Have you ever felt sick to your stomach from fear, nervousness, anxiousness, or excitement? Much of this is actually the result of the Vagus nerve (CN X) going from your brain to your abdomen.  The body is wired in a way where systems that you may think are miles apart actually work hand in hand to maintain your health and wellness.

Research has shown that the communication of the Vagus nerve and others goes both ways. The health of your gut can affect your brain chemistry as much, if not more than the brain giving your stomach butterflies.  80-90% of serotonin, the feel-good chemical, is made in the gut. Conversely cytokines, stress and inflammation chemical is also manufactured in the gut.

What we ingest food, medications, chemicals and how well we sleep all impact on our gut health and total health. Eating hyper processed and sugary foods powers up the bad gut bacteria. Taking antibiotics, drinking highly chlorinated water, and being too stressed can all kill off good gut bacteria. The bad bacteria turn on stress hormones, inflammatory molecules, and increase sensitivity to pain. Good bacteria have the opposite effect on the body.

So what? Well inflammation that is persistent and/or without purpose is implicated in obesity, cancer, depression autism, asthma, arthritis, MS, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s. Poor gut health can feed into numerous viscous cycles of self-destruction inside the body.

High levels of bad bacteria increase the risk of obesity. Obese people have a 55% chance of developing depression. Depressed people have a 58% chance of developing obesity. High blood sugar, a key marker in obesity and diabetes, increases the risk of dementia. This is true for even a slight increase. Depression is also correlated with inflammation. Major depression disorder (MDD) is accompanied by an activation of the inflammatory response system , with a major uptick in cytokines and lipopolysaccharides (LPS). Separate studies were able to demonstrate that healthy people would begin to have depressive symptoms almost immediately after being dosed with LPS or cytokines.¹

All of this is important because it is another something to consider in the healing process. Importantly its something that you have a lot of control over. Minding your gut health can change your internal healing processes in ways that improve the healing process. You can bring you pain down without depending on medication. You can change your mood by moving, improve it even more by taking steps to increase your good gut bacteria.

At Invoke Therapy and Wellness we take the wellness component seriously. How you feel greatly impacts how you heal. Taking a step back and assessing your mental wellness, your dietary habits, how you manage your sleep matters. Just looking at your neck with a whiplash injury is doing a disservice, making sure we address as many components of the human machine as possible puts us in the best position to heal as efficiently and completely as possible.

Come to Invoke Therapy and Wellness to experience the difference of being seen and treated across the entire spectrum of healing, not just body parts in isolation. You will heal faster, and more completely when your care is tailored to you.

1. David Perlmutter.  Brain Maker: The Power of Gut Microbes to Heal and Protect Your Brain–for Life. 2015. Little, Brown and Company: Boston