76: What the Gut-Brain Connection Really Is And How You Can Repair It To Help Heal Your Bowels

The gut-brain connection is often grossly misunderstood. It's not just about one big vagus nerve: there are actually 5 key components that all work together to create a healthy connection.

And you can't fix something until you understand it. That's why this episode is all about the gut-brain connection and how to repair it to help heal your Crohn's and colitis.

TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• Explaining the gut-brain connection
• The 5 key components that make up the gut-brain connection
• How these pieces all work together
• The biggest things you're doing to damage the gut-brain connection
• 5 steps to repairing and healing it naturally

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Transcript

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(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) The gut-brain connection is grossly misunderstood, but having a healthy connection does make a huge difference in your overall gut health and, of course, the outcomes of things like bowel disease. But once you know how it works, only then can you fix it. And so today you're going to learn what the gut-brain connection actually is, the five main pieces that actually create this connection, what you're doing right now that's damaging it, and how you can repair and strengthen your gut-brain improve your overall health, of course, of your gut and gut diseases, or everything else, because it's all part and parcel. 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 links 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 we haven't met yet, my name is Josh Dech. I'm an IBD specialist, physician's consultant, and researcher, and I'm here to help you heal yourself naturally. Now your gut-brain connection is made up of five different components, and all these pieces require each other. They're all like pieces of a puzzle, which are required to create this full, well-balanced picture. When any of these things are out of balance, everything starts to collapse. So they require each other to stay healthy and functional. So I'm going to walk you through the five main pieces, because again, I always say you can't fix something unless you understand how it works. So the first one we want to talk about, component number one, is the nerves. This is the low-hanging fruit. When people think gut-brain connection, this is what most of us understand it to be. It's this nerve. Now we have what's called the vagus nerve. This is going to be your squishy brain. This is going to be your intestines. There we go. So between this, you have what's called the 10th cranial nerve. That is called the vagus nerve. Now it's a big, thick nerve that runs down the left side of your neck. You literally pluck it like a bass guitar string. It's about that size. And when it comes down past your heart and lungs, it really starts to spread out like a horse's tail and innervates all your intestines, your lungs, your heart. It connects to all kinds of stuff. And this nerve isn't just a connection from your brain to your gut. It connects from the gut to the brain. In fact, we actually have this vagus nerve as part of it, but there's upwards of 500 million neurons inside of your gut that connect right back to your brain. Now your brain has something like 100 billion neurons in it. Your gut has about 500 million. So if I'm doing my math right, which I'm usually not, that's like a 200th. Maybe it's a 2000th. One 2000th? Anyway, 500 million neurons really isn't that much. But here's what's really interesting. Your gut and your brain are talking to each other through this nerve with many different things that it uses through that nerve to communicate. Think of it like different types of cars on a highway. But this connection, 80% of those signals between your gut and your brain are what's called afferent. So they actually come from your gut and go up to your brain. 80% of the signals between them come from your gut, go to your brain, not the supercomputer up here talking first, trying to talk to your brain. My brain is not talking to my mouth today, but we have to look at all these connections coming upward. And they ride a bunch of channels using these nerves as a major connector for them on top of blood and other things. This is why your gut is called the second brain. 