In this week’s video, I talked about the gut-brain axis and how this connection has a huge influence not only on your digestive health but also on your mental and emotional health, on productivity, and really, on your overall health. Watch below!

There’s a connection between our brain and the enteric nervous system (located in our digestive tract) happening through the gut-brain axis, a bidirectional signaling network that involves microbes, hormones, immune cells, and neurons.

The 100 trillion microorganisms in our gut (microbes, bacteria, fungi, viruses), are collectively called microbiome, and they are probably the most important regulators in our body. These microorganisms constantly communicate with the brain and vice versa, and they have multiple functions, such as breaking down food, producing vitamins, and helping the body absorb nutrients, but there’s more.

While processing foods during digestion, they produce biochemicals that influence our brain chemistry (cognition, executive function, mood, etcetera), and they also influence our hormones, blood sugar, sleep cycle, and even our stress response, since most of the neurotransmitters that our neurons use to produce responses in our entire body are produced in the gut, coming from amino acids in our diet.

The gut-brain axis is a mind-blowing topic that I fell in love with about ten years ago when I was looking for answers while experiencing burnout and some mild health issues. Learning about it helped me connect the dots, regain my health, boost my brain performance, become more successful, and today it’s the foundation in my coaching practice to help clients achieve better productivity, better performance, more clarity, and optimal well-being.

Gut dysbiosis is rampant in today’s society, mainly due to bad lifestyle habits, and I see this often with my clients. They experience chronic stress, digestive issues, fatigue, brain fog, sometimes even poor memory, and they feel like something is off, but they don’t know what it is because medical tests don’t show anything wrong. When we are able to dig deeper with their doctor and find underlying causes, they feel better, their energy and clarity improve, their digestive issues are fixed, and my coaching assistance can be more effective. I hope that the information and tips shared in the video will help you shed some light and guide you in the right direction if you’re experiencing digestive, mood, or energy issues.

Mindful eating is a great way to support your gut-brain axis by paying attention to the food you eat and taking the time to chew to digest and absorb the nutrients better, which is the opposite of what we do in today’s life, having our meals at our work desk, while watching TV, or glued to our phones. That’s mindless eating, and it negatively impacts our digestion.

I offer Mindful Eating Workshops for individuals and groups where I guide the participants through an experience. They follow different prompts throughout the eating process involving all the senses, and at the end of the workshop I equip them with scripts that they can easily follow at home to become more familiar with the practice and make it consistent in their lives.

If you’re interested in having me host a workshop for you, maybe with a group of friends, or at your company, connect with me today!

How do you take care of your gut-brain axis? Share with us below!

Sabrina Cadini

Holistic Precision Life Coach, Brain Wellness Coach, and Life-Work Balance Strategist helping busy professionals and high achievers live and work better by prioritizing themselves. I use different modalities (epigenetics, neuroscience, chronobiology, and positive psychology) to implement effective lifestyle changes.