From butterflies in your tummy to significant symptoms of IBS, the link between your gut health and mental health can have big impacts.
Have you ever wondered why advice for looking after your mental wellbeing always includes eating a healthy and varied diet? Or why tips for keeping your body in good shape usually shout out lowering stress and scheduling regular relaxation?
Your mental and physical health are linked, maybe more than you realise. One important way they impact each other is through the ongoing communication between your gut and your brain.
The gut brain axis
Your gut and your brain are constantly talking to each other through a system called the gut brain axis. Physically linked by a large nerve called the vagus nerve, the gut brain axis allows for direct two-way communication between your brain and digestive system.
This system is so sensitive that just thinking about food can trigger your mouth to produce saliva and your stomach’s digestive juices to start flowing, part of a process called the cephalic phase of eating. It also means that when the brain or the digestive system is under stress or experiencing illness, one can negatively impact the other.
How your brain and mental health impact your digestion
Ever felt butterflies in your stomach when you were nervous or had to take an emergency trip to the bathroom before a big event? That happens because your brain can directly affect how you digest food and how it moves through your gut.
Usually, your digestive system runs along by itself without needing your brain to tell it what to do every step of the way. However, in times of stress or excitement, when your fight or flight response is triggered, your brain can override these normal processes. If you’re being chased by a lion, the last thing your brain wants is for your body to waste energy on digesting lunch! To you, this disruption might feel like nausea, diarrhoea or cramps.
Your mental wellbeing can also affect your long-term digestive health. Periods of high stress or experiencing depression or anxiety have been shown to cause inflammation in the gut, lower numbers of “good” bacteria, and even increase the brain’s sensitivity to pain signals coming from the gut.
How your gut changes your brain chemistry
Your gut is so influential to your health that it’s sometimes called the body’s second brain. Your gut, and the trillions of microbes that live there, can influence your brain and mental health in several ways.
Did you know that the largest endocrine, or hormone releasing, organ in your body is your gut? Your gut releases its own hormones and can trigger the release of hormones in the brain and other body parts. These hormones play a role in many bodily functions. When it comes to your mental wellbeing, your gut can influence your mood, stress response and ability to think and make decisions.
A gut that is inflamed, experiencing disease or has an unbalanced microbiome can affect everything from your emotions to the way you crave food and the quality of your sleep.
What happens if the gut brain axis is disrupted?
The gut brain axis could be linked to better understanding many health conditions, including anxiety and depression, Parkinson’s disease and long COVID, and other neurodegenerative conditions. Studies into what this could mean for diagnosis and treatment of condition are ongoing. Irritable bowel syndrome, often known as IBS, is a good example of what we do know about what happens when there are issues within the gut brain axis.
IBS causes a wide range of symptoms, the most common being gas, bloating, diarrhoea, constipation and stomach pain. While it can be triggered by a variety of health events, research has shown that IBS is a stress-sensitive disorder. This means that experiencing more stress can mean more discomfort and trips to the toilet. Regardless of the initial cause of a person’s IBS, reducing their stress levels can help manage their symptoms.
IBS symptoms in themselves can be distressing and it’s easy for a stress cycle kick in once a person starts to worry about how they’re feeling and what they can or can’t do to control symptoms. This loop of worry in the mind causes a brain response which affects the gut and can further escalate physical symptoms.
While many people will see a doctor for physical symptoms of IBS, they will often be asked to consider lifestyle choices or therapy options that help reduce stress as part of their treatment, because doctors know that the gut brain axis relies on the health of both systems.
5 tips for promoting a healthy gut brain axis
Looking after your gut brain axis means looking after your gut and your brain, which is why so many mental wellbeing tips mention looking after your physical health and vice versa.
Like most health advice, ideas for looking after your gut brain axis boil down to simple steps you’ve probably heard before. Now you understand the importance of yourgut and your brain, you might feel doubly inspired to try these five tips.
- Eat a wide variety of foods, with plenty of vegetables. Food fuels your brain and body, a varied diet promotes a healthy gut microbiome, and tasty food is enjoyable to eat, which means eating well is great for your gut brain axis overall. Feeling stuck for meal ideas? Try these recipes from Health & Wellbeing Queensland.
- Find one or two types of movement you enjoy and do them regularly. Physical activity can help your digestion, improve your mood and reduce stress. Dancing, bushwalking, going to a gym, swimming, running with your kids or dog, or joining a sports team. There are endless ways to move your body and picking ones you enjoy will help you do them more often.
You can also try to build more movement into your everyday routines by choosing active transport options like walking or riding for part of a regular commute, taking stairs instead of lifts, or scheduling a weekend walk or active game instead of a sit-down meetup with friends or family.
You can find ideas for different types of physical activity and prompts for ways to fit more movement into your everyday lifestyle in the Australian Government’s 24-hour movement guidelines.
- Figure out how you want to deal with life’s daily stressors. Do you like to talk problems out with someone close to you or are you more likely to write your thoughts in a journal? Do you feel better with a step-by-step plan, or do you need a reminder to lower your high expectations of yourself? Here are some other strategies for dealing with stress.
- Make time to relax and enjoy yourself. Everyone needs regular breaks; we’re not machines that can get things done all the time (and even machines get breaks to prevent issues like overheating and stress to parts!).
Whether it’s finding moments of mindfulness throughout your day or enjoying a hobby, there are many benefits to giving your mind and body a chance to reset. Need ideas? We’ve got dozens of tips broken down into different categories. - Get the best rest you can. There are a lot of things that can disturb your sleep: young children, shift work requirements and illness are just a few. Give yourself a helping hand by switching off screens and devices ahead of bedtime, setting up your sleep environment so it’s comfortable and dark, and trying to go to bed and get up around the same time every day.
When to seek help for your gut, your brain or both
If you’re experiencing problems with your digestion, or you’re feeling stressed, emotional or not like yourself, and you’ve noticed these changes for two weeks or more, it’s time to see a doctor.
While some changes are easy to make by yourself, when you start noticing changes to your health and wellbeing that stick around, a doctor can help you figure out what’s going on. Book an appointment with your GP and while you wait, keep a diary of what you notice so you can tell them about all your symptoms.