500 million neurons, 80% of the communication goes from your gut to your brain. It's this amazing connection. But those nerves are only one part of the puzzle. It's like having wires or having an internet cable connect your computer. It's just a cable until things ride along it. And this is where the other communication pathways start to come in. So your second pathway is going to be chemicals. Now the chemical messengers are a fascinating piece of the puzzle. There are so many of them, but the big ones we look at are like serotonin. About 90% of the serotonin in your body is actually made inside of your gut. Now people argue, well, what's the matter? Here's why. 90% of your serotonin is made in your gut, and a lot of that can ride up to the brain, but very little really crosses the blood-brain barrier. So it's not like you have this flood of serotonin. However, much of the serotonin you make inside of your gut is used for things like motility, muscle contractions, and all these great processes we need to digest, absorb, and break down your food. So you do make serotonin. You do make dopamine. You also make something called GABA. That's G-A-B-A. That stands for gamma amino butyric acid. It's one of the main calming neurotransmitters for your brain and your nervous system. If you take GABA pills, you'll go to sleep. It's really great. Your gut also makes melatonin. In fact, there is more melatonin. Estimates have varied greatly, but some have suggested up to 400 times more melatonin, the sleep hormone, in your gut at all times than there ever will be inside of your brain. So it's this constant connection of hormone and creation. It also makes something called acetylcholine. And what acetylcholine does is this is used for things like memory, muscle control. It does all kinds of cool things. It is a neurotransmitter. So we think about how nerves connect. So now we've got this vagus nerve, right? And at the end of each nerve, they sort of connect. It almost looks like bones in a body oddly enough. And in between these nerves, you have all these little signals that ride along. And they sort of think of it like skipping across this pathway. And the signal gets carried. And it sort of plays this game of telephone from nerve to nerve until it gets where it needs to go. It happens in fractions of a millisecond. Now, these chemical signals are what ride along these nerves, so to speak. And they create these chemical signals. And they'll actually sit in between these nerves and go, hey, we're passing the signal back and forth. So having a healthy gut-brain connection, yes, it's the nerves that connect your brain and your gut, the nerves that talk between your brain to your gut. But it's also the chemical messages and signals that wire your brain and allow it to communicate with the rest of your body that manage and control your digestion. So you have two big pieces so far, the nerves and the chemicals. This is where the gut-brain connection really begins. But the next connection isn't just inside of your gut. It's a huge part of the gut brain. That is your microbiome. Your gut microbiome, we know, contains bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites. Estimates are anywhere from 40 to 100 trillion different microbes living inside of your gut. And that may be just bacteria. Estimates are there's up to 40 times more viral components inside of your gut. It's a vast ecosystem which produces a lot of these neurotransmitters. It even produces things like vitamin K, some B vitamins. It's a huge connection. So your microbiome does so much for you. It regulates your mood, your appetite. It regulates your personality, how social you feel like being, the foods you crave, all come back to your microbiome. They also produce a healthy microbiome or produce something called butyrate. This is a short-chain fatty acid. And that it's fermented from fibers. And that is the main fuel source for your colon cells. These colonocytes they're called. It keeps your junctions tight. So it actually helps prevent leaking gut. A healthy microbiome is everything. Healthy microbiome controls inflammation and hormones and all kinds of stuff inside of your body. So having a healthy microbiome, those bacteria also produce these microbial metabolites which can stimulate vagal signals, this vagus nerve. They can stimulate signals between your gut and your brain. So it regulates a lot of stuff having a healthy microbiome. But now you can imagine if all these things are regulated by the microbiome, imagine what gets dysregulated when you have dysbiosis or an imbalanced microbiome. Hormones, mood, inflammation, immune system, skin, you name it. Everything starts to get out of whack. So having a healthy microbiome also improves, it gives proper chemical signals to run up that vagus nerve. So far we have now three parts of your gut-brain connection. You have nerves, you have chemicals or neurotransmitters, and you have the microbiome. Now you could also put on this list, which we're going to, is another one. I'm not going to fit it all on my board. I might have to erase something. But we have your immune system and immune cells. Now we know 70%, give or take, 70% of your immune cells are grown and matured inside of the gut. You also connect your gut to the rest of your body through this immune system, through something called the GALT, that's a G-A-L-T, and the MALT, M-A-L-T. Now these stand for gut-associated lymphoid tissue. So that's your lymphatic tissue. Then you have the MALT, which is the mucoid-associated lymphoid tissue. So that's sitting around the mucous membrane layers. I'm going to erase some of this stuff, regrettably. I'm probably going to wish I didn't so I can come back to it as a reference. But here's what happens. Think of your small intestine. We have