62: Calm Your Nervous System to Heal Your Gut

Your nervous system is one of the biggest drivers of your gut issues, and only by healing that can you truly heal your gut. 

TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• Why your nervous system causes gut inflammation
• What happens when your nervous system is not regulated
• How to calm your nervous system to heal your gut
• How to regulate inflammation
• How calming your nervous system calms your immune system

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Transcript

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Your nervous system is one of the biggest players in your gut symptoms and your immune responses as well. Now, if you don't understand this, I promise you're going to be prone to flares and you may never fully heal your gut naturally. So in this slide, you're going to be learning about why your nervous system is causing so much gut inflammation, what happens when it's not regulated, we're going to talk about how to calm your nervous system and re-regulate that gut-brain connection, and of course, we'll show you how this all together calms your immune system so you can begin healing your gut naturally. Contrary to what your doctors told you, Crohn's and colitis are reversible. Now, I've helped hundreds of people reverse their bowel disease and I'm here to help you do it too, because inflammation always has a root cause. We just have to find it. This is the Reversing Crohn's and Colitis Naturally podcast. Now, I do these live trainings in my Facebook group every single week and put the audios here for you to listen to. If you want to watch the video versions of these episodes, just click the link in the show notes to get access to our Facebook group and YouTube channel. And for weekly updates, information, tips, and tricks, you can sign up for our email list by clicking the link in the show notes below. Now, if you're new here, my name is Josh Dech, almost got my words all mixed up. My name is Josh Dech. I know that already, but now you know too. I'm a gut specialist, a positions consultant for complex cases of Crohn's, colitis, and IBS. And I do these videos every week so you can learn how to heal your gut naturally. Now, I did have an afternoon nap today, contrary to what may look popular belief right now because my brain is half mush and I got two puppies running around. So, we're a little distracted, but we're here for you nonetheless. And if you want to see our dogs, let us know. We'll just pick them up and say go mental. All right, we're getting right into it. If you missed my recent episode on stress, you're going to want to make sure you catch that one too. It's available on YouTube and the Reversing Crohn's and Colitis Naturally podcast. So, make sure you do watch those. But first things first, I want to talk about what your nervous system actually is. We're going to break it down to its parts so you understand what it is and how it works. First things first is your central nervous system. That's this here, your brain and spinal cord. I guess my drawing kind of looks like a fly, like a little bug with like a smiley face. But anyway, your brain and spinal cord, that's a central nervous system. Everything else that comes off of that, that's going to go down and create all the nerves that go into your arms and all the nerves into your legs, basically anywhere outside of your brain and spinal cord. That's your peripheral nervous system. Everything else is peripheral. So, your central, we're going to call this your CNS. Your peripheral, we're calling your PNS, you say that really fast, sounds like penis. And then, it breaks down to two types of activation. So, the first peripheral and the second peripheral. First one, we're going to be calling somatic. Somatic means voluntary. So, this is going to be things like going to the gym, muscle contractions, walking, getting up, etc. The other ones that we have are going to be called autonomic. And this is things that your body just does without your consent. Beating your heart, breathing while you're sleeping, all that stuff. Part of your digestive system. Some of it, chewing, swallowing, and pooping is largely voluntary, right? So, we're going to be calling that somatic. But it's also, it's kind of mixed because it does it without you thinking about it, right? When you swallow, you don't make sure it goes all the way down. You just hit the trigger and then the rest of it happens. When you go to sleep, for example, your gut is still doing peristalsis. So, it's kind of a both end. So, you have your central nervous system, your peripheral nervous system, which breaks down to voluntary and involuntary. And then, we have a third nervous system right here. We call this your ENS. That stands for enteric nervous system. That's your gut. Your digestive system has about 500 million neurons inside of it between the esophagus all the way down to the intestines. About 500 million neurons, which is quite a lot when you think about it. Your brain has about 100 billion. So, if we had to pick and choose, we definitely say the brain is a smart friend. The gut is a dumb friend. However, it's not as dumb as it may sound at a glimpse, right? This nervous system is semi-independent, right? So, somatic, autonomic, central, brain spine, peripheral, everything else enteric is included under that peripheral, but it's specifically tied into your