cheryl
Administrator
Staff member
What to Eat for Optimal Mental Health - Mindful
I once had a patient who was confused as to why I talked about her gut while treating her mind. To her, it seemed irrelevant. “After all,” she said, “it’s not like they are actually next to each other.”
While your gut and brain are housed in different parts of your body, they are physically connected.
The vagus nerve, also known as the “wanderer nerve,” originates in the brain stem and travels all the way to the gut, connecting the gut to the central nervous system. When it reaches the gut, it untangles itself to form little threads that wrap the entire gut in an unruly covering that looks like an intricately knitted sweater.
Because the vagus nerve penetrates the gut wall, it plays an essential role in the digestion of food, but its key function is to ensure that nerve signals and body chemicals can travel back and forth between the gut and the brain, carrying vital information between them, and making the brain and gut lifelong partners.
I once had a patient who was confused as to why I talked about her gut while treating her mind. To her, it seemed irrelevant. “After all,” she said, “it’s not like they are actually next to each other.”
While your gut and brain are housed in different parts of your body, they are physically connected.
The vagus nerve, also known as the “wanderer nerve,” originates in the brain stem and travels all the way to the gut, connecting the gut to the central nervous system. When it reaches the gut, it untangles itself to form little threads that wrap the entire gut in an unruly covering that looks like an intricately knitted sweater.
Because the vagus nerve penetrates the gut wall, it plays an essential role in the digestion of food, but its key function is to ensure that nerve signals and body chemicals can travel back and forth between the gut and the brain, carrying vital information between them, and making the brain and gut lifelong partners.