This Is What Happens to Your Brain When You Heal Your Gut

0:00This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer, find more on Facebook. If you have a health issue, one of the number one things you're probably overlooking is your gut-brain connection. You have a connection between your mind and your body, and most people overlook this and don't care for it the right way.

0:43And because of it, they're suffering with health issues. For instance, brain fog, poor memory, not being able to focus or concentrate, or lack of motivation oftentimes doesn't start in the brain, It starts in the gut or issues like IBS, gas, bloating, any type of digestive issue. Oftentimes that starts in the brain. In this episode, I'm going to dive into the practical things I've done in my clinic and the science behind how to heal your gut brain connection, including the ideal diet, herbs, lifestyle medicine, and other practices to heal your gut brain connection. Welcome to the Dr. Josh Axe Show.

1:38So before I dive into the top seven things that are disrupting your gut, let's talk about what the gut-brain connection actually is. The gut-brain axis is the bi-directional communication network between your gut and your brain. In fact, also it's important to know that your gut is often called your second brain because it has the second most neurological tissue to your brain and it communicates with numerous, really every organ and cell and tissue in your body. And the gut-brain axis involves your neural and your hormonal and your immune signals that keep your body balanced or throw it off. So the gut-brain axis includes, one, this is really important, the Vegas nerve.

2:22And this is the main communication superhighway between your gut and your brain. And it's a long nerve that runs from your brainstem to your intestines, carrying messages in both directions. And it works fast. Messages can travel in milliseconds, helping regulate things like digestion, mood, heart rate, and your immune response. And so this Vegas nerve is something, by the way, that a lot of doctors pay particularly close attention to because it really helps regulate something called your parasympathetic nerve system. Now, we all know most of us live in this sympathetic state, right? Fight or flight response.

3:02And our ancient ancestors, it's called fight or flight because they would either run away or fight. And that's when it's most activated, when your body is in fear mode, when it's very, very alert, when you have to save your life. But most of us due to today's fast paced environment are living in a sympathetic state all the time. This causes cortisol to rise that can keep melatonin low. When cortisol goes up, insulin goes up and then throws off your blood sugar, can throw off a lot of your different hormones from everything from estrogen to progesterone to testosterone to thyroid hormones. And so we know that the vagus nerve is the chief nerve for the parasympathetic nerve system.

3:42And if you can activate it, it starts to calm your body. And the opposite of fight or flight is rest and digest. Your body can now be calm. Your organs are functioning at a higher level. You can better digest food. You can better absorb nutrients and create nutrients. So all of those things start to happen when you get more in that parasympathetic state, which the Vegas nerve is the chief of, and again, it is the top neural pathway for communication between your brain and your gut. And if that's thrown off, well, then that can lead to digestive issues or neurological issues like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases long term.

4:28Okay, number two thing you need to know about the gut-brain axis is your gut microbiome is the community of trillions of bacteria and other microbes that live in your gut. And those bacteria help digest food, support your immune system, and make important brain chemicals. This explains why digestive issues often show up alongside anxiety and depression. And the gut microbiome helps produce neurotransmitters like serotonin for mood and sleep. About 90 % of your body's serotonin is produced in the gut, not the brain. Also, did you know that your gut creates dopamine for motivation and pleasure? Now, we also know dopamine is released.

5:09It's your body's reward system. So when you're on social media scrolling and you get a like, well, most people think, oh, that's coming from the— and then you get that feeling of, oh, people like me or this sort of sense of sort of happiness or joy or contentment. But that's actually a big part of that's your gut. Okay, so dopamine, that's your reward center for something. Or someone says, hey, they're proud of you, or you get a trophy or something like that. That's dopamine. Okay, but that's released in the gut. And then GABA, this is for calm and relaxation. This is actually very important for thyroid function.