gut. Now, there is a main highway here from the nervous system inside of your gut. This goes right to the brain. This is called your vagus nerve. You may have heard of this before. It's a very, very common nerve. We hear about a lot on health podcasts, all over Instagram. Good thing to know. But there are 12 main cranial nerves. Don't ask me what the names are. I don't remember. That was 13, 14 years ago in college. But we do know that the 10th cranial nerve is your vagus nerve. And it comes down the left side of your neck. It branches out like a horse's tail. It gets really nice and wide with all these different connections. It innervates into your heart and your lungs, your digestive system, all of this. And so, we talk about that vagus nerve. That's why it's so important. It is the main portal that goes from your brain to your gut, or more importantly, from your gut to your brain. The reason I say that, 80% of the signals that are between that vagus nerve, 80% of them are called afferent, A for meaning away. So, 80% of those signals actually go from your gut up to your brain. Only 20% are efferent. And that's going to be your brain telling your gut what to do. It means 80% of all this highway traffic is coming from your gut going back to your brain. This is where neurochemicals are going to transition and move around. All kinds of really cool stuff happens in the superhighway. It's super, super, duper important. It's estimated that your gut, that enteric nervous system, that vagus nerve carries anywhere from 400 to 600 million different signals per day. Some estimates are within the billions. It's pretty important stuff. Now, when your central nervous system, your brain and spinal cord, that is the main power supply for the rest of the body. This is why if you break your neck, you're wholly paralyzed because that's the main highway. If you sever that highway, traffic stops. And a lot of that autonomic stuff can still take place, but sometimes it doesn't. This is why some people who might break their neck end up on breathing machines, because they can't breathe for themselves, because that breathing center has actually been cut off from the rest of the body. So, that autonomic, automatic meaning, response doesn't happen anymore. So, this central nervous system, it overlays everything. It's the main power supply. When it is overworked, everything else becomes exhausted. I don't know how else to explain it, but if you are a giant and you have a tiny little family and you have to carry your tiny family on your back, don't ask me why this came to my brain first, but that whole family's productivity, their movement, their farming, everything's going to slow down if the big thing carrying everybody gets tired. If your nervous system gets fatigued, your nervous system starts to break down, it's overworked, overclocked, it's redlining, everything else down below is going to suffer. This is why you feel weak or tired. You go to the gym, like, I just can't lift quite as much. I just don't have the energy to go out. Your nervous system is overclocked and even the muscles on that peripheral, everything that's outstream from that central is exhausted. That includes your gut. And so, when that central nervous system, that brain spinal cord, all that power supply is overclocked, everything loses power, which means you have a weakened vagal tone. That vagal tone, that vagus nerve, this horsetail that comes down the left side of your neck, the 10th cranial nerve, that whole tone gets weakened, which means you have poor communication. So, that 80% of signals coming from your gut telling your brain, hey, we need this. Here's what to do. It all gets scrambled, garbled. Scarbled is a new word today. My brain is scarbled today. I'm having a day. Anyway, what else happens when your central nervous system is scarbled is you end up with reduced blood flow to the digestive system, which is also going to mean that you have altered peristalsis. Now, peristalsis is this autonomic, that's an automatic wave-like pattern. If you actually put your hand on your throat and you swallow, you can feel that rippling wave coming down as food travels down. Your intestines do this wave-like pattern to push food through until it becomes poop. And when your nervous system is scarbled, then you have this altered peristalsis can become erratic. It can lead to diarrhea, can lead to constipation. We also see changes in secretions. Now, secretions are going to be the important things we need for digestion, right? We have bile production and bile flow. When you're scarbled, that gets reduced. You need to digest with stomach acid, HCL. When you don't have proper amounts, guess what? You don't digest properly. Things ferment. Well, when you're stressed, you have less digestive enzymes, less stomach acid, less bile flow. So, you can't digest, break down, and absorb your nutrients, which leaves you depleted. It ends up producing more gas, foods ferment, you get more toxins in your body, which further harms your system and triggers your immune responses. Another thing that we see is your barrier dysfunction. When you have high stress, so now your nervous system, it's clocking, it's overclocking at like a 10 out of 10, okay? We have super high stress now. These hormones that you end up overproducing like cortisol and norepinephrine, they produce a leaky gut. Now, your gut by nature is leaky. I mean, that's kind