Beyond oxygenating your body, your breath also regulates your nervous system
When life rolls through you have a tool, your breath, free and always available to activate the parasympathetic branch of your nervous system (NS), which signals the body to carry out the biochemical functions required for healing
Regulate your nervous system for your own health and for the health of our society
Physical and emotional stress activate the sympathetic branch of the NS and increase our vulnerability to imbalances: Our young men have low testosterone, we’re allergic to our environment, our children are riddled (some crippled) with anxiety, and our gut health is struggling to stay on track
Our normalization of these radical imbalances jeopardizes the sustainability of our society
Five main components of your gut that you want to keep happy
1. Nutrients provide support for enzymes, and enzymes catalyze the biochemical reactions that enable your body to function.
In order for it to count though, your body must be able to digest your food to extract nutrients, absorb these nutrients, convert them to a usable form, and get them into the cell.
Chewing increases saliva production which releases digestive enzymes in the mouth, begins the process of nitric oxide synthesis, and breaks food down into manageable pieces so digestive enzymes/secretions downstream are more efficient.
Stomach acid is an example of a digestive secretion which also acts as your first line of defense for pathogens such as parasites, bacteria, and viruses. Bile (from your gall bladder) not only digests dietary fat, but also provides antimicrobial defense as well as facilitates the elimination of cholesterol
Sitting down to enjoy a meal signals your parasympathetic NS to release digestive enzymes in order to extract nutrients from your hard-earned food. Rushing through a meal signals your sympathetic NS to keep you in the unnecessary rat race that traps you in fatigue and distraction…not worth it.
You can take a supplement to optimize digestion, or the free and sustainable way is to chew your food till it’s mush in your mouth and eat in a relaxed state.
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2. You gut lining is the delicate barrier between what’s in your intestines and the rest of your body
This is where nutrients extracted from your food during digestion are absorbed into the bloodstream so they can go on to fuel your cells. This membrane barrier selectively allows small nutrient molecules to pass through (amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, minerals) while retaining other things to the gut that are not supposed to enter circulation (food not fully broken down, byproducts from gut microbes, toxins)
Within the mucus membrane of your gut lining are gates (called tight junctions) that decisively select what moves out of the gut, past the gut lining, and into the bloodstream. Stress, maldigested food, medications, toxins, etc can cause inflammation to the gut lining. This inflammatory damage to your gut lining gates (enhanced intestinal permeability / leaky gut) can decrease your ability to absorb nutrients and inappropriately allow molecules out into circulation that should stay in your gut
This becomes a problem when things moving from your gut into circulation alert the part of your immune system that lives in the mucus membrane of your gut lining
3. Your gut lining houses 2/3 of you immune system
It makes sense that your gut would be backed up by an army of immune cells as it’s a common entry way for pathogens. Things get uncomfortable though when the immune system becomes hypervigilant. Here is one scenario…In the spirit of seizing the day you scarf down a meal, both skipping the first stage of digestion (thorough chewing) and sending signals to your sympathetic NS (as opposed to your parasympathetic NS which supports digestion).
Undigested food meets your inflamed and poorly barricaded gut lining where it is able to pass through the gates. Your immune system (which is only trained to tolerate nutrients, not whole food particles) sounds the alarm. An alarmed immune system creates inflammation in the gut which you may experience as bloating, gas, or misdiagnose as fat. This inflammation can also be felt in the rest of the body which you may experience as arthritis, brain fog, skin stuff, anxiety.
This is how poor gut health can lead to inflammatory ailments elsewhere in the body.
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4. You have at least as many microbes in your gut as you do cells in your body
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 your 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, and how stress can affect digestion and inflammation
Functional medicine is rooted in the science of epigenetics
The environment in which we experience life (internal and external) overtly affects our genetic expression. This means that even in light of a genetic predisposition, we can 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.
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~ What messages is your environment sending to your body? ~
