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The Rejuvenating Health Podcast
Join Women's Health Nurse Practitioner, Lindsey VanSchoyck for a weekly dose of Precision Medicine as she addresses the hot-button topics specific to Women's Health, Fitness and Nutrition, interviews expert guests and hosts round table discussions with the team of dedicated functional health care specialists.
The Rejuvenating Health Podcast
E126 | Gut Feelings: The Science Behind Intuition
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We explore the fascinating scientific connection between the gut and brain, explaining how your intuition is rooted in physical systems rather than just being a mystical "feeling." The gut-brain axis influences our decision-making, clarity of thought, and intuitive abilities through a complex network of nerves, hormones, and microbial interactions.
Today we'll dive into:
• How the gut houses the enteric nervous system (our "second brain") and connects to the brain via the vagus nerve
• How microbiome directly influences production of neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine
• How Inflammation, stress, and poor diet create "fuzzy" signals between gut and brain
• How to integrate practices like breath work, vagus nerve stimulation, and body scanning to strengthen intuitive pathways
Take our 7-day challenge! Choose one practice to strengthen your gut-brain connection: a post-meal 10-minute stroll, 5-minute breath work before afternoon decisions, increasing fiber intake, or implement a screen curfew before bed.
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Introduction to Gut-Brain Connection
Speaker 1Any views, thoughts and opinions expressed on the Rejuvenating Health Podcast are solely those of the speakers and are intended as such. Please consult your trusted healthcare practitioner for medical advice. Let's go, girls.
Speaker 2Hey ladies, welcome back to the Rejuvenating Health Podcast. I am your mindset coach, coach Lakin, and I'm joined today, as always, by women's health nurse practitioner Lindsay, and today we are going to talk about a little bit more of a combination of woo and science. So it's like the saying of you know, you got to listen to your gut, and a lot of times people will think that that's something that's like woo, right, like this gut intuition. But today I actually want to talk about the science of how our brain and our gut are truly linked and how they affect each other.
Speaker 1Yeah, well, I mean literally all of your hormones, like serotonin, dopamine, like all that stuff resides in gut health. So I don't think people realize that at all.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, I want to think about, like, how the gut brain and specifically how that connection affects the nervous system, right, and how those kind of team up to produce our intuition. But we don't think of that as being like an actual tangible thing or something that's rooted in systems within our body, right, we think of it as more of like oh, it's just this feeling that we get, but really gut health not only is tied to our brain health and a lot of other health benefits that we've talked to before, but it's also going to help to sharpen that like inner guidance or that intuition, that connection to that feeling that we have, especially for women.
Science of the Gut as Second Brain
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah. So I think, kind of starting out with, like science, your gut is essentially like your hardware, right? So your gut houses these nerves called the enteric nervous system, which is why your gut is called the second brain, essentially, and that connects. It connects to your brain via the vagus nerve, which if you haven't heard of like a vagal response and vagus nerve, then not sure what planet you're living on, but it is a thing and it is a two way highway, okay, and so essentially, most vagal fibers carry information from your gut to your brain, which explains why things in your gut, or havoc in your gut or whatever in your gut can lead thinking, not follow it. So, essentially, like it's not your brain telling your gut, it's more your gut telling your brain essentially.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, and you're like your gut lining right. There's this whole. All the microbes are going to influence that neurochemistry. There are messengers that tell our gut to synthesize a large share of the body serotonin, like that's where it's truly coming from. And so it's important for local gut function and signaling that we have a healthy microbiome, because the microbiome will indirectly shape, like our mood, our motivation, our, how you know, adaptable we are cognitively and it's going to create this clear, clearer pathway for us to be able to receive those signals. And when we don't have a healthy gut, when it's muddy, that's when it's that's where we have, like, the lack of clarity, aka, you know, a lot of times it comes through as brain fog.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, and so we kind of talked about the hardware and then the chemistry, and now we're going to talk about like the networks and then the chemistry. And now we're going to talk about like the networks, right, so your brain has interceptive pathways, so notably it's the insula and anterior cingulate cortex, so ACC, and those are integral and internal body signals and they coordinate with decision networks, which that is like a lot of science there and it's called this higher interceptive accuracy. So essentially what it means is that you're in tune with your body's cues, right? So if your gut feels better, you're going to make better decisions. You're going to feel better, essentially like in your brain, body, all of those types of things.
