Beyond oxygenating your body, your breath also regulates your nervous system
When life rolls through, you have a tool (free and always available) to activate the parasympathetic branch of your nervous system, which signals the body to carry out all the biochemical functions required for healing
It is necessary that we ALL learn how to regulate our nervous systems, both for our own health and for the health of our society
We have normalized radical imbalances in part because our nervous systems are chronically dysregulated: Our young men have low testosterone, we’re allergic to our environment, and our children are riddled (some crippled) with anxiety. This is not a sustainable society
Five main components of your gut that you want to keep happy
1. Nutrients fuel the biochemical reactions that make your body function
How is your body going to run properly if it’s under-fueled? It’s not. Your body secretes digestive enzymes in order to break down food and extract nutrients to fuel you This starts in your mouth with chewing
2. You gut lining is a delicate barrier between what’s in your intestines and the rest of your body
This is where the nutrients extracted from your food are absorbed into the bloodstream so they can go on to fuel your cells. But if inflammation damages the mucus membrane of the gut, nutrient absorption can be impaired and things that should stay in
your gut, don’t (aka, leaky gut). As potentially harmful antigens and pathogens, as well as food that hasn’t been fully digested inappropriately make their way beyond your gut lining and into the blood stream, they pass by and trigger immune cells that live in the gut’s mucosal lining
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4. You’ve got more microbes in your gut than you do cells in your body
Lots of things can impair digestive secretions, including stress which signals the sympathetic nervous system to shut down digestion to prioritize a looming threat…real or perceived. You can take a digestive supplement, or the free and sustainable way is to chew your food till it’s mush in your mouth and eat in a relaxed state. This signals to your parasympathetic nervous system that it’s safe to allocate resources toward digestion
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3. Your gut lining houses 2/3 of you immune system
A key fact that most people overlook is that 2/3 of your immune system resides within the mucosal membrane of your gut lining. Here is one scenario…
In the spirit of seizing the day you scarf down a meal, skipping the first stage of digestion (thorough chewing) and in a sympathetic nervous system state, impairing digestion. Undigested food meets your inflamed and poorly barricaded gut lining where it is able to pass through the gates. Your immune system sounds the alarm which you feel as systemic inflammation…arthritis, brain fog, skin stuff, anxiety
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These critters are important enough to have coevolved with humans for over a billion years. Their balance in population and diversity matters because they influence digestion, synthesis of certain vitamins and neurotransmitters, immune function, and more. Therefore, your bugs have a big say in the status of your health including the in inflammation in your gut, your mood, your metabolism, your cardiovascular health, and more
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5. Your vagus nerve carries messages between your gut and brain
Millions of neurons immersed in your gut create your enteric nervous system (the NS of your gut) and communicates with your brain via the vagus nerve (the gut-brain axis). The vagus nerve can sense metabolites produced by the trillions of bacteria living in your gut, transmit this information to your brain, and then generate an appropriate response that affects your mood, stress levels, immune function, and digestive health. This is how gut health can influence mental health, why stress can affect digestion and inflammation, and why you want to breath
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What messages is your environment sending to your body?
Functional medicine is rooted in the science of epigenetics. Meaning, the environment with which we live (internal and external) overtly affects our genetic expression. Even in light of a genetic predisposition, we can use this understanding to influence whether or not genes are activated or deactivated. The factors that influence our environment are more encompassing than you might think, and include everything from the food we eat to the thoughts we think.
