Foods & Moods

Have you ever woken up one day and felt tired so you have your coffee or tea to wake you up a bit and it’s a somewhat busy morning so you grab yourself something simple like a pastry or some fast food and you feel ready to go for a couple hours and suddenly you begin to feel your energy levels decrease so you grab a quick snack or another cup of caffeine? Have you ever wondered why some people just seem more bubbly consistently throughout the day while you tend to go through more moods? There’s a reason for that and it connects directly to the foods you choose to ingest and how those foods affect your gut bacteria! Your body is a biological machine and the way we fuel our machine is through foods, some fuel (foods) are quick burning (Simple Carbohydrates/Sugars) while others burn slower (Fats/Lipids/Complex Carbohydrates/ Protein)

Let’s talk about how the foods (Fuels) you consume affect your brain, in order to do so we need to talk about serotonin and insulin. Now, what is serotonin and what does it do? Serotonin impacts every part of your body, from your emotions to your motor skills, it is considered a natural mood stabilizer, it’s also the chemical that helps with sleeping, eating, and digesting. Serotonin is a chemical that sends signals through your nervous system and your nervous system uses neurons to send messages, all over your body, the neurons travel between your brain, skin, organs, glands and muscles. To put it simply, the nervous system is the computer’s mainframe and serotonin determines if you’re receiving pleasant messages or mean nasty ones. Did you know that 90% of serotonin receptors are located in your gut?! Now what is insulin and what does it do? Insulin regulates blood sugar levels. Post consumption, carbohydrates break down into glucose, a sugar that is the body's primary source of energy, glucose then enters the bloodstream and the pancreas responds by producing insulin, which allows glucose to enter the body's cells to provide energy. Also, after you eat, your insulin levels are the highest and excess glucose is then stored in the liver as glycogen and then throughout the day the liver releases a steady flow of glycogen into the bloodstream keeping our blood sugar levels balanced.

What does all this mean and what kinds of foods are good for your gut bacteria? To be blunt, whole foods. The more processed a food is the more likely that those foods contain chemical additives such as hydrogenated fats, food colorings, starches, sugars. These chemical additives cause insulin levels to fluctuate drastically creating energy spikes or energy lows instead of a consistent level of insulin release throughout your day which in turn cause your serotonin levels to fluctuate dramatically as well which causes mood swings. A gut that has been primarily fueled with simple carbohydrates for a long period of time can cause other hormonal imbalances such as adrenal gland and thyroid gland depletion and failure, but these things are reversible by choosing to make a lifestyle change of more thoughtful eating habits. Furthermore, additives and excess sugars have also been proven to result in an increased risk of disease (Such as diabetes) and cancerous cells. So I urge you to think of your long term physically and mental health when making food decisions because it all truly is connected.

Sources:

Health.harvard.edu

Stanford.edu

Dartmouth.edu

healthline.com

clevelandclinic.org

#health #nutrition #fitness #food #gut #education #wellness