Is There A Connection Between The Gut And The Brain?

Is There A Connection Between The Gut and The Brain?

Many people would answer no, but are they correct? What if there is a connection between the human gut and the human brain?

Well let’s think about it. Foods are supposed to give us the necessary material, or energy, for daily living. Although many humans eat food products that don’t contain any energy, such as those that have been heated. “Heated” in this case can be replaced with cooked, denatured, broken down, deactivated, mutated, processed, etc.

On the other hand, you can keep foods in their natural or most natural state. The act of heating something disturbs the subtle chemical composition in the food source. When there is a disturbance, it reverses the evolution of vitamins and minerals in foods making the state of the food useless to a human or any other animal. These vitamins and minerals are the energy necessary for survival of our species.

This means humans need to eat a good majority of fruits and vegetables in the fresh/raw state and steam them if you must cook them. Nuts and seeds should be eaten raw as well and maybe lightly heated. When it comes to eggs, meats, and seafood, humans have been cooking these complete protein sources of food over the fire since man first started using fire hundreds of thousands of years ago. Cooking meats breaks down enough of the proteins so they become much easier to digest.

Since foods must be eaten for energy, humans must find a way to extract the minerals and vitamins to use as energy. Enter bacteria. Ever thought about what happens when living plants and animals die? They decompose, change to an ugly gray or brown, or they get crunchy and hard from being dehydrated. Humans eventually figured out we could use the decomposed plants/animals in a ground up form as a fertilizer for the next generation of plants and animals. It is the bacteria that perform these duties for the cyclical nature of life and death.

Tiny bacteria were on this Earth LONG before any animal and plant species. These single celled creatures have the power to break down material as well as build up material. These bacteria are pretty cool! They handle all of the hard work for you as a human. Bacteria will break down dead plants and animals and turn them into a composted fertilizer and replenish the soil in the ground so that new plants can thrive. New plants/trees are grown and take the sunlight and the carbon in the soil to make sugars and therefore higher life forms, such as animals.

Now that its understood food gives us energy and bacteria break down food, this naturally takes you to the connection between bacteria and energy. Believe it or not, a human is only 10% human. Yes I said it you are only 10% human! The other 90% of our bodies are made from different colonies of bacteria, most of which reside in the GI tract (Gastrointestinal tract). These guys have their own DNA, just as humans do, that gives the bacteria its instructions for life.

Bacterial DNA means some of these guys are used to break down foods that humans eat, others are used to produce enzymes or vitamins, and even still others are involved with supporting the immune system. Supporting the immune system is quite possibly one of the most brilliant pieces of art in the entire world. How is it that these little bacteria can dictate human immunity so that we don’t just get ill at the snap of a finger?

Think about it. Most of the bacteria in our guts are “good” bacteria that battle all of the pathogenic “bad” bacteria to protect the host organism, in this case, a human. If you have more “bad” bacteria then they will pave the way for other harmful bacteria to enter your body and set up shop to be toxic. They are truly the best recruiters for illness.

The “good” bacteria, however, do more than just battle the pathogenic ones. They are the real heroes that actually break down human foods, make the minerals and vitamins accessible to the rest of the body. They can also direct certain chemicals to be used as neurotransmitters for the brain to send its orders to the rest of the body. This could be to break down and eliminate toxic material, repair the inflamed tissues, or rebuild the tissues so they are healthy and strong.

So you can just go get an anti-biotic medicine and heal your gut when your “bad” colonies outnumber your “good” colonies though, right? Hell no! There is a reason why they call it “anti-biotic” meaning no (anti) bacteria (biota). You’ve literally lost your biota or microbiome because you took a round of antibiotics. The good news is that with a shift in your lifestyle choices, especially eating foods in their untouched state and coming from the Earth, you can realign your bacterial colonies in your gut. When you change your bacteria colonies back to the “good” outnumbering the “bad” then your health will start to come back in roaring fashion and you will find that losing weight is pretty easy. In fact, you don’t have to work very hard to lose weight. It’ll just happen, assuming you are exercising and moving at least a little bit every day!

So to conclude this post, there is definitely a connection between the gut and the brain! As you can tell, we have a tremendous amount of bacteria in our gut that breaks down the foods we eat. Once food gets broken down and the minerals and vitamins are extracted and ready for use, the bacteria can then create neurotransmitters (neuro = nerve, transmitter = signal) to send to the brain to control bodily functions on a daily basis. This must happen constantly if humans are going to survive a long and healthy life.

In addition to receiving neurotransmitters from the gut bacteria, the brain also uses the broken down foods (starches and fats) as a source of energy to send more neurotransmitters such as hormones throughout the body as part of a more highly evolved communication system. This helps the body know how to react to different stimuli. With the help of bacteria, the body can do some truly amazing feats.

It also opens the doors for the brain to reach high levels of intellect. Once this begins to happen, there is no telling where the complexities of the human brain can take you. Science is only beginning to understand the human brain and its complex connections and network.

What are your thoughts on the gut brain connection? Stay tuned for the next post, as it will be Part 2 of the Gut-Brain connection.