of what your body just does. It's supposed to be leaky. But the problem is, when we have these cells in your small intestine, it's only one cell thick. Here's what happens. You may have heard of this term called villi or microvilli, these little finger-like things in your intestines. Well, inside here is blood and lymphatic tissue. It is only one cell, just like this, that separates what's inside your gut, basically food turning into poop, and your blood. What happens when you get poop in your blood? Well, you get sick. And so, when you have high levels of stress, you get this barrier leak. We call it leaky gut. Some doctors say it doesn't exist. It's intestinal permeability. You're arguing semantics. Shut up. It's leaky gut. And so, you have these cells that spread apart and more things actually leak from here into your bloodstream. That becomes a problem. Now, you have large pieces of food, you have toxins, all kinds of stuff getting into your gut and flaming your brain, which does what? Makes that signal even worse. So, we can double down on the issues. And then, of course, over a long period of time, that ENS, that enteric nervous system, that also innervates this entire intestinal tract from mouth to anus, that whole system can be permanently changed. In the worst case scenarios, your GI reflexes, they're altered, you're hypersensitive, you become inflamed under stress, all kinds of nasty business. So, we talked about the brain and spinal cord. That's your central nervous system. We call your CNS. That's your brain spine. You have your PNS, not penis. That is your peripheral nervous system. And then, you have your enteric nervous system. So, that's brain and spinal cord, everything else under that umbrella is your gut. So, you can see how the flow of having your nervous system actually impacts your gut directly. And it's important to understand this. We talked about it, but do we really understand it? But who knows? Now, you do. Anyways. So, jumping on the next one, why else is this a problem? When you're all disrupted, we get leaky gut, we have disrupted flow, we have motility issues, secretion damage, reduced blood flow, the works. Well, did you know that inside of your gut, it's a remarkable little ecosystem? It's not just a poop factory, it's a neurotransmitter factory. 90 to 95% of your serotonin is made inside of your digestive system. So, that's that feel good, feel happy molecule. 90 to 95%. If you have gut issues, wonder why you're depressed, right? 50% or so of your dopamine comes into your gut. That's where it's made. Did you know there was a study done on mice and they cut the dopamine entirely? They had zero levels of dopamine and they put food in front of the mice and they starved to death because they didn't actually have the willpower, the desire, the drive to go and grab that food three inches away. If they put it into their mouth, they'd eat, but they wouldn't go and get the food. Dopamine is your success, it's your reward, it's your motivation. Serotonin is happy. If you don't have it, they're going to feel like crap. A large portion of something called GABA, G-A-B-A, that stands for gamma amino butyric acid for the science nerds out there, this is your nervous system's like chill out molecule, right? That transmitter, it's like just relax, we're going to calm down. Large part is made in your gut. If you're anxious, it's due to inflammation and neurotransmitter imbalances. Did you know, fun fact, you make 400 times more melatonin inside of your gut than you do from the pineal gland inside of your brain? 400 times. Can't fall asleep, can't relax. You wonder why? Because all your neurotransmitters made in your gut are jacked up. The factory is on fire and the production out the other end is not what you expect it to be. You should have neurotransmitters and nice poop. Instead, you have bad neurotransmitters and nasty poop. So, let's fix the factory. It can be as simple as that. There are other gut hormones that are made as well. Your GLP-1s, you may know these like Wigovisome, Glutide, these different drugs which help alter blood sugar, satiety signals, all of that. Ghrelin, the hunger signal or the hunger hormone. You have your CKK or cholecystokinin. This is going to stimulate bile. Peptide YY, this is another satiety hormone. These are all made inside of your gut. So, if your hunger is all screwed up, you're hungry, you're not. You're starving, you're not. You're not hungry at all. Now, suddenly you want to eat and it's midnight. You can't fall asleep. You're anxious. You wonder why? It's your gut. That's where everything's regulated. There's one more doom and gloom I'm going to tell you before we fix this because this is a very important piece of the puzzle. And you might be surprised, maybe not at all, depends on your experience with doctors, how many doctors will tell you, yes, stress is a part, but it's not really a thing or eat whatever you want, doesn't matter. It's just absolutely asinine. Here's what you need to know. When you are stressed, your immune system, particularly around your gut, but your general immune system on how you deal with illnesses, viruses, flus, all of these become hyperactive or inhibited. When we're dealing with nervous system, that creates stress. Stress stimulates certain inflammatory pathways. Specifically, there's a few that I picked out actually here and even wrote a list for you guys. When we