding nerve connects the two organs directly, like a cable linking a remote factory with the head office. Hence, the term 'gut-brain connection'.
The signals travel both ways:
- The gut tells the brain how it is feeling (stressed, inflamed, nourished or calm)
- The brain then tells the gut how to respond (e.g. slow down digestion during periods of anxiety or stress)
If the gut is inflamed, unbalanced or feeling overwhelmed, it sends distress signals up to the brain. The brain then responds with its own red alert: mood changes, tension, poor sleep and sometimes panic!
🌿Related: 10 Clever Natural Ways To Improve Digestion
What happens when the gut is unhappy?
Like in any factory, the gut microbiome thrives under good management and healthy conditions. But when things go wrong, like with chronic stress, a course of antibiotics, lack of fibre, or too much sugar, the good bacteria start to die off. The less helpful ones can then take over, and soon this once happy factory becomes a place of chaos.
Some possible issues that can occur as a result:
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Leaky gut. This is when the gut lining can become too porous, and food particles or toxins can escape into the bloodstream. This can then trigger the immune system and cause low-grade inflammation.
🌿Related: 5 Supplements For Leaky Gut You Need To Know About
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Inflammation. Ongoing gut inflammation can affect how your brain works. This has now been strongly linked to depression and anxiety.
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Imbalanced microbes. This is commonly called dysbiosis, and can also be connected to mood issues, IBS and fatigue.
4 ways to support the gut-brain connection
1. Probiotics
This is where probiotics come in. These are live, friendly bacteria found in fermented foods and supplements that can help repopulate your gut. Think of probiotics as sending in skilled workers to replace a struggling team.
They can help reduce inflammation, crowd out unhelpful microbes, support gut lining, and also help to produce calming neurotransmitters like GABA and serotonin.
Clinical trials have shown that strains (like Lactobacillus rhamnosus and Bifidobacterium longum) can significantly reduce anxiety and depressive symptoms, by ‘simply’ improving gut health.
🌿Related: When To Take Probiotics - A Simple Guide
2. Prebiotics
Prebiotics are the fibres and starches that the body can’t digest but your gut microbes love. They are found in things like onions, garlic, leeks, asparagus, bananas, oats, legumes and whole grains.
When good microbes eat these fibres, they create short-chain fatty acids like butyrate, which are anti-inflammatory, and they also help to support the gut lining and brain health.
In other words – if you feed your microbes well, they will repay the favour.
3. Manage your stress
When you are under chronic stress, your brain signals to slow down digestion, tighten the blood flow to the gut and release the stress hormone, cortisol.
Over time, this weakens the gut lining, changes the microbiome and ramps up inflammation. It is a horrible two-way spiral, as the more stressed you get, the worse your gut becomes and then the worse your mood gets…
That is why calming the nervous system through meditation, deep breathing, movement and supportive herbs is often recommended for helping gut health.
Chamomile works by supporting your nervous system. It helps to support feelings of calm and may help reduce anxious feelings by working on GABA signals within the brain. We use chamomile in our Rest and Calm.
🌿Related: 5 Safe And Effective Herbs To Help Anxiety
4. Diversify your diet
Try and increase the amount of diverse plant foods you consume as this diversity helps the gut microbes, and their diversity. Plant foods are often high in fibre (prebiotics) as well.
Include fermented foods in your diet to support your microbiome. By adding in more prebiotics through fibre and functional vinegar drinks (like our Fire Cider and Switchel), you are increasing the fuel source for the microbes.
Consider reducing ultra-processed food consumption, as in excess, they can harm microbial diversity.
Be mindful of your alcohol and sugar intake as both can affect microbiome health. But don’t deny yourself the small joys in life.