Speaker 2Yeah, and like all that to say like we want to break down what's physically happening. But essentially, when the gut is inflamed or stressed or poorly fueled, right, then the signal is that signal is going to get fuzzy. And when the system is calm and nourished, then the body's cues are going to come through, like I said, clearer and the brain is able to sort them faster. So we're able to access that inner knowing right A little bit better. And those messages are really important for, you know, being able to reduce noise and increase our receptivity and increase our salience or our memory, the things that are tied to, like, our core beliefs and our memories there.
How Gut Health Influences Decision-Making
Speaker 2It's like one powerful way to strengthen our intuition is to lower our cognitive noise, right, that mental clutter that's coming through all the time, and increase our receptivity, so our openness, our curiosity I always talk about leading with curiosity right, our wonder, and then train our salience. So this is when our brain flags things as meaningful. We talk a lot about the RAS system, right, our reticular activating system, and so if we do that well, then we can notice the right signals and sometimes coincidences, maybe not right Much sooner and we can also be more open to possibility, as opposed to being bogged down and kind of getting in this loop of negativity.
Speaker 1Yeah, being bogged down and kind of getting in this loop of negativity. Yeah, so I mean essentially, if your body is dysregulated, if your gut is inflamed, if you're under, you haven't gotten a good enough sleep, you're overfueled with carbohydrates, it's like signal versus noise, right, and those pathways can get noisy. When you're, when you're inflamed and you're not sleeping and you're overfueled, you get these noisy pathways. And so that's why it's really important that and why we stress like making sure that you're getting adequate sleep and you're getting your nutrients and you're restoring that rhythm, because that nervous system balance is what gives you those clear signals to your brain, and so it's what gives those accurate signals where there's not like fuzziness and noise. I mean, we've all been on.
Speaker 1I was listening to. Our kids had a football game three hours away on Friday and I did not go because it was way past my bedtime to go three hours away and they also lost 63 to zero. So I wasn't going to attend that, but I was trying to listen to it on the radio and it had the most like the signals were terrible, like every time the cloud crowd cheered. I'm like, okay, I cannot listen to this, like I'm going to have to turn it off. But you have to think about your body that way too. Like there's constant communication pathways and if they get fuzzy and noisy, like essentially, your body is just going to be like well, I don't know what you're talking about. Like I'm going to turn, tune this off and not even pay attention to you anymore.
Speaker 2Yeah, and that's where, like sometimes, some of those regular mindfulness practices like, right, I know that we think of this stuff as like, oh, we're only training the brain, but it is tied to the full system and so there are ways to kind of train our salience or like our bodies and our brains meaning network, right Of, like what we're attaching meaningfulness to.
Speaker 2We can do that through regular practices, whether that's like thinking about priming our day for it, right Like start your day asking questions like what do I want to notice more of, what am I open to, what feels aligned, what is supportive to me and my goals, and what I want to do.
Speaker 2Right, thinking about like kind of like tagging what matters, so writing things down that are valuable to you or are aligned with your goals, and then like reviewing them, whether that be a morning routine, an evening routine, but this is going to kind of nudge your brain to take notice of those things. Very often we'll notice a lot of negative things that come up, but we don't take the time to celebrate wins like we talk about, or notice positive things that are coming through, because it's not something that gets flagged naturally and so that takes practice. We have to practice doing that and then capturing patterns. Right, like if writing things down is what allows us to help to capture the patterns, because we have a lot of input happening all the time, every day, throughout the day, and a lot of it's not even ours right. But if we can start to write things down and notice patterns or repeat themes that come up, things that are relevant, then we can train our attention to look out for the things that are creating positive loops as opposed to negative ones.
Practices to Strengthen Intuition
Speaker 1Yeah, exactly Right. And so we can kind of do this by doing some practices, right. So you can try some of these things for two to five minutes daily, right, like slow nasal breathing at four to six minutes or four to six breaths a minute, right. So there's, you're practicing breath work, right, like you're breathing in for four to six seconds and then you're letting it out, right, and you're trying. Well, it'd be more like six seconds, cause you really want to get like six seconds, six breaths a minute, so it's more like 10 seconds.
Speaker 1But I can't do math right now because I think my pathways are fuzzy from not getting enough sleep last night. So you can do slow nasal breathing, where you're doing four to six breaths a minute, so you're breathing in for like 10 minutes, 10 seconds, and then letting it go. Right. You can do exhale bias breathing, so you're inhaling for four and you're exhaling for six to eight. You can do things like box breathing, like there's all kinds of breathing breathing methods out there, right. You can do like humming or gentle gargling, which is going to stimulate your vagus nerve and that's going to often help you create, like this sense of feeling calm and clear and stuff like that.
