4d • General Discussion
Gut - Brain 🧠Axis
The enteric nervous system
(aka your GUT) is known as our SECOND brain. The connection between the enteric nervous system & the cortical brain is known as the GUT - BRAIN AXIS.
- Did you know our gut & our brain arose from the same embryonic cells before they moved apart in the body? The gastrointestinal tract is connected to your brain by the huge & hugely important vagus nerve, one of the largest nerves in the entire body. The enteric nervous system in humans consists of some 500 million neurons through the 9 meters of intestines, 0.6% of the number of neurons in the brain & 5x as many as the one hundred million neurons in the human spinal cord. The enteric nervous system also stores emotional conflicts for the brain to access when necessary & without the brain's processing capacity being bogged down by all the extra storage. These are our emotions that produce "gut" reactions that give us butterflies, make us worry, or prepare us to fight or run.
That big visceral nerve embedded in your gut - the vagus nerve. Research has revealed that up to 90 percent of its fibers carry information from the gut to the brain, rather than the other way around. In other words, the brain interprets gut signals as emotions! Some 95 percent of your body's serotonin, that marvelous mood molecule that antidepressant drugs like Prozac keep in your body, can be found in the gut.
So, it's no wonder that diet & mood are literally inseparable!
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Gut - Brain 🧠Axis
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