When researchers at Stanford University, led by Dr. Justin Sonnenberg, explored the mucus layer that lines the gut, they found that it is home to several groups of bacteria that are vital for regulating immunity and inflammation. The mucus layer, which renews itself every hour, is critical in maintaining the integrity of the gut lining and reducing leaky gut.
It’s becoming clear that the bacteria in this layer depend on dietary fiber to thrive, which is why the carbohydrates we do consume should be in the form of fiber-rich fruits and vegetables. These complex carbohydrates are broken down by our gut bacteria. That’s right: The gut’s beneficial bacteria use the fiber we eat as fuel to promote their own growth.
Prebiotics are a specialized form of dietary fiber that our bodies cannot digest but that gut bacteria love to consume. Prebiotics are often categorized as carbohydrates because they are found in many fruits and vegetables. Prebiotics act like a fertilizer; it has been estimated that for every 100 grams of prebiotics consumed, a full 30 grams of bacteria are produced. As our gut bacteria metabolize this fiber, they produce substances called short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which help us stay healthy. Butyric acid, for example, is an SCFA that improves the health of the intestinal lining. In addition, these fatty acids help regulate sodium and water absorption and enhance our ability to take in important minerals and calcium. They effectively lower the pH in the gut, which inhibits the growth of potential pathogens and damaging bacteria. They enhance immune function and even help explain why some people have trouble losing weight, even though they cut back on calories.
Your endocrine system, which manages and controls your body’s hormones, holds the remote control to much of what you feel – moody; tired, hungry, sexual, sick, healthy, hot, or cold. It lords over development, growth, reproduction, and behavior through an intricate system of hormones, the body’s chemical messengers. These messengers are manufactured in different parts of the body (for example, the thyroid, adrenal, or pituitary gland or gonads) and then travel through the bloodstream to reach target organs and tissues. Once there, they act on receptors to elicit a biological response – usually with the goal of effecting change that allows your body to run smoothly and maintain balance. They serve a vital role in every bodily system, including your reproductive, nervous, respiratory, cardiovascular, skeletal, muscular, immune, urinary, and digestive systems. To keep the body balanced, the forces of one particular hormone are usually counterbalanced by those of another hormone.
While neurological disorders of body schema tend to be lateralized and asymmetrical, the kind of disorders directed towards the neuropsychiatrist or psychiatrist and those which draw people to cosmetic surgeons are, in contrast, strikingly symmetrical focusing on the midline of the body: the nose, breasts, tummy, penis or overall size.
The emotion of disgust is based on avoidance of contamination.” The word is related to that for taste in French (dégoût) and Latin (gustare), and the meaning is similar to distaste in English. The quintessential disgusting experience is eating human or animal waste. Just the mention of it will produce a yuk response with the characteristic facial expression of shutting the mouth firmly, expelling its contents by sticking out the tongue and bottom lip and closing the nostrils to smells, or in the extreme, gagging.
Hormone imbalances can lead to serious health issues – metabolic and thyroid disorders, infertility, cancer, hair loss, fatigue, depression, a loss of libido, chronic pain, and more. Hormonal chaos can happen quite naturally during stressful periods or as a result of your age or various health conditions that disrupt the harmony. Women experience decreases in estrogen and fluctuations in thyroid hormones during and after menopause, while men have a drop in their testosterone levels by 1 to 2 percent every year after age thirty (part of this drop, however, can be attributed to lifestyle factors -typically weight gain -rather than aging alone). As we’ve just seen, a misbehaving microbiome can certainly come into play as well. And hormone levels can be affected by certain toxins.
Insulin, as you likely already know, is one of the body’s most important hormones. A carrier protein produced by the pancreas, insulin is best known for helping us transport carbohydrate-based energy in the form of glucose from food into cells for their use. Insulin circulates in your bloodstream, where it picks up glucose and moves it into cells throughout the body, where it can then be used as fuel. Extra glucose that the cells don’t need is stored in the liver as glycogen or deposited in fat cells.
Normal, healthy cells have no problem responding to insulin. But when cells are relentlessly exposed to high levels of insulin as a result of persistent spikes in glucose -again, typically caused by consuming too many modern carbohydrates -our cells adapt and become “resistant” to the hormone. This triggers the pancreas to pump out more, so now higher levels of insulin are required for glucose to enter cells. But these higher levels also cause blood sugar to plummet to dangerously low levels, resulting in physical discomfort and brain-based panic.
If you’re a diabetic, by definition you have high blood sugar because your body cannot transport critical glucose into cells. And if that glucose remains in the blood, it will inflict a lot of damage. It will attach to proteins in the body in a process called glycation, which then triggers inflammation as well as the production of free radicals. All of these -glycation, inflam-mation, and free radical production -are implicated in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and multiple sclerosis. Even being prediabetic, when blood sugar issues are just starting to arise, is associated with a decline in brain function and a risk factor for full-blown Alzheimer’s disease.
The same enzymes that break down insulin also break down amyloid-beta, the protein that forms tangles and plaques in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s. When people secrete too much insulin due to a poor diet, obesity, and diabetes (a condition called hyperinsulinemia), the enzymes are too busy breaking down insulin to break down amyloid-beta, causing amyloid-beta to accumulate.
Source : The Grain Brain Whole Life Plan: Boost Brain Performance, Lose Weight, and Achieve Optimal Health by David Perlmutter, Kristin Loberg
Goodreads : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29214704-the-grain-brain-whole-life-plan
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