The Gut Brain Axis Connection: The Digestion Sessions

Today I wanted to share my key takeaways from another fantastic talk about the gut brain axis connection. Dr Datis Kharrazian recently spoke at an online summit, The Digestion Sessions, which was hosted by Sean Croxton.   Hope you enjoy!

• The gut-brain connection is neglected by both conventional and alternative medicine doctors
• The brain communicates to the gut, and the gut communicates back up to the brain.
• When the gut brain axis starts to fail, either the gut or the brain can degenerate first, then leading into degeneration of the other.
• If the brain fails first, you lose vagal signaling, which leads to low motility and lack of blood flow to the gut, which leads to leaky gut, an inflammatory reaction, and ultimately autoimmunity.
• If the gut fails first, whether it is from a poor diet and stress, this leads to unhealthy gut bacteria and inflammation, causing a leaky gut, which then causes a leaky brain and autoimmunity.
• Once the gut-brain axis fails, you have chronic inflammation and leaky gut, leaky brain, setting the stage for autoimmunity.
• Autoimmunity is a loss of self-tolerance and your immune system starts to attack your own tissues.
• T regulatory cells are immune cells that help use keep our self-tolerance.
• Once you lose self-tolerance, your immune system becomes over-zealous, you also lose chemical tolerance leading to conditions like multiple chemical sensitivity and start creating antibodies to your own tissues, like your thyroid, brain, and gut, leading to autoimmunity.
• Many neurodegenerative diseases, like dementia, Alzheimers, and Parkinson, start in the gut
• A dysfunctional brain-gut connection can cause autoimmunity.
• To determine if your digestive issues also involve your brain, you must determine if you have a motility issue. Motility is how your body moves food through your system and is controlled by your brain. Signs of this might be constipation, you need a cup of coffee to have a bowel movement, or you need magnesium of herbal laxatives.
• The vagal nuclei in your brain stem sends signals the migrating motor complex in your gut which cause your intestines to contract
• Constipation often has a neurogenic component. Brain involvement must be ruled out in constipation cases that are resistant to dietary changes and other treatment approaches.
• When food does not move through the GI tract properly, the food ferments, and this leads to bacterial and yeast overgrowth. Digestive enzyme deficiencies and hydrochloric acid release are also impaired leading to parasite overgrowths.
• A digestive stool analysis will often shown bacterial, yeast, fungal, and parasitic overgrowths. To treat these, you not only have to address the microbial overgrowth, but you also have to strengthen the gut-brain connection
• Questions to ask to rule out if your digestive issues are brain based and have a motility problem:
• Do you have to take laxatives to have a bowel movement?
• Do you have to drink coffee to have a bowel movement?
• Do you have less than one bowel movement per day?
• Listen to the abdomen with a stethoscope to check for bowel sounds checking for intensity and frequency
• Check the palate and uvula (at the back of your throat) while you say aaaaahhhhhh. Look for movement of the arches at the back of the throat upwards that is equal on both sides. Lack of a vagal reflex here can mean that the vagal nuclei in the brain stem (that sends signals to this area) are degenerating.
• Gargling water, stimulating your gag reflex, and singling loudly are exercises that can help to retrain the vagal nerve brain to gut connection
• Coffee retention enemas can be used to help regain the gut-brain axis connection
• Just giving supplements for motility based digestive disorders may make you feel better, but it will not fix the problem forever
• Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth is caused by brain-gut axis dysfunction. It is a motility problem because the migrating motor complexes are impaired.
• Conventionally, pro-kinetic drugs are used to help regain gut motility. And antibiotics are used to kill off the bacterial overgrowth. However, this is not a fix, because almost 100% of patients relapse. The solution is to regain control over the migrating motor complexes by exercising the vagus nerve with the techniques mentioned above.
• With neurodegenerative gut disorders, catching the problem early is important because there is a point where the damage is irreversible.
• Parkinson’s is a neurodegenerative disease starts in the gut and the area of the brain that is responsible for sense of smell. Early signs can be constipation and loss of sense of taste.
• Having a hard time with directions, forgetting where you left things, forgetting names, having to write everything down are all signs of early dementia and brain degeneration.
• As the brain degenerates, the signaling thru the vagus nerve is lost, leading to gut problems
• When the vagus nerve does not function properly, a leaky gut is created.
• To heal a leaky gut, you should take probiotics, glutamine, digestive enzymes, etc, but you should also do exercises to stimulate the vagus nerve to fire properly again.
• Hormones like progesterone, testosterone, and thyroid hormones are all needed to heal a leaky gut
• Head trauma (like a concussion for example) immediately causes a leaky gut.
• Inflammatory reactions in the gut create cytokines that can travel to the brain and create stimulate the glial cells, generating inflammation in the brain.
• Glial cells cause brain inflammation that cannot get turned off. Resveratrol, turmeric, and luteolin have been shown to turn off glial cells and stop brain inflammation.
• When you have brain inflammation, nerve conduction speed slows down, leading to symptoms like brain fog and slowed cognitive function.
• Zonulin exists in the brain, not just in the gut. This is the protein that opens up tight junctions in intestinal cells and in the brain, creating a leaky gut.
• Autistic children need to have the gut-brain aspect of their condition addressed too, not just following a special diet and giving them fish oil.
• Gut inflammation can cause destruction of the myelin sheath in nerves, which is what happens in multiple sclerosis.
• People with gluten sensitivity usual have leaky gut and leaky brain.
• The foods that cause the most inflammation are GMO foods like soy and hybridized foods like gluten
• If you have any antibodies to your tissues, these are predictive, meaning that you either have or will have autoimmune destruction of the targeted tissue.
• Many women with infertility have antibodies against their ovaries.
• Gluten cross-reacts with the brain and causes inflammation because of molecular mimicry. Gluten has a similar protein sequence as certain areas of the brain (purkinje cells in the cerebellum and synapsin in the nerves).
• There are 3 different enzymes for gluten sensitivity can create antibodies:
• Transglutaminase 2 which is intestinal
• Transglutaminase 3 which is skin
• Traansglutaminase 6 which is brain
• 70% of people with gluten sensitivity have a reaction in their brain, not their gut like in Celiac
• Researchers are now finding the impact of gluten is really on the brain, not the gut. It just happens that gastroenterologists found it first and classified it as a gut disorder. Gluten sensitivity is now being found to be primarily a neurological disorder.
• An anti-inflammatory diet is key to restoring the gut-brain axis
• The future of food sensitivities and autoimmunity will allow us to determine which foods might cross react with various tissue antibodies, like thyroid, brain, gut, etc. For example, tuna antibodies cross react with T3, an important thyroid hormone. When these cross-react, T3 gets destroyed.
• Knowing this information means we can create a highly individualized autoimmune paleo diet. This information will be released in a paper pulblished by Dr Kharrazian in the next year.