5:43This is important for getting good sleep at night. GABA is also released in the gut. And your microbiome, the good bacteria, the probiotics in your gut are a critical part of that. And the brain-gut connection, the way it works is as a loop. The brain can impact the gut, and the gut can impact the brain, and there's a cycle that happens when they're doing those things positively or negatively. Also, a healthy gut helps regulate, we know, stress, appetite, sleep, and cognition, making it central to mental health. Now, on the other hand, a disrupted gut can impact brain health, your mood, your focus, and even your risk for, as I mentioned, neurodegenerative diseases.

6:29And we know that stress and trauma and mental health issues can alter gut motility, the gut microbiome and inflammation. I mean, I've had so many patients over the years who have come into me with inflammatory bowel disease. And what will cause them to have a flare up of their digestive system, just as much as eating a conventional pizza with all the gluten and casein in it, or a bunch of ice cream with sugar and dairy, Well, that obviously will flare them up, but we'll flare them up the same way as if they're going through a stressful time in life. Maybe they got fired from work or going through a divorce or just just have a lot of relational or life stress or they're just overdoing it.

7:06They're too busy all the time. That will cause those very same symptoms. OK, because they're both stressors in different ways to the gut, which then impacts the brain or vice versa. We also know that, according to medical studies, anxiety can cause diarrhea. We know that anger and frustration or impatience or things not happening the way you want them to, that can cause constipation. And general stress can cause IBS symptoms. You know, there's a patient I'm working with now, and she is dealing with IBS, and she wants to find a pill for it. Okay, she wants to know what's the supplement, what's the food, and she keeps searching for those.

7:47And I've just had to tell her multiple times, listen, this is stress related. And we can do some things dietarily, and we're going to. We got you on probiotics right now. We're going to do some, you know, we've got you on the omegas. We've got you on a really good diet. But we have to address the stress. You can't completely ignore it, or your gut can't heal. OK, most people don't realize that stress, again, along with, by the way, foods, medications and chemicals. These are things we're exposed to every day. All of those things impact the gut and that disruption travels upstream to the brain.

8:21And so so often I see this in medicine that people want to address just one of the issues. And the number one thing people want to ignore is the stress issue. OK, how the brain can impact the gut. They just want to take something for the gut when childhood trauma and relationships going on right now in their life or their overcommitment of being too busy trying to fit too much in their day, they don't realize that that is the single greatest thing damaging that gut-brain access. Now, I want to walk you through some other things that disrupt the gut-brain access that might surprise you. Number one is this, antibiotic drugs.

8:56Antibiotics can wipe out beneficial bacteria, not just the bad bugs. This leads to a less diverse gut microbiome, which weakens the gut lining and ramps up inflammation. There was a 2020 study published in the Frontiers Journal, and it showed that antibiotics significantly reduce gut bacteria diversity by about 40 to 50 percent. Think about that. You take one round of antibiotics, it's going to alter your gut bacteria by 40 to 50 percent. This is then going to alter your metabolic activity. So your metabolism. It's going to promote inflammation. It's going to weaken the immune system. And you know what else it's going to affect?

9:34It's going to affect your brain. Okay. It's going to affect your mood. It's going to affect your ability to focus and concentrate. All of those are side effects from taking an antibiotic drug. So that is one of the greatest disruptors of the gut out there. And by the way, antibiotic drugs are a big problem. But also so are other things that act as antibiotics. That's number two on the list. Glyphosate. Okay. glyphosate, which is the herbicide that's found in Roundup, which is the most widely used pesticide today, has been shown in studies to alter gut microbiome balance, causing leaky gut, a condition where the gut lining becomes more permeable, where things get through that should never get through, right?

10:15So I've used this as an example many times, but imagine your gut as a net or a kitchen strainer. It keeps certain things out, right? Spaghetti, we made spaghetti last night because my daughter loves spaghetti. Of course, we used, I think, like a cassava or a whole grain flour that sprouted and, you know, pasta sauce. We added a lot of parsley and basil from our own garden, which we're excited about. So all that being said, we used a kitchen strainer. And when we were using this, right, the spaghetti doesn't get through. However, if I would go there and take a strong pair of scissors or wire cutters and cut in there and cut a few holes in it, well, the spaghetti is just going to slip right through.

