Have you ever heard the saying “health begins in the gut?”
There is a lot of truth to this statement. This is because gut health impacts almost every other part of your health. The body systems with which medical research has associated with gastrointestinal health includes but is not limited to:
Neurological & Mental Health
Metabolic Health
Cardiovascular Health
Immune Health & Autoimmunity
Hormone Health
Integumentary (Hair, Skin, Nails) Health
There are few reasons for this.
Your gastrointestinal system is basically a network of tubes extending from your mouth to your anus. In total, the length of these tubes is approximately 10 yards. In order to fit inside your body, these tubes are bent and coiled in an organized fashion. However, the length of your digestive tract (aka GI tract) makes it one of the largest sources of exposure to the outside world in your body. This means, it has a high degree of exposure to toxins.
Your gut is armed to deal with this insult in the form of your immune system. Fifty to seventy percent of the immune system is located in your gut. The good thing about this is the immune system actively monitors the contents of your gut to mount an immune response when it detects harmful foreign invaders. The tricky thing about this is that there is only one, thin layer of tissue between the inside of your GI tract and your immune structures. This tissue is easily
damaged by stress, unhealthy foods, and medications like over the counter pain killers and antibiotics. Once the tissue is damaged, the barrier between the outside world and the immune system becomes compromised. Things that should not have access to the immune system, can now create immune activation that spreads to the rest of your body.
One of the ways that your gut regulates your immune system is through your gastrointestinal microbiome. This is the population of good, bad, and neutral bacteria that lives in your gut and helps educate your immune system. The microbiome can also be damaged by the same factors that damage the intestinal tissue. When the microbiome is damaged, you can get overgrowth of bad bacteria, death of good bacteria, and decreased microbial diversity (collectively known as dysbiosis). Dysbiosis can also be more severe when the intestinal tissue is damaged, because the destruction of tight barriers between individual cells of that tissue, creates greater surface area on which bad bacteria can grow . Dysbiosis not only increases problems with gut health and immune activation, it can also create problems in the entire body.
Not only is your gut intimately connected to your immune health, it is also directly connected to your neurological and mental health. Here’s how:
Seventy-five percent of neurotransmitters (chemical messengers that allow your nervous system to communicate) are made in your gut. For some neurotransmitters, an even greater percent is manufactured in the gut. Disruptions in gut health can impact levels or neurotransmitters and manifest in ways like anxiety, depression, and insomnia.
The majority of your gastrointestinal organs are regulated by a nerve called the Vagus nerve, which is activated when you are in a rest and digest state. This means that, if you have chronic stress, unresolved trauma, or anything keeping you in fight or flight, you are susceptible to decreased gastrointestinal functioning.
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