Your gut is sensitive to emotions like anger, anxiety, sadness, and joy – and your brain can react to signals from your digestive system. Learning about the gut-brain connection can help support both your mental and physical health.
In this article:
What is “the gut?”
How is the gut connected to the brain?
How is the gut microbiome related to mental health?
Key points
Your gut and brain are connected: Your stomach and brain communicate with each other. Your brain and gut have special nerves and chemicals that help control digestion and emotions.
Your gut affects your feelings: The tiny bacteria in your gut can change how you feel. Stress and sadness can upset your gut, and an unhealthy gut can make you feel more anxious or down.
Take care of your gut: Eating healthy foods like fruits, vegetables, and yogurt helps keep your gut working well and can positively affect mood.
What is “the gut?”
The gut includes every organ involved in digesting food and processing it into waste. The lining of your gut is often called “the second brain” because it contains a large network of nerve cells that regulate digestion by itself. The gut also produces many of the same feel-good chemicals that the brain does, like serotonin and dopamine.
How is the gut connected to the brain?
The gut or “second brain” communicates back and forth with your actual brain. They are connected in two main ways:
- Physically: The vagus nerve is the gut’s direct connection to the brain. It controls messages to the gut as well as the heart, lungs, and other vital organs.
- Chemically: The gut also connects with the brain through chemicals like hormones and neurotransmitters that send messages. The chemical messages that pass between the gut and the brain can be affected by the bacteria, viruses, and fungi that live in the gut called the “gut microbiome.” The bacteria, viruses, and fungi that live in the gut may be beneficial, harmless, or harmful.
How is the gut microbiome related to mental health?
The knowledge that there is a connection between digestion and emotion has roots in ancient cultural traditions around the world. Today, we know there is a strong relationship between mental health challenges and having gastrointestinal symptoms like heartburn, indigestion, acid reflux, bloating, pain, constipation, and/or diarrhea.
Having anxiety and depression can cause changes in the gut microbiome because of what happens in the body when it has a stress response. When the gut is under stress, less of the feel-good chemicals, like serotonin and dopamine, are released. Research shows that this can contribute to symptoms of depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia.
Tips for taking care of your gut
- Eating a balanced diet: Doing your best to eat a balanced and nutritious diet is the most important thing a person can do to keep their gut healthy. Try to eat a diet full of whole grains, lean meats, fish, fruits, and vegetables.
You know your body best. Think about what kinds of foods make you feel most energized.
- Prebiotics: It’s also important to feed the good bacteria, viruses, and fungi that live in the gut what they like to help them grow. These foods are called prebiotics.
Prebiotic foods are high in fiber and work best when they are raw. Try asparagus, bananas (especially if they aren’t quite ripe), garlic, onions, or jicama. If you can’t stand the taste of these foods raw, you can try steaming them lightly to still get most of their prebiotic benefits. Tomatoes, apples, berries, and mangos are also good prebiotic choices.
- Probiotics: You can also eat bacteria. Probiotics are live bacteria that exist in foods. Eating probiotics can be tricky. The types and amounts of bacteria in probiotics vary, and when foods are heated, the bacteria often die. Examples of probiotic foods are yogurt (the label should say live or active cultures), unpasteurized sauerkraut and kimchi, miso soup, kefir (a yogurt-like beverage), kombucha (fermented black tea), tempeh (made of soy beans), and apple cider vinegar.
You can also get probiotic supplements to help grow good gut bacteria, but it is important to pick the right ones. Make sure the type of bacteria is listed on the bottle – Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus are some of the most common – and that the label says that the bacteria are live and there are billions of colony-forming units (CFUs). Some may need to be kept in the refrigerator.
Other things to consider:
- Antibiotics kill bad bacteria but also kill the good bacteria that keep your gut working properly. Taking probiotics and eating prebiotics after a course of antibiotics can help your gut recover.
- If you have gut problems like an upset stomach or unusual bathroom habits that don’t go away, it is important to see a doctor. Start with your primary care doctor. They may recommend you see a specialist called a gastroenterologist.
Take a mental health test
If you or a friend are struggling with your mental health, take an anonymous, free, and private mental health test. It only takes a few minutes, and after you are finished, you will be given information about the next steps you can take based on the results.
