The Gut feeling - how it can help you deal with stress

The Gut connection to the brain

The Vagus nerve is the physical connection between the gut and the brain. It is connected to the amygdala the fear centre in your brain. This is where the gut feeling comes from. Therefore poor gut health can impact on the fear centre in your brain.

A Large study called the smiles trial looked at depressed patients and randomised them into two groups. One group of depressed people were given social support and another groups diet was changed. The diet group were encouraged to eat high fibre, rainbow colour diverse diet.

What did the results show?

The Diet group - 30% had full recovery from depression.

The social group - 8% recovery with social support.

Stress and the gut.

Key research has also found in human studies where subjects are given healthy bacteria compared to a randomised control. Both groups were put through a stressful experiment condition. The control groups stress levels increased significantly. However, the probiotic group were able to blunt the stress response compared to the control group.

You can get these healthy bacteria from some probiotic but there is much more chance of utilising these healthy bacteria by eating a diet that is high in fibre, mainly plant based covering all colours of the rainbow.

So they key facts:

The gut is directly linked with the fear centre in the brain
Poor gut health can lead to mental health issues
Reversing this poor gut health can reduce depression and make you more equipped to deal with stress
You can improve your gut health with probiotic food, high fibre, rainbow colour diet.

You can find out more from our website on how nut can play a role on your health. As you all know if your gut isn’t feeling right and we are more stressed we are much less likely to perform in everyday life. Whether this is your sport, exercise, work or home life function. It’s not just about getting stronger to improve your health. That’s why we here at the Performance Lab are concerned with all aspects of your health to help get you back to your best.

Enjoy your healthy eating!

Matt