Why Mood Might Start In Gut

Dr Kirstey Holland 0:04

The gut brain connection. How your gut shapes your mood, your focus, and your sleep, and why we repair it first. Hello, beautiful. If your mood has dipped, your focus has gone foggy, or your sleep has deteriorated, the cause may not be in your head at all. It may be starting in your gut. This week is about the connection between your gut and your brain and why in our approach we settle the gut first. Three things to remember. Your gut and your brain talk all day long along a nerve called the vagus nerve. Most of your serotonin, your feel-good hormone, is made in your gut, not in your head. In perimenopause, shifting hormones and everyday stress can unsettle your gut. And I'm talking about biochemical stress here too, not just the stress that we create or we have in our lives. When your gut is inflamed, that inflammation can reach your brain and it can show up as brain fog, low mood, and broken sleep. This is why we repair your gut first. You cannot calm a brain that is being impacted by inflammation from below.

Feed Your Microbes First

Dr Kirstey Holland 1:15

What to do this week? Feed your gut first. So when I talk about feeding your gut first, I always think about feeding my microbiome when I'm putting a meal together. And there's a training inside the Vitality Clinic talking about the power in your plate. Three cups of green, one cup of color is basically feeding your gut. All of the salads and the vegetables and the starches are feeding your microbiome. That is their food. If you feed your microbes first, you most likely will have a much better gut. So please remember to always feed your microbes. Aim for a wide range of plants across the week and plenty of fiber. Variety is what your microbes do best on. Lower the stress signal any way you can. Slow breathing, a daily walk, time outside, all bring cortisol down. And cortisol is hard on the gut lining. Even if you're in the car and you do a quick breathing exercise, it can be simple. Breathe in to the count of three, hold for three, out for three. That's actually shown to reduce cortisol and hot flushes in menopausal women significantly. So breathing is supportive. Protect your sleep rhythm. Sleep is where repair happens. Notice the link between your gut, your mood, and your sleep and write it down. Your perimenopausal symptom tracker, along with your lifestyle, food, mood, and pain diaries, are already inside the Vitality Clinic for you. Please use them. Leave supplements and medicines to your call. Anything you take is practitioner guided, so bring your questions rather than self-prescribing. That is everything you need this week, but if you'd like to go deeper, stick with me.

Your Gut As A Second Brain

Dr Kirstey Holland 3:01

For those who love the detail, your second brain. Your gut is lined with so many nerve cells that it is often called the second brain. It talks to the brain in your head along the vagus nerve. In fact, there are two. And the connection runs both ways. But in actual fact, they have basically recently realized that the information travels up to the brain twice as often as it does from the brain to the gut. Around 90% of your serotonin is made in your gut. Your gut also produces dopamine, which is your motivational hormone, and it supports the production of GABA, your calming signal, the brake pedal for a busy mind. And there is one more piece worth knowing about because it explains so much about your sleep. Your serotonin is the precursor to melatonin, so your feel-good hormone actually helps you with your sleep hormone, the hormone that tells your body it is time to rest. So a settled gut supports a steady mood, clearer thinking, and better sleep. The other really cool bit about healing, sealing, and repairing the gut, and therefore producing more serotonin, you produce more melatonin when the sun starts to set. And when your melatonin is high, cortisol cannot be. So the stress hormone is low at night. The inverse happens when patients have a circadian rhythm disruption. Cortisol can often be high overnight. If cortisol is high, blood glucose is high. If blood glucose is high, we run into issues with insulin resistance. So by healing, sealing, and repairing your gut and producing more serotonin, you're producing more melatonin, allowing you to sleep yourself skinny.

What Perimenopause Changes In The Gut

Dr Kirstey Holland 4:44

What changes in perimenopause? Falling progesterone and erratic estrogen, together with the chronic low-grade stress that so many of us live with, change the conditions inside your gut. The data actually shows that the microbiome goes out in perimenopause. Helpful microbes such as lactobacillus, bifidobacterium, and achomansia can decline and the balance of the whole community shifts. We call that loss of balanced dysbiosis. Stress also raises cortisol, and sustained cortisol weakens your gut lining. When that lining is compromised, inflammatory messengers called cytokines can reach your brain. So basically, when you have an inflamed gut, you have an inflamed mood and mind. This is often what brain fog actually is. Inflammation reaching the brain, not a mind that is failing you. Why we repair first? Once you see that picture, the order of our whole approach makes sense. We work in sequence. Repair, then rebalance, then reclaim, then release. We repair your gut first because everything else needs a steady foundation. You cannot calm a brain that is being impacted by inflammation from below, and you cannot rebalance your hormones well on top of an inflamed, leaky gut. Renee's story. I think of a woman I'll call Renee. She came to me anxious and with the feeling that everything in her life had become too much. Earlier attempts to help her had not put the gut first, and some of them had left her feeling worse. Once she healed, sealed, and repaired her gut, her sleep and her mood began to improve on their own. What she told me afterwards has stayed with me. She said that nothing in her life had actually changed, and yet she no longer felt overwhelmed. Her life simply felt more

