Your Gut, Your Brain and Your Mental Health | Jordan Haworth

0:00How important is it to kind of look after the health of our vagus nerve with our gut? Because when we spoke about mental health as we were walking, because we just had a psychiatrist on, oh my gosh, it was one of the most mind-blowing episodes I've ever done on antidepressants. So much stuff that's misinformed. And, you know, it was interesting that when he said, you know, if we're not looking at antidepressants, nice guidelines have 18 different things that you can do. And I mentioned, oh, diet. And diet wasn't even on there. which for you and I obviously blows our brains um but diet is so important for mental health and mental health is important for our gut microbiome and chicken and egg it's big conversation like which one goes first but the vagus nerve is basically what connects the two so talk to me about the vagus nerve health for our gut microbiome so yeah the vagus nerve is the highway between the gut and the brain longest cranial nerve um which connects to the brain not the longest nerve that's a sciatic nerve in the leg just for all you pub quizzers don't blame me so yeah the vagus nerve is this highway of communication and it controls digestion it controls many functions digestion being one of them and what happens is if we are mostly in sympathetic mode so fight or flight yeah then we need we're not in the mode for digestion and that's what happens with a lot of people who have things like irritable bowel syndrome ibs so stress previous trauma huge risk factors if your body's constantly in fight or flight your digestion is not going to be functioning normally we can hack the vagus nerve to tip us into parasympathetic state so that's rest and digest mode the vagus nerve actually makes up most of that that nervous system and if we can utilize that then we can improve digestive processes and there's a few hacks we can do for that for that so one of them is just deep breathing and what you want to do is make sure that exhale is longer than inhale so in for four and then out for eight seconds is great studies showing that humming can help as well so humming the vibrations stimulate the vagus nerve so maybe do you in for four out for eight and add a hum onto that exhale and just by doing that even 10 times so two minutes before a meal can help get prime your body for digestion and they've done research to show just how strong that you know that that connection is um so they they took people and they gave them a meal but whilst they were doing the meal, they did an EGG, electro gastrography.

2:43It's like an ECG, but for the stomach. All right. And they then made them watch either a horror movie or a guided meditation. They watched a horror movie. The stomach function on the EGG was significantly disrupted. And then the, we're watching the calming meditation perfect normal function right and that's just you know just showing how how strong that gut brain connection is how utilizing the vagus nerve can be helpful there's new things we were chatting before about vagal nerve stimulators so devices our clinic is doing a study at the minute of one in irritable bowel syndrome um so you know watch this space that they could potentially be helpful but yeah it's just I think if you've got IBS or some other disorder of gut brain interaction there's quite a few of those functional dyspepsia is another one which is more stomach related symptoms if you have been diagnosed with one of these then do not neglect the vagus nerve your nervous system your autonomic response and people first they want to turn to probiotics they want to turn to diet removing gluten dairy without addressing that nervous system so if you don't do that you're never gonna you're never gonna go that's my journey i'm so like for me the nervous system is the biggest thing before food like i obviously went into studying nutritional science so i thought that's where i should go and it's actually my nervous system that i fully needed to retrain then obviously i figured out i had adhd which is a big part about understanding my nervous system but you know i think the vagus nerve devices are really interesting because if you're more of a somatic person we don't know what that word is but more of a sensory touch person they can be really really helpful but i just think you know even like um eft tapping is also really good um which is basically like tapping on your like different parts around like near the vagus even pressing on it is really helpful as well but yeah i mean if you're someone who loves tech and devices I definitely think like all of these things are worth a shot.

4:50Anything that can get you into a more regulated nervous system. And the biggest one that we haven't spoken about is nature. Like getting out into nature, grounding, putting your feet on the floor. I mean, personally, I have everything in my house trained to calm my nervous system because I live in London, so it's the most unregulated place. But I do think that is the first step because once you're then calm, you do digest your nutrients better. You actually make better choices this because you're in a more rational logical as opposed to emotional reactive mindset and plus like who just doesn't want to feel like karma I think it's like everything I feel like it's quite like a Buddhist term but we're all kind of searching for that more regulated state in a very dysregulated world and you know our environment is completely key to making us into dysregulation so I think looking at your Vegas now I know that you said you listened to one of our episodes on the vagus nerve we've got loads of them but i think like it's all about kind of like putting these things together right it's like never one answer um i do think the vagus nerve is going to be like one of the next kind of big next i don't want to say trends because trends makes it feel like it's short but the next kind of thing that everyone's going to be connecting to i think in the next coming year um so jordan i want you to finish the sentence for me because I'm not about perfection on this show.

6:08I'm about, you know, imperfections and championing them because I think perfection will kill you more quickly than your imperfections ever will. So your gut doesn't need perfection. It needs... Consistency? I don't know why I thought you were going to say constipation. I just... You were like, consistency? I was like... That's true. Consistency. tell me more little wins over time um like oasis little by little right that's what you need to do yeah so people over complicate it like we started off the the chat with trying to take these supplements um just actually recycling what i said before in terms of if you get the foundations right consistently the fermented foods the fiber the flavonoids polyphenols the free f's the sleep the movement and we haven't even spoke about you know doing too much because you can like the high rocks and the marathons and stuff but maybe another time are you doing a marathon i did a marathon and i would i don't think i'd do another one i'm a hypocrite i literally wrote a book saying how like endurance high intensity exercise can wreak havoc on your gut causes increased intestinal permeability leaky gut it's not good for your nervous system but then i went and did a marathon anyway um back to just fireworks for me and then managing stress if you do these things consistently over time you can get your gut health even if you have got health issues to like 70 80 percent better um so you don't need any fancy supplements you don't need expensive probiotics like it says on the book some little wins consistency build those foundations over time amazing um Jordan I have to leave with the last question which is what does live well be well mean to you um it's a great question because I think I probably just answered it in the last one um but as someone who's struggled in the past with eating disorders um and just how I live now in terms of having a great social network, having a balanced diet with less food, fear and anxiety, being able to move daily, you know, not taking these things for granted.

8:36So I think as long as I continue to follow that and not be, you know, not be drawn and sucked in to buy these companies and marketing which uh is why we do what we do you do the podcast that's why i do the social media the book um so yeah that yeah that i think that's i like that yeah yeah i try i didn't want to like waffle on too much but i feel like we've answered most of it people go in all directions of this answer which is why i love it because basically live well be well is an individual understanding of like basically what i think the answer to success is like yeah ultimately that's where we all want to be right and health is so individual and so very rarely do we ever get the same answer to that question which is why i absolutely love it because it's like it basically shows you the individual way of how everyone sees health