A Wired Brain & Gut Connection

 Well hello everyone. Another beautiful week in front of us that is all up for the taking. It all comes down to how we individually approach the day that will transform our life in the direction we want. I am starting to do my blogs a little different. They are going off of the HealthShop that we have on Monday nights. Some people are visual learners and some love reading, either way, I would love to tailor to everyone's needs. 

You have heard me talk about this before, but I want to go over how the brain is wired as it relates to the gut-brain connection. I always go back to this autonomic nervous system because it's so important to get the fundamental idea as it relates to the body, the brain, and emotions. We have two different systems within the body, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system gets the body ready to go for more stressful situations as it flashes a flood of hormones that boosts the body's alertness, heart rate, and sends blood throughout the muscle. In this process, it increases your heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, sweating, and dilates the pupils for fight and flight. That being said, it's going to decrease the movement of the food getting digested. Now the flip of the coin is the parasympathetic nervous system, this system is going down the lines of being in a rest and digest state. This the state that we want to be in to maximizing the gut and brain connection. It is the state we need to be in if we want to repair the body as well. Now if we're in a sympathetic state, we can find ourselves in this very fearful kind of flight or flight state making it hard for the body to repair itself. 

So getting ourselves in this parasympathetic state is the most optimal state to digest and repair. The parasympathetic state is really undoing the actual work that's done by being in the sympathetic state, which is not a bad thing, I mean we would like that stress in the body of tearing down on muscles so we can rebuild those muscles back up being in the parasympathetic state. This state does the opposite or the sympathetic state. It's going to decrease the heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, and it's going to increase digestion and assimilation of the food. Now it is stated that 70% of the day we are in this sympathetic

state. Not a good thing or bad thing, many people are waking up to the idea that we can focus more on this parasympathetic state. So we can find ourselves being more relaxed to repair the body much better. So you need to be in a parasympathetic state when you digest food. It’s fairly simple, but it’s not easy. This is the way that I like looking at a lot of things as it relates to more of the emotions, but also how the brain works. It’s not easy because of this amazing thing of neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to form and reorganize the connections in response to learning or experience. 

Well what does that actually mean. I want to give it to you more in a practical sense. It comes down to the nerve cells in the brain that fire together, wire together. But let's just say for instance, if I'm trying to learn how to publicly speak or anything that is uncomfortable I need to keep working at it. I'm going to create more of these nerve connections to allow myself to be better at public speaking to reach past that part of myself of not being as good at public speaking. So the more I practice public speaking, the more connections I will have in my brain that will transform my skills making it much easier to speak. You can see my personality change as someone starting out being very nervous to being more calm and confident in myself in publicly speaking. Now you can do this in any other way. It doesn't have to be public speaking, it could be how to handle a stressful situation or being relaxed when you are eating food. 

Now, I want to go back to a point that when I first started public speaking back in the day. I had a victim mindset when I was public speaking. I made a bunch of excuses like the light was too shiny or my palms are sweaty, knees are weak and my arms are heavy. All kinds of things the mind will bring up due to how my brain was wired. I would worry about what was going to happen. Were people going to make fun of me, judge me for who I was and the list goes on. So I  would put myself in more of this sympathetic-survival state. It continued to make me fearful all the time because I didn't have the nerve cells wired with the emotions of being confident in myself which made me unhealthy. 

I would have anxiety. I would have depression for trying to impress other people. Well that's one mindset of looking at it, but now I find myself

looking at it from an opposite perspective. Now I have more of a victor mindset, continuously working on myself to be the best I can be. It could be from being in a relaxed state public speaking to eating. It doesn't matter. We're looking at if I get all these fibers wired together, or from any situation, I can be more motivated, I can be more confident, and be much more calm. This can go for any situation that life gives me. And I can be more fearless. Fearful is simply a mindset that we have. If I get more of a Victor mindset, I can be able to handle any situation by the fact that my brain is wired differently. I'm more confident myself and more fearless and more motivated that would make me more healthy. Like I said, you can relate this all to the state you are in when you are eating. So next time you eat, are you going 100 mph or are you in the most optimal relaxed state?

I have a question for you. Do you want to be perfectly healthy? The big thing that I have learned through my health journey is that no matter what it was about, it always came down to me. And the same thing goes for you. YOU are the only person standing your way from being healthy. If you want me to explain more about this topic and help you get truly healthy, please sign up for a coaching session with me to understand more how you can transform your life by getting out of your own way. 

You can watch the video of this blog Here to see the HeatlthShop. If you are interested in signing up for coaching with me, schedule your FREE initial coaching visit Here

Much love,

Coach Ed