Speaker 2So there's lots of things that you can do to kind of yeah, there's even like vagus nerve stimulators now, like wearables, right, that you can, that you can wear, that will mimic that same motion of getting that vibration around the vagus nerve, so that way you can get that stimulation as well. There's like interception drills, right. So this is where this can help with down-regulating a lot too. Doing like a body scan, right, like 60 to 90 seconds it's not a big time ask, but just kind of going through scanning different parts of the body, relaxing each one individually, right, and noticing sensations in each area of the body, is really huge. Where are we carrying tension right, and guarantee that's going to be a pattern that? You'll notice Me, I always carry it in my upper back of my traps. That's almost always the case, right? Some people it's in their jaw, some people are hand clencher, it just depends. But you'll notice that if you start to create awareness around it.
Speaker 2Counting your heartbeat is a really easy one, right? If we're feeling upregulated and we need to ground and we need to get that interception. Taking a moment, just put your hand on your chest and just count your heartbeats for 60 seconds. It's like one minute. Or sensations first, journaling, right.
Speaker 2This is where we can name the sensations that we're noticing in the body. What are we feeling? Where do we feel it? We don't. This is not a practice that a lot of people do, and so this is something that I incorporate into my practice when I'm working with clients, and a lot of them lack the language for it, right, if I say, oh, what is the? What are you feeling right now? What does it feel like in your body? Can you name the sensation? And that usually takes a good amount of guidance, because we don't do that, but it's important to note. Oh, when I'm feeling stressed out or upregulated, do I feel heat? Do I feel tingling? Does it feel like pressure? Does it feel like weight? Right, what does it feel like physically in your body? So you can start to gain awareness of those sensations when they're coming on, as opposed to waiting until they feel overwhelming.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah. And like you always want to think about steady signals over spikes.
Food Choices and Stress Management
Speaker 1Right and and and I think the this is an example of this is blood sugar right Like we talk about this with our clients over all the time. Like we kind of want your blood sugars to be like steady throughout the day, like we don't want you to have these really high peaks and these really high lows, right? So you? That's why we're constantly tell you like eat protein and fiber at every meal for stable energy. Right, eat berries and greens and spices so you're getting these polyphenols in your diet. Right.
Speaker 1Do fermented foods that you tolerate because sometimes we know like dairy might not be your friend but like yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut. Make sure that you're hydrating appropriately. Make sure that you're eating your meals in a rhythmic way to support your motility and mood. Right, like I don't want you eating. There is timing, like there's science and timing to how you should be eating your meals. You shouldn't be eating three hours before bed. You should be eating an hour within waking up. You should space out like three meals throughout the day, not snacking all day. Again, this is all going to vary depending on your, your personalized labs and all of that type of stuff, but it like there is a lot of science to like how you're eating, the types of foods that you're eating, your blood sugar spikes and all of that type of stuff to really help make sure that your gut is happy.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 2And surprise, surprise sleep also matters, right, like, and it's funny, you know, it's like. Oh, sometimes I feel like we talk about the same stuff all the time, but it is relevant to almost all the topics that ever come up, right Like, these lifestyle habits do have an impact on everything, right, so it's like this is no different. We've talked about how sleep impacts the gut before, but, right, Making sure that we have a curated sleep routine, making sure that we're optimizing our sleep as much as possible, creating micro breaks from screens leading up to our sleep window, trying to have singular task windows or not multi-managing too many things at once to get up regulated before we go to bed right, we want to protect, like, the last 90 minutes before bed. That's really important. That would be the most ideal. Can we lower the light and the temperature to create an ideal environment for sleep, not be on our phone scrolling, like, normalizing that pattern, so that way we can build a really strong circadian rhythm. That's going to help the integrity of the gut.
Speaker 2So, so, so much, and then. So we've talked about kind of these habits, right, these daily habits. And also doing like a guided practice would work too, if you are open to doing something like. There's tons of YouTube channels where you can do like guided breath work or a guided micro practice that could take five minutes or less, whether it's non-sleep deep rest or breath work or just a guided meditation. That's really quick. But again, tapping into those sensations, tapping into what's happening in the body, so that way we can clear up those channels, is really, really beneficial.
Speaker 1I think I think we kind of brushed over this a little bit, but the reason why we're talking so much about like the breath work and stuff like that is because cortisol is a gut disruptor, right?