10:54That's what happens in leaky gut. And when that spaghetti, when the gluten and the casein and the toxins and things slip through in the bloodstream, it causes systemic inflammation, which then circulates and causes inflammation of the brain. That's right. Causes inflammation of the brain. Now I see this the most of all conditions with autism. Okay. When I have a child on the autistic spectrum, they, every time they have leaky gut. Okay. And in what's happening is that chronic inflammation is then affecting the brain, which is slowing and affecting development and speech. So if we can really reduce the inflammation and heal the gut, well, now the brain can develop and function at a higher level because the inflammation is gone.

11:38So, so that's sort of the idea there. By the way, there's a 2024 animal study that found that low dose glyphosate disrupted gut microbiome balance, damaged the gut lining an increased intestinal permeability by 25%. And that's just very low dose, very low dose, 25%. So it acts like an antibiotic in a way and how it damages the gut microbiome. Number three, thing that impacts the gut is chronic stress. Okay, now arguments can be made, that's number one. But overall, it is, it raises cortisol, we talked about this a little bit, how it impacts the body, I'm going to actually dive into this even deeper in just a few minutes.

12:14Number four, thing that really harms that gut brain connection are things like artificial sweeteners. Artificial sweeteners like sucralose and aspartame might seem like healthier choices, but research shows they can reduce good bacteria like lactobacilli and bifidobacterium, which impairs your blood sugar and triggers brain inflammation. And there are many studies on artificial sweeteners like sucralose, altering good bacteria in the gut. In fact, artificial sweeteners can reduce good bacteria by up to 25 to 30%, leading to impaired glucose metabolism and inflammation. Number five thing that really disrupts the gut microbiome are processed foods, full of preservatives, seed oils, sugar, emulsifiers.

13:02These can change the gut environment. And some of these emulsifiers have been shown to thin the mucus lining in the gut, which then contributes to inflammation and even anxiety-like behavior in animal studies. A few other things that are going to cause major inflammation are, this is number six and seven, gluten and casein. These are the proteins found in grains like wheat, which is gluten, and the main protein found in dairy, which is casein, especially something called A1 casein. In people with sensitivities, even those without celiac disease, gluten from wheat and casein from dairy can be broken down into exorphins.

13:41These are compounds that act like opioids in the brain. These opioid-like peptides bind to the same receptors as morphine and can impair mood, attention, and cognition. And studies show that children with autism and ADHD benefit from eliminating gluten and casein in their diet. You know, this is something I saw when I was and when I still today work with children with autism, is when the first diet I ever put kids on, my first even month in practice, was a gluten and casein-free diet. I'd seen the studies, and I saw great improvements with that. Now, there are more things you want to do in going beyond just gluten and casein-free if you truly want to heal the gut microbiome.

14:20But that, as a start, can make a big difference. And when you put a child on an elimination diet, And this is where we start to remove the gluten, the casein, maybe other foods that cause sensitivities as well. Sometimes eggs, sometimes just a number of foods that they might be sensitive to. We see fewer symptoms of autistic behavior. We see improvement in speech. We see improvement in any motor issues they had. Generally, we see great improvements, but if we see a child go back to gluten and casein, we see these same things exacerbated and made worse. So, you know, gluten and casein are probably the two worst, but there are other things I do want to mention.

15:09Caffeine, high FODMAP foods, added sugar is a major, major problem that we could talk about. You know, what I tend to do for a diet for healing the gut microbiome is foods that are just easy to digest. They're real. You know, I really like pears and blueberries as a fruit. I really like meat, grass fed beef, chicken, wild salmon. I like rice like jasmine or basmati rice. It's cooked a long time where it's kind of like a mush known as congee in Chinese medicine. So those are some of the things I really like. And I'll get into that more in a little bit. the ideal diet for healing the gut-brain connection.