these villi, these little finger-like projections. They have microvilli on top of those. And inside here runs these little channels. And those little channels are your lymphatic system and blood vessels. So your lymphatic system is directly inside. It's integrated with your intestines. So when you have dysbiosis, producing toxins, you have imbalances, guess where they go? Into your lymphatic system, around your entire body, creating inflammation. Now those signals, those inflammatory signals that can happen, they can trigger your brain to go into survival mode, which is good short-term. It ramps up immune signals and says, hey, we got to protect you. Long-term, it becomes a big problem. It becomes chronic inflammation, which begins to degrade tissues. It becomes cytotoxic for your body. And so when you get these mixed up signals, it can signal via your blood. So a lot of these chemicals get into your blood and lymphatic system. They can actually cross. Some of these chemicals ride the vagus nerve, but many can go around your blood and get to your brain, crossing this blood-brain barrier. It's like a mesh, like a very thick, almost like a cheesecloth. It's got many layers to permeate through. It's the most intense barrier of protection we have inside of our body, several layers to this blood-brain barrier. And some of these chemicals and toxins can cross it. When they cross the blood-brain barrier, they can trigger the brain's immune cells, we call microglia, that alters neurotransmitters. And again, everything else down this chain starts to suffer. So your immune system is another part of that gut-brain connection, the immune cells and the signals, which are regulated by your microbiome and even by the chemical signals coming from your gut, helps to regulate your brain and regulate your immune system. So you see how it's all connected and a lot of it rides the superhighway, yes, of the nerves, but also the blood vessels and lymphatic tissue inside those little finger-like things in your small intestine. So your gut-brain connection now has four parts that can't live without each other. There is a fifth part, which I'll write way at the top here where I can fit it, that is going to be hormones. Hormones are a huge part of the gut-brain connection. So here's what happens. Your brain can detect stressor-stressors. It can activate stress hormones like cortisol. Again, good and normal amounts, highly inflammatory and excess amounts. Cortisol can be very disruptive. The stress of stressors, the brain will signal, it'll decrease GI function. It decreases HCL, so stomach acid production. It decreases digestive enzymes. It alters motility by speeding up or slowing down. It creates inflammation, which leads to your microbiome, this major part of your gut-brain connection being disrupted, which produces more toxins. Then you get this feedback loop now where you have the brain detect stress, create stress hormones, that decreases GI function, that shifts your microbiome, which can shift your mood and cause anxiety, which gives your brain this I'm unstable signal, which creates more stress, which activates more stress hormones. The microbiome shifts and the mood changes and the brain picks it up and on and on the cycle goes. So your gut-brain connection is made of five really incredible parts. You have the nerves in the superhighway where they communicate to each other. You have chemicals that ride along the superhighway that help regulate your brain. They communicate to the rest of your body. You have the microbiome, which produces these chemicals, regulates the inflammation and regulates that nerve. You have your immune system, which regulates and controls all kinds of different things in your body, inflammation, disease, your immune system, how much you fight off a flu or a virus, how quickly you heal, everything. And those signals are signaled by hormones. And these are all integrated. Not one of these five pieces can live without the other. So your gut-brain connection isn't, oh, that's my vagus nerve. Yeah, that's a part of it. But there are many aspects to your gut-brain connection that can either cause it to thrive or cause it to fall apart. And if it's falling apart, well, you're going to be very, very sick. So when you hear someone say gut-brain connection, ask them, what part? They're probably talking about meditation. They're probably talking about humming or cold water or any of these, like they'll do gut hypnotherapy. It's all vagal nerve. That is one of five parts of your gut-brain connection. So when somebody tells you gut-brain, oh, you got to work on your gut-brain connection. Okay, which part? Why? How does it interact? What is this going to do? How does that one part interact with the rest of its parts? Now, you could argue there are up to seven different parts, looking at cellular and metabolic health and function, but we're not going to get that deep today. Hormones, nerves, chemicals, microbiome, and immune, they're all connected. Once you understand this, you can go, okay, well, what am I doing to damage it? Well, we know that