Why Repair Comes Before Hormones

Dr Kirstey Holland 6:36

manageable. That is the gut brain connection doing its work. Supporting your gut safely. The most useful things are simple, and they come first from food. A wide diversity of plants, enough fiber to feed your mic to feed your microbes well, and bring down the stress signal that keeps cortisol high. If you need to, you can rely on your GR restore in your power cupper to help you bump up your fiber. Sleep belongs in this list too because repair happens while you rest. In perimenopause, some popular gut foods and supplements are not the right fit for every woman. The safer and more effective route is for anything you take to be guided by your practitioner. So bring your questions to your call and we will choose together what is right for you.

The Research Behind Gut Brain Axis

Dr Kirstey Holland 7:24

Now, I definitely want to bring the science behind this week and behind the gut-brain connection. Every single claim in this week's teaching is referenced. So I want you to know that the research is absolutely there. I'll quickly run through 13 claims that are so important to understand. Number one, your gut and your brain are joined by a constant two-way line of communication that runs largely along the vagus nerve. This is the work of Brian JF et L. The Microbiota Gut Brain Axis 2019. The next incredible point is around 90% of your serotonin, the chemical most tied to a steady mood, is made in your gut rather than in your brain. This is the beautiful Emrin Meyer. Your gut and its microbes also support GABA, your calming signal, and dopamine, which is tied to motivation. This is Margolis, the microbiota gut brain axis from motility to mood 2021. Your serotonin is the raw material for melatonin, so gut made serotonin supports your sleep wake rhythm. Again, Emran Mayer. The mind gut connection how the hidden conversation within our bodies impacts our mood, our choices and our overall health 2016. When your gut is inflamed, inflammatory messengers can reach your brain and contribute to anxiety, low mood, and foggy thinking. CAP M Gut Microbios Effects on Mental Health The Gut Brain Axis 2017. A more permeable gut barrier and an altered microbiome are linked with stress related psychiatric symptoms. Kelly JR at L breaking down the barriers, the gut microbiome, intestinal permeability, and stress related psychiatric disorders twenty fifteen. The relationship runs both ways. Stress can damage the gut lining and a damaged inflammate inflamed gut can amplify stress and low mood. Keult Glaser JK SL Marital Distress, depression and a leaky gut. Translocation of bacterial endotoxin as a pathway to inflammation 2018. A gut to brain pathway can influence motivation, including the drive to be physically active. So basically, if we have great gut health, we actually want to exercise. This is a very difficult last name. A microbiome-dependent gut brain pathway regulates motivation for exercise. One route of gut-to-brain communication appears to run through the mitochondria, linking gut imbalance with fatigue and mental cloudiness. So literally, by increasing and supporting our gut health, we increase our energy levels. This was by Liu Yu et L. Interactions between intestinal microbiota and neural mitochondria, a new perspective on communicating pathway from gut to brain, 2022. A healthy gut is dominated by beneficial species, the same ecosystem that produces most of the body's serotonin and other neurotransmitter precursors. So basically, what that means is that your brain chemistry, the precursors, the things that come before the neurotransmitter production are produced in the gut. This is important. Shifting estrogen and falling progesterone change which gut bacteria thrive, and that altered community feeds back into inflammation and mood. So that is the article that shows us that the gut microbiota goes out in perimenopause. And this was Baker JM et L, Estrogen Gut Microbiome Access, Physiological and Clinical Applications 2017. And listen to this. A specific group of gut microbes controls how estrogen is produced and recirculated. So distributed microbial balance can intensify hormone symptoms. So basically, what that is saying is we need a healthy gut in order to process our estrogen well through the component of the microbiota called the estrobilome. If we have shitty gut health, we can't process our estrogen properly. And that's when estrogen starts to recirculate and we can get estrogen dominant symptoms. This was by WHUS et L. Gut Microbial Beta-glucaronidase, a vital regulator in female estrogen metabolism, 2023. Taken together, this is why repair comes first in the hierarchy of healing. A calm, clear brain needs a settled gut beneath it. Emran Mayer, The Gut Brain Access 2022.

Key Takeaway And Farewell

Dr Kirstey Holland 12:37

I hope you have enjoyed this mini podcast, and I will chat to you soon.