look at certain pathways, these might mean nothing to you right now, but just for you science heads, keep it in mind. What else have I got here? So, interleukin-6. I have my TNF alphas. We have, what else did I put on there? Interleukin-1b. These may not mean anything to you, but bear with me. You have your interferon gammas. These different pathways, there's dozens of them, but these same pathways that stimulate inflammation, these are the same pathways your drugs, like your Remicade, your corticosteroids, your JAK inhibitors, they're trying to suppress these pathways. They say, these are too high. You're inflamed. You have pain. Let's calm them down with biologics, immunosuppressive drugs. These immune pathways are suppressing, plus many others. When you're stressed, guess which specific immune pathways get driven up? The same ones the drugs are trying to suppress. And there's dozens of them that are driven this way. So, there's a reason why stress is ripping your gut apart. It's destroying your body. Now, we can't avoid stress. It's the type of stress and how we deal with the stress and the tools we give your body to manage that stress better that makes all the difference in the world. And that's what I'm about to show you. Here's what you need to know. We're going to talk about how to calm that CNS because, again, the whole chain is central nervous system to peripheral nervous system, and that is part of and connected to your enteric, which is your gut. So, brain and spinal cord, everything else inside everything else is your gut. By re-regulating that nervous system from the top down, we can begin to re-communicate, start to rebuild back the neurotransmitters, start to heal and seal the gut, calm your immune system, calm inflammation, get your body to re-regulate itself so you're not so dependent on medication, and then you're suddenly on the road to recovery because IBD is a reversible condition. Absolutely is. If you haven't listened to the rest of my podcast or YouTube videos, do it. And I'm telling you, one episode and you'll just absolutely change your mind about everything you've been told till now. Okay. So, here's what we're going to look to. How do we calm the CNS? First things first. Remember we talked about that vagus nerve, that horsetail that comes down from the brain and innervates all your other organs. We want to stimulate that vagus nerve. A couple of ways we can do that. Very, very simply. Breath work. We talk about box breathing, for example. That's going to be, think, four seconds inhale, four seconds hold, four seconds exhale, four seconds hold. Some people might consider, that's what we call box, right? Up. If you think about hold is up, for those of you on the audio, across the box is hold, down is exhale, across is hold. That makes your box. Typically, it's a 4-4 pattern. So, breathe in your nose for four seconds, hold for four seconds, etc. Some people might be more like a 3-2-5-1, right? We are in for three, hold for two, exhale, breathe through your mouth like you're breathing through a straw, create pressure, and gently exhale and hold. That's a box breathing. Some might call it military breathing, whatever names there are. Cold water exposure, especially on the face or on the neck. Sometimes cold plunging, but for some people it can be too stimulating and it can actually create issues. But humming, you ever wonder why like ohms and chants and humming makes you relaxed? Because that vibration stimulates the vagus nerve. There are other things you can use for that. There are different tools that you can use. I don't know if there's one called hooblist or whatever it is, but it's an electrical stim you can put on your neck to hit that vagus nerve. Again, it's pretty deep and tough to hit, but allegedly it can do it and it's got great stats. But singing, chanting, any of that stuff is going to vibrate. And especially if we're talking way up here in our sinuses, that's one thing. But if you bring your voice down here and let it vibrate, as though I talked to my wife at nighttime, it's much sexier. And this voice, she just rolled her eyes at me. That's where we stimulate the vagus nerve, is that vibration. There are also some supplements you can utilize. Now again, I'm giving you this as a whole picture because the whole picture makes a difference as a whole picture. Some people try to take just one thing because we're lazy or we're trying to look for a simple quick exit. They will all help, but your best buddies use everything. Certain supplements that will help. Magnesium glycinate, magnesium taurate. So we're going to use magnesium. We can also use something like L-theanine. L-theanine can be very, very calming on the nervous system. Tryptophan. Be careful if you're going to supplement tryptophan because there's actually a toxic dose that can kill you. So I recommend maybe getting it from foods or other things. But we can also use something else to get conversion. You can use something like 5-HT, that can be very calming. And that's an over-the-counter supplement you can get. There are certain probiotics like certain bacillus strains. And then your lacto, especially your rhamnosus. These strains can actually be producers of GABA. Remember that calming neurotransmitter for your body. So you can get some of that. Anti-inflammatory foods you might look at. Things like curcumin and omega-3s can be anti-inflammatory, help calm