Speaker 1Um, cortisol is going to cause inflammation, and inflammation in your gut is what causes a lot of these issues. So, like the number, there's two things that cause a lot of gut disruption One, it's your food choices and having a bad gut microbiome and two, it's your constant stress that is wrecking your gut right. Or it's your daily alcohol use before bed that's wrecking your gut microbiome. So I mean just kind of like wrapping it up. That's why we so I mean just kind of like wrapping it up. That's why we're telling you to do these things of like being mindful and doing breathing and stuff like that, because that cortisol is a huge gut disruptor and when you're high in cortisol, you're not listening to your hunger cues and you're eating crappy food. When you're low in sleep or you haven't gotten enough sleep, your hunger hormones are messed up and you're not eating the right food. So that's why some of healing your gut health is doing these maybe woo woo things, but it's not because it's bringing your cortisol levels down.
Speaker 2Yeah Well, and it's like those are all signals, right, like those are all the same type of signals that we would lump intuition in with when we talk about, like those hunger cues, right. And like it's literally our body sending signals to tell our brain, our gut sending signals to tell our brain hey, this is what your body needs right now, right. And so often we've been used to shutting those signals down or just dismissing them or overriding them, or the signal is muddy because of the lack of integrity of the gut health, and so then we can't, they're not clear and we are not paying attention to them, and so this is just getting us into the habit of being more in tune with what's happening in our body, creating that body awareness and being able to receive those signals in a way that allows us to nurture the body and provide what it needs, as opposed to always just saying, well, that's not going to work with what I need to do with my to-do list right now, so I'm just going to bypass it.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah. So, like putting it into action, I'm going to challenge you guys over the next seven days to pick something like one lever that trains the channels of your gut and brain, so the tuner of your gut and brain, right? So one thing you could do is committing to doing a post-meal 10 minute stroll. Okay, that's going to help with your motility of your gut, which is going to help with your mood, right? Another thing you could do is a five-minute exhale, biased breathing, before decisions made after 3 pm. So, like we know that, like our stress and cortisol seems to be the most in the afternoon, especially as moms, because our kids are coming home from school and we're trying to make dinner and it's like, yeah, so doing some breathing. Then Another lever could be hey, try to hit that 25 grams of fiber a day. So maybe you're adding some fermented foods or you're doing some high plant fiber.
Speaker 1Another thing you could do is, hey, no screens before bed. Another thing you could do is, hey, no screens before bed. 60 minutes. Like, give yourself a curfew on your screen time. That means no TV, it means no electronics, it means no phone. Go, take yourself a bubble bath, read a book. Like, get you some relaxation right, because that's going to help you get better sleep.
Speaker 2Yeah, no-transcript state it's not consistency.
Speaker 1right, like you can't heal it and then go back to your bad habits right, like you can't heal your gut for 90 days doing some kind of crazy detox protocol and then go back to eating McDonald's every day, like your gut's just going to get trashed again.
Weekly Challenge and Closing Thoughts
Speaker 2Right, right, and then it's going to take a lot of times. You know, over time it will end up taking longer to heal because it's harder as we age. Right, there are a lot more things at play hormonally and so being able to, it's never too late to start, but it does take consistency and it does take a shift in your mindset of how you're going to choose to live your life moving forward. And so you know, we wanted to just provide a basis of, okay, what is actually happening between the gut brain connection so we can understand it on a science level but also clarify that, like your intuition, isn't this mystical thing, right? It's like there are mechanics to it. It is both and making sure that you care for the hardware that's involved in that gut brain connection, so that way that inner knowing or that software can run really clear and clean for you and that way it can work to your advantage instead of something that feels like you're fighting or that you're working against it.
Speaker 1So hopefully this was helpful. Hopefully you took away something from a lot of that science and a little bit of woo and you can put some daily practices in. But these are like these are daily practices that aren't just good for your gut health.
Speaker 2It's just good for your health overall, and it also helps you identify like the clear knowing is like we have all this self doubt as women. Right, and being able to clear up these pathways allows you to have a clear full body yes or full body no when it comes to making decisions, because we have a lot of overwhelm. There's a lot of things on our plate as women, especially at this season of our life, and so imagine if it could be easier to get to a place where, when things come to you and you have to make a decision about them, instead of letting them all rack up and it feels overwhelming, you have this clear line of communication that allows you to say, yes, that is aligned, or it works for me or no, that doesn't work for me, and it actually feels good when you do it and it's not muddied. So that is the ultimate goal of this type of practice.
Speaker 1Yeah, so I can share it with a friend. Um, our podcast is on YouTube too, so if you want an easier way to watch it, you can watch it on YouTube, as long as I remember to upload it every week, but it's a calendar to do it, just an easier way to watch it.
Speaker 2Yes, please. And if you do watch it on YouTube, make sure that you subscribe. That definitely helps us out. Make sure that you rate it and review it. Please leave us those five stars and then follow along with us online. That helps us as well. Bye ladies, see you next time, thank you.