when it comes to illness or any kind of sickness or disease in the human body, there are only three things that create sickness and disease in the human body. Everything fits under these three umbrellas. If you're a listener a long time, you'll know exactly what I'm getting at. You have toxins, you have microbes, and you have deficiencies. Toxins can be a million and one things. It can be alcohol, diet, chronically high stress, chronically high blood sugar. It can be heavy metals and environmental toxins and pesticides. It can be microplastics, VOCs from fresh paint, a new car, a new carpet. It can be a bad relationship causing that chronic stress. There are so many things that are toxic to our body, which can lead to imbalances within our system. Toxins put a higher demand on your body, which creates nutrient deficiencies. Toxins can also allow in or allow already existing microbes or the bad guys to overgrow. Parasites, viruses, bacteria, and fungus. That's what consists of our microbes that we need to worry about here. Bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites. Well, a toxic environment breeds fungus. It breeds microbial overgrowth so good guys can die. It taxes your immune system so you can't fight viruses, and parasites thrive in those acidic toxic environments. And again, imbalanced microbes do what? They don't produce the nutrients you need. The B vitamins, and the vitamin K, and different things your microbiome produces. But they also put a higher demand and stress load on your body because it's toxifying your system. It's inflaming you, which means you need more nutrients, so you burn through them. So toxins lead to microbes. Microbes lead to deficiencies. Deficiencies lead to an inability to get rid of toxins and microbes. Again, this starts to feed itself. If you have deficiencies, you can't get rid of toxins. If you have deficiencies, you don't have the tools to get rid of your microbes. If you have microbial overgrowth, they produce toxins and load your body, meaning you have deficiencies. So this is the trifecta of everything that makes human beings sick. You could even distill it down further to say, what do you have too much of, or not enough of? And I would even say too much of, you could have too much deficiency, I guess, too many toxins, too many microbes, or not enough deficiency, or not, not enough deficiency, not enough vitamins, minerals, amino acids, sunlight, fresh air, good relationships, quality sleep, rest, relaxation. You need these things to thrive. If you don't have enough, that's a problem. If you don't have enough good microbes, that's a problem. So you're deficient. Toxins, microbes, deficiencies. These are the three things making you sick. And in particular, there's a few things we do more commonly in this umbrella of toxins, microbes, deficiencies that really tend to damage that gut-brain connection. Chronic stress is a big one. Remember we talked about that vagus nerve, right? Between your brain down to your gut, you have this huge vagus nerve. And when you're stressed, your brain picks up that signal. It can jam up a lot of this vagal nerve signal to and from the gut and the brain. It disrupts that gut microbiome peristalsis, how food moves through your gut. It creates inflammation. It shifts the microbiome. It does all kinds of stuff. Chronic stress is huge. Now, here's the thing about stress. I'm pretty chill. I know up here, I get really excited. That's used stress, not distress. It's good stress. I'm pretty chill. But a large part of that has been, I've discovered in my life, has been coping, compensation mechanisms, things that we start to develop over time. We're all chronically stressed in our modern world. Hi buddy. We're all chronically stressed. Come here. And what that means, we live in chronically stressful environments, but we cope and compensate very well. We do a really good job of that. We do a really good job of pretending like it doesn't exist. We do a really good job of distracting ourselves. You're hitting dopamine, doom-scrolling TikTok. But we're chronically stressed. We have media. We have Instagram. We have the news. We have politics. There's always some freaking crisis every decade that everybody's worried about. We're always chronically stressed. Diet, 60 to 80% plus of the American diet is processed or ultra-processed junk food. Now, what we're talking about here is blood sugar spikes and peaks and valleys. We're talking about microbiome shifts. We're talking about inflammation, all kinds of stuff. Ironically enough, the acronym for standard American diet is SAD, which I think is delightful. But these are the things we're typically doing. Over-the-counter medications, your Advils, ibuprofens, Aleve, any of these NSAIDs, it's non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. They are highly toxic. They damage the microbiome. They create leaky gut. You get 60% increase immediately in most people for a single dose of ibuprofen. 