15:48A few of the things that can really trigger and affect the gut microbiome, lack of sleep. Of course, that's affecting the brain, then affecting the gut and vice versa. So lack of sleep is a big deal. Hormonal changes in women, that can actually start to change the gut microbiome, especially certain medications. We know like birth control, these contraceptive drugs, increase estrogen. Estrogen kind of can act like a fertilizer for certain types of microbes, like yeast in particular, causing a real change in the gut microbiome. So we see that in women even more than men. And then medications like NSAIDs are very, very damaging the gut microbiome.

16:23And the more of these factors that we sort of combine, if somebody's not eating a healthy diet, getting excess sugar, maybe you have a woman on birth control, maybe they took one round of antibiotics, not sleeping well. See, that's what I, it's rare for me where somebody had just one thing and that was the thing throughout their life that caused them to have issues. Now, that can happen. But for a lot of people, if you're older, now that can happen in adolescence or in the womb or as a child. But for most people later on in life, it was sort of this onslaught of numerous things that then sort of, you know, caused the bucket to overflow.

17:02Right. We've been adding things to the bucket. It starts to overflow. And that's and that's the way that most illness tends to pop up is these things have been growing for a while. and the more of these factors we combine again the more likely someone is to suffer from these gut and brain issues so here's what i want to do first let's go through the connection between your gut health and things like stress infections and even autism and then i'm going to share with you my top foods and herbs to boost gut health and brain health so i'll go through the exact foods the top foods you want to start consuming your gut your brain and your hormones are all connected, approximately 95 % of your body's serotonin, that happiness hormone, is produced in the gut.

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19:58So here's the first thing to know. Chronic stress is another major cause of gut-related issues. Emotions like fear, anxiety, worry, or trauma send signals to your gut via your HPA axis, which stands for your hypothalamus, pituitary, areas of the brain, and then adrenals, where cortisol is then released. And these emotions can increase, as we talked about, all stress hormones, including cortisol, which then slows your digestion, reduces nutrient absorption, and weakens your gut lining. Studies show a strong link between stress and IBS symptoms. And we know that IBS is heavily influenced by mental health.

20:38In fact, one study found about 60 % of people with IBS have a psychiatric disorder like anxiety. 60%. People with IBS are three times more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression than those without IBS. Chronic cortisol exposure from stress can eventually cause leaky gut, which allows toxins in the bloodstream, fueling inflammation and brain fog. And disrupted gut flora can decrease serotonin and GABA production while raising pro-inflammatory cytokines. We know this lowers your mood, causes depression and poor sleep and insomnia. These tip the brain towards depression and anxiety because we need serotonin and GABA for a positive mood, restful sleep, normal digestion, wound healing, bone health, blood clotting, sexual desire, motivation, all of those things you need GABA for.

21:33And probiotics have been shown to significantly reduce the symptoms of anxiety and depression, which is one example of how the gut and brain are connected. A major meta-analysis, this is where we take many studies together, not one study, many studies, found that probiotics can ease depression symptoms by nearly 50 % in those with mild to moderate depression, while multi-strain formulas reduce negative mood in healthy adults within just two weeks. So if you know somebody with depression or anxiety, they absolutely should be on a probiotic. In fact, I think almost everybody should be on a probiotic because we are exposed just with our daily lives to so many antibiotics, not just when we've taken them when we were kids or adults as a medication, but also hand sanitizers, cleaners, glyphosate.

22:24We're just exposed on a regular basis. Okay. Now, early changes in your gut microbiome. By the way, there's a study on this in neurodegeneration, and they found that when your gut microbiome starts to change towards the negative, right, you have less good bacteria, more bad. It often makes you susceptible to Parkinson's up to 20 years in advance. Okay, so major, major side effects of when your gut is unhealthy in terms of increasing your Parkinson's risk. Studies show that Parkinson's disease often begins in the gut. For example, up to 80 % of patients experience constipation decades before motor symptoms appear.