that system. But specifically things like glutamine and even tributyrin. Glutamine and tributyrin actually produce, think of them like nourishment for your enteric nervous system, for the nerves inside. They're huge for the colon and the cells in the colon, inflammation, repairing leaky gut. But they also nourish a lot of those cells in the nervous system, helping them re-regulate themselves. There are other things you can do, like somatic shaking. You ever seen a dog after a fight like shakes or trembles? It's not always because they're scared or freaked out, but that regulates your nervous system, deliberately shaking. And that might be trampoline bouncing. It might be just shaking up and down and jumping up and down gently, whatever it is, rebounder. That's a somatic shake. Tai chi yoga, these regulate the breathwork with movement, which helps stimulate that vagus nerve and get that re-regulation going. You're getting patterning done once again. Another important thing to look at, extremely important. Gosh, so overlooked. That's going to be, as I'm erasing my board for a cliffhanger, your circadian rhythm. Why your circadian rhythm? This is everything. If you're not sleeping, the rest of you falls apart. So we have to look at sleep hygiene. Sleep hygiene is very, very basic. First of all, you want to be exposed to sunlight. Most of us get about 100 times too little sunlight during the day and 100 times too much light at nighttime. Because we're indoors, we're in offices, we're not outside exposing to the UVs like we should be, or at shaded UV, safe sun exposure. Our eyeballs aren't taking in. We have photoreceptors in your eyes and your skin that measure the light. We need that during the day. It keeps us up and gets us moving. And at nighttime, if you're taking in blue light from your devices all the time, that's why I wear these ones closer towards the end of the day and red ones at night. I got a puppy in the background. But this is where your body learns to calm down and produces that melatonin from your gut and in your brain. Remember, it's 400 times more made in your gut than in your brain. And so, sleep hygiene is very, very important. Wear your blue lights or turn devices off. Go to bed at a regular time. Have a routine and a schedule. Make sure your room is as cold as you can. Run a fan if you have to. Blackout curtains. I have a sexy little cotton eye mask that I wear. My blackouts aren't perfect. This is how we sleep. Now, that also lowers your cortisol, but you can actually take supplements to lower cortisol. Now, cortisol gets a bad rep, but it's not all bad. It's a good hormone in healthy amounts. In the excess amounts we deal with, that's a problem. So, certain herbs like ashwagandha or magnolia bark, phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylserine specifically, these help re-regulate some of those levels. But getting your cortisol back in check is a huge part of this. If you say, Josh, this makes sense. Help me with my gut. This is a lot of information. Take away the guesswork. I don't want to spend a year listening to every single podcast you've ever done or downloading every guide and everything you've ever put together. Give me some help. Simple way you can do that. Now, if you're here watching on YouTube, you're listening on the podcast, there is a link below this video and in the show notes. You can either send me an email. You can schedule a call. Just check out the website. Ask some questions. All the information is there. You just need to look at it. These conditions are reversible. Crohn's, colitis, IBS are not forever. I can't legally use the word cure, but between you and I, I do believe they can be cured in many, many cases. Some are trickier, and we're still working on it, but I have seen cases fully reverse with no sign of coming back. And if you can actually do that, you can live your life normally. Stress doesn't upset your gut. Food doesn't upset your gut. You have your life back. I would challenge, is it cured or just in remission? But ultimately, it's for you to decide. On that note, guys, thanks so much for being here. You know how to get a hold of me. If you're watching on YouTube or on Facebook, very easy way to get a hold of me or on Facebook. If you're on the podcast, there's links below in the show notes or below the video. You can schedule a call. You can send me an email. All the information is there. We just want you guys to have access to it. Thanks so much for being here. We're going to see you guys next time. One of my favorite things to hear as an IBD specialist is something along the lines of, I learned more from you in 15 minutes than from my doctor in 15 years. And if this, for the first time, is really starting to click and it's starting to make sense, you're going, wait a minute, this might be reversible. I think there's more that I can do. This condition came out of nowhere. It happened to me out of the blue. I was healthy for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, and suddenly I wasn't. And you're telling me there's no cause. If you're understanding, finally, that there is a cause, that something is driving this, I want to invite you to check the link in the show notes below. Send me an email. Ask a question. See if a program is the right fit for you. Because I promise you, this doesn't have to be a lifelong sentence. You're not doomed to this, and IBD can be reversed.