60% increase in leaky gut after a single pill. Punches holes in it right away. Prescription medications, they are toxic. They often lead to nutrient deficiencies and they alter your microbiome. Over-the-counter and prescription. We have environmental toxins. Pesticides, if you live near farms or don't, if you're eating inorganic foods, if you're drinking tap water, municipal water, you don't have a reverse osmosis, remineralizing filter, or at the very least a distiller or something to clean that water out, you're getting a lot of junk. We don't sleep. We're up on our phones, blue lights beaming into our eyes every day. So we're not actually regulating our circadian rhythm. In fact, stats show that during the day, because a lot of us, we spend like 98% or 96% of our lives indoors, which we were never supposed to do. We actually get about a hundred times too little light during the day and up to a hundred times too much light during the evening after the sun's already come down. And they've done studies. They've taken chronic insomniacs out to the woods, put them in a tent, said you rise with the sun, you fall with the moon, and chronic insomniacs start sleeping. We're disrupted by EMFs and 5G and soon to be 6G, where they're actually going to be bouncing the antennas off of humans instead of towers. We have these sedentary lifestyles. We consume alcohol. We have low stomach acid because we're chronically stressed. We're under constant stimulation, again, media and cell phones and EMFs and all these things and dopamine and sugar and all this junk, which leads to these even little bit of microbiome shifts. A little microbiome shift in the wrong direction that sits there chronically, we consider a chronic infection and a chronic infection stresses your system. So the steps to actually healing this, and I'm going to skim this one for you guys because I have whole talks on this process. It's a very simple thing to remember. It's going to be the five R's. That's it. Five R's. The first R is remove. Find your toxins. Find your microbes. Remove them. Find your deficiencies. Remove them by replenishing. So your first R is to remove the ongoing issues. Second is going to be replenish. What am I deficient in? Am I lacking good microbes? Am I lacking vitamins, minerals? Am I lacking good sleep? Am I lacking rest and relaxation? What is my problem? How can I remove that? How can I replenish the deficiencies it's left me in? I have too little of something now. You have to bring that back up. Second to that now, we're going to rebuild the gut lining and repair the gut microbiome. This is where your microbiome has to live. You don't want to live in a house with no windows, no walls that's rubble. Neither does your microbiome. It wants a nice, fancy house. It's a fancy little bish. So we got to make sure we feed it. We give it a home. We take care of it. So rebuild the gut lining. Repair the microbiome. The last step to that puzzle, especially in the case of bowel disease, is going to be to rejuvenate. Rejuvenate what? Rejuvenate your immune system. You could also use the word rebalance. So many of us have these chronic inflammatory reactions, these imbalances, etc, which leaves our immune system. It should. You get a little flu. Your immune system comes up. You get rid of it. It comes back down. Your immune system is constantly doing this. The problem is so many of us are chronically inflamed, or if you're in the bowel disease spectrum now, Crohn's, colitis, diverticulitis, your immune system, some of it may not work at all, and some of your responses are way too high. And that's what's creating your bowel disease. It's an overactive immune system, which is now eroding your tissues instead of rebuilding and repairing your tissues. So now we have to bring that back down and rejuvenate that, bringing balance to your immune system, not boost, because you could boost the wrong thing, and that's a problem. We have to rejuvenate and rebalance it. And those are the simple steps to getting your body back to normal and repairing that gut-brain connection. There's a lot to it. It's a big thing to understand, and this made it as simple as I felt I really could without leaving out pertinent details so you guys aren't left hanging. But feel free to go back, watch or listen again. That's what we're here for. Now if you're dealing with bowel disease, Crohn's, colitis, diverticulitis, you've got irritable bowel syndrome, something going on, you're like, I need help, nobody else can help me. Let's have a conversation. See if we can get you some help. Simple way to do that. I'll tell you how to do that. Now if you're on YouTube, or you're listening on the podcast, or if you're watching on YouTube, there's links down below in the show notes or underneath the video where you can just dive in, grab everything you need. You can book a call, check out the website, check out the podcast. There's all kinds of information out there. We just want you to have the tools to get the help that you need. That's it guys. Easy breeze today. Thanks so much for being here. You know how to get the information. You know how to get a hold of us. We're going to see you 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.