23:03Researchers analyzed stool samples from over 300 people and found that those with Parkinson's disease had significant differences in their gut microbiomes compared to healthy controls. These microbial shifts affected the production of key metabolites that influenced Parkinson's symptoms and progression, and this study suggests that gut microbiome plays a pivotal role. In a similar way to Parkinson's, gut-brain pathways have been observed in Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis, and autism. And microbial imbalances, chronic inflammation, and toxic gut metabolites all seem to have contributing roles to these neurological conditions.

23:42For instance, children with autism often show lower levels of beneficial bacteria, especially bifidobacterium. This is one of the most critical bacteria you get that a mom passes on to her child via typically vaginal birth. This is why it is so important that if you have a C-section that you then go and take some of the microbes from the vaginal canal and wipe the child down with it because they're not getting that via C-section like they would via the normal vaginal birth. So you really need to make sure that because children need these in the development of their immune system. If they don't have them, they get sick and their risk of many conditions increase.

24:31These bacteria, by the way, like bifidobacterium, are highly anti-inflammatory and they are protective of the brain, which may be why that they're at risk for autism because this type of bacteria, bifidobacterium, protects the brain. Babies with early imbalances in gut bacteria have been found to have higher risk of developing autism. These changes can impact brain signaling chemicals like GABA and short-chain fatty acids, like butyric acid, even before symptoms appear. Now, in addition to autism, MS is also greatly connected to gut-brain issues. Research indicates that microbial imbalances can worsen MS symptoms or even elevate the risk by altering gut immune signals driving autoimmunity.

25:20Now, it's important to note there are many researchers that believe there is a that that MS and what starts to happen in that demyelination of that protective coating around the spinal cord you know that that's part of what happens with MS right you have this you're something called your myelin sheath okay that that Cirex imagine you've got this copper wiring or some sort of wiring where you're sending signals right and what happens is if you remove the coating on the outside that that rubber that tends to protect wiring and let's say water certain things start to impact it, it starts to short circuit.

25:54And that's like what happens with MS. Part of these bacteria kind of act as a protective mechanism around our nerves and brain, okay? In a similar way, when you have MS, people believe that sometimes it could be a form of mold or fungus, or it's very similar to that, that starts to eat away at that area around the neural tissue that can then cause that short circuiting. And that's why I believe people with MS really, really need to focus on healing the gut microbiome. I mean, if you have MS, that is the primary thing you should focus on healing is your gut microbiome in order to heal. And gut imbalances, as we talked about, weaken also the intestinal lining, promote autoimmunity, and even disrupt the blood brain barrier, allowing harmful substances to then impact the brain and nervous system tissue.

26:45Okay. So, so that's a, that's a major contributor there. Now I want to also go from MS now to more with autoimmune disease, infections like H. pylori, candida, and parasites directly damage the gut lining, which triggers immune activity. Those conditions can generate neurotoxins, which can intensify mood imbalances, migraine headaches, autoimmunity, and brain issues like brain fog. The ways in which infections impacted people's guts and mental health are highly individual. Okay, it depends on genetics, diet, immunity, one person might experience anxiety from a gut infection, while another might develop skin rashes or autoimmune disease.

27:26So it can impact everyone differently based on your gut microbiome. We know that systemic inflammation, though, disrupts gut brain access in these microbes, everything from parasites to bad bacteria, they'll leach toxins, okay, that then start to damage the gut lining, which then impacts the brain. You know, there's a book I remember reading years ago. It was called Wheat Belly. It was by a cardiologist. His name was Dr. William Davis. And he discussed how modern wheat, which is genetically different from ancient grains due to hybridization, right? So they bred this grain, this wheat, to have higher levels of something I think called amylopectin, so higher levels of this carbohydrate and higher levels of the sticky protein gluten in there.