How Gut Health Influences Anxiety and Depression

Treat your mental health holistically by healing your gut.

Have you seen those commercials for depression meds? What they don't tell you is the long list of side effects:

• nausea / vomiting

• weight gain

• sexual disfunction

• nervousness / restlessness

• tremors, and more...

The worst thing about taking medications is that they do not address the root of the problem. You will have to either take the meds your whole life, or live with depression and anxiety.

You should work with a good therapist to untangle difficult experiences that are contributing to your emotional health. But you also need to work on what's going on in your "other brain"...

There are more nerve cells in your gut (over 500 million) than any other part of the body except the brain. It is so complex that in some cases it makes decisions independantly, earning it the nickname "the second brain". Your gut and brain are constantly sending information back and forth through the vagus nerve.

Scientists have proven that disbiosis (poor gut health) increases anxiety and depression, while a healthy gut microbiome positively influences emotions. The influence of gut health on the brain can hardly be overstated. The gut produces hormones that influence brain function and mood. Intestinal permeability and inflammation is linked to depression and anxiety. A healthy gut produces neurotransmitters like serotonin which affect mood and influence the nervous system's response to stress. It is impossible to have a healthy brain without a healthy gut.

I told someone once that their poor gut health was causing them emotional problems, and they thought I meant that their waistline needed to shrink. When I say gut, I'm not referring to your waist size. I mean your digestive system, and more specifically, what lives in it. (The microbes associated with disbiosis have been proven to contribute to obesity, so healing your gut actually will contribute to losing weight!)

Your digestive system is host to trillions of microbes. These microbes have vital roles to play helping you digest your food, they synthesize certain nutrients for you, help your immune system ward off pathogens, regulate metabolism and appetite, regulate immune responses, and they even produce psychoactive compounds which influence your mood. All of this is done for you by microbes, it is not your own body performing independantly.

Here's the catch: not all gut microbes are helpful, some are harmful and do not perform these vital functions. Some gut microbes are pathogenic. A gut with disbiosis may have similar microbe species to those found in a healthy gut, but in the wrong proportions. They will also have pathogenic species living inside of them.

The food that you eat determines your microbiome profile. Microbes that thrive in fiber dominate a healthy profile, while sugar eating microbes tend to dominate an unhealthy profile. Most Americans have a toxic gut because of the processed foods that they eat. If you do not proactively strive to gain and maintain a healthy gut, then your gut is probably toxic.

These tiny free-riders exert influence over your food choices for their benefit. For instance, sugar loving yeasts send chemical signals to your brain telling you to eat more sugar. Then they send chemical reward signals to the brain when you consume sugar. We don't realize how much our feelings and choices are influenced by something that is parasitic. It's not really YOU that is craving sugar. It's the things living inside of you.

The Standard American Diet (SAD) may be convenient and inexpensive, but it is toxic to the gut. Good food nourishes gut health and allows it to flourish, but bad food causes inflammation of the gut wall, gut wall permeability, lack of motility (constipation), and of course, disbiosis. This is why it is so important to read the ingredients of everything you put into your mouth. Those chemical additives and processed ingredients wreak havoc on your gut, and therefore, on your mental health. Here are a few examples of the problems caused by poor food choices:

• emulsifiers like CMC, polysorbate 80, and carageenan disrupt the natural mucosal layer in the gut and allow permeability of molecules that should not pass through the gut wall into the bloodstream

• preservatives like potassium sorbate, sulfites, and sodium bonzoate reduce gut bacteria diversity and cause inflammation, leading to bowel distress

• artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose reduce populations of good bacteria and allow harmful gut bacteria to thrive, leading to obesity and insulin resistance

• seed oils like soy, corn, canola, and safflower oils are high in omega-6's which are pro-inflammatory and contain lipid peroxides which are corrosive to the delicate microvilli in the small intestine

• refined sugars and carbohydrates feed pathogenic bacteria and yeasts and cause leaky gut

Antibiotics tend to cause gut disbiosis because they kill ALL bacteria in your body, good and bad, leaving a clean slate to be colonized by a new bacterial community. If you are not exceedingly careful about what you consume during and after a round of antibiotics, disbiotic species will propagate and leave you in disbiosis. I've known people who were suffering health problems as adults that was linked to antibiotic use when they were children.

The good news is that even if you have a very damaged gut, you can fix it. I did.

Apples are rich in pectin, which provides beneficial microbes with good food to multiply in.

Ironically, anxiety and depression sometimes cause us to feel stuck, like we can't change the way that we eat because it's too hard. I remember feeling that way as a young mother. I desperately wanted to improve my and my family's health, but it seemed like it was all I could do to keep my head above water every day, and the thought of adding more to my load was suffocating.

Do you know what happened when I made the change anyway?

I got better, and my kids got better. It was such a relief! It took a little extra effort at first, but that effort paid back dividends. I was SO happy I made the change. Even my kids noticed that they felt better eating a healthy diet and they did not want to go back to the way they used to eat. Our physical and mental health improved dramatically.

Here are my recommendations for healing your gut based on my own experience:

• Read the ingredients of everything you eat and turn it down if it contains chemical additives or processed ingredients. You will find that most prepackaged foods are unacceptable and you will begin cooking from scratch a lot more. Stop drinking soda and eating candy. Pay special attention to sauces and spice mixes as these can ruin otherwise good dishes. This blog goes into more detail about discerning good food from bad food.

Home made sauerkraut is fresh and crisp and full of gut friendly bacteria.

• Incorporate fermented foods into your diet every day. Fermented foods are packed with beneficial microbes and digestive enzymes. If you think you don't like sauerkraut, try fresh homemade sauerkraut! It's not at all like the stuff in a can (which is not actually fermented and is not probiotic).

• Drink raw milk from a trusted, low-risk raw milk farmer. Raw milk contains beneficial bacteria that heal the gut and help it to function optimally. Many people who have trouble digesting store bought ultra processed milk do well with raw milk.

Raw milk makes me feel good.

• Ask your raw milk farmer if they have any colostrum for sale. Colostrum is the early milk produced by a mother for the first couple of days after giving birth. It is proven to heal leaky gut.

• Practice fasting to rest your gut and allow it time to heal. Pathogenic bacteria die off when they are deprived from food for a short time, while beneficial bacteria hang on. It has the opposite effect of taking antibiotics--it erases bad bacteria while causing good species to flourish. I practice three types of fasts: eating in a window, 24 hour fasts, and extended fasts.

• Take fulvic and humic acid supplements. These compounds were abundant in foods grown in rich organic soil, but modern farmlands have soil that is depleted, leading to food that is depleted. Fulvic and humic acids enhance beneficial microbes while inhibiting pathogenic ones.

• Drink bone broth. It is full of gut healing collagen and gelatin which repair a damaged mucosal lining. Glutamine in bone broth is anti inflammatory and protects against ulcers. It is easily digestible, making it a good option for people with compromised gut health.

• Avoid taking antibiotics whenever possible. Consider using colloidal silver as a gut friendly alternative. If you must use antibiotics, double down on your efforts to incorporate lots of fermented, probiotic rich foods into your diet.

  
  

  

  My colloidal silver brewing kit. My family, pets and livestock have all benefitted from the health promoting effects of silver.

  
  

Having a healthy gut is my Number One most important factor for whole body and mental health. A toxic gut leads to a toxic body and brain. A healthy gut leads to whole organism health.