221.From Gut to Great: Simple Steps to Boost Your Mental Clarity and Emotional Stability

Are you aware of the profound connection between your gut health and your overall well-being?

You're not alone—many people underestimate how their gut microbiome can influence their mental, emotional, and professional performance.

Join Dr. Adrienne Youdim as she explores the science behind the gut-brain interaction, revealing how nurturing your microbiome can enhance focus, decision-making, and resilience in both work and life.

Don’t forget to share this episode with friends and colleagues who might benefit from understanding the importance of gut health!

What You'll Learn From This Episode:

• Understand the gut-brain connection: Discover how the vagus nerve and neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine link your gut health to your mental and emotional states.
• Recognize the role of the microbiome: Learn about the trillions of microorganisms in your gut and how they support digestion, immunity, and mood regulation.
• Identify the impact of diet on gut health: Explore how processed foods, excess sugar, and refined grains can disrupt your microbiome and affect your cognitive function.
• Implement practical dietary strategies: Find out how to incorporate a variety of plant-based foods, fermented foods, and prebiotics into your diet to support gut health.
• Embrace lifestyle changes: Understand the importance of exercise, sleep, and relaxation practices in maintaining a healthy gut microbiome.

"When we nourish our gut, we unlock the potential for better mental clarity, emotional stability, and professional performance."— Dr. Adrienne Youdim

Ways that Dr. Adrienne Youdim Can Support You

1. Join the Monthly Free Mind-Body Workshops: Participate in engaging mind-body practices designed to help manage your stress response. Register here.
2. Sign Up for the Newsletter: Stay updated with valuable insights and resources by subscribing to the newsletter. Sign up here.
3. Freebie alert. Register for our monthly free MindBody Workshop and receive a downloadable guide on emotional labeling to help you manage your emotions effectively.

Connect with Dr. Adrienne Youdim

• Website :https://www.dradriennespeaks.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dradrienneyoudim/

Transcript

Here's some empowering truth. Your gut health doesn't just impact your body. It affects how you think, feel, and function. Your gut impacts your mental and emotional health, and that directly impacts your professional performance. So today on Health Bite, we're going to discuss the science behind the gut-brain interaction, and specifically, how you can support your microbiome so you can unlock better focus, decision-making, and increase your resilience, not only in your work life, but in your life life. Welcome back to Health Bite, the podcast where I offer small, actionable bites to greater physical, mental, and emotional health and well-being. I'm your host, Dr. Adrienne Youdim. I'm a triple board certified internist, obesity medicine, and physician nutrition specialist. And I have learned in working with patients and clients for nearly 20 years, that good nutrition is not just about the food that you eat, but all the ways in which we can nourish ourselves physically, mentally, and emotionally. Together, we will explore the intersection of science, nutrition, health and well-being, and the pursuit of living well. And I just love this stuff. So thank you for joining me on this journey. So first things first, let's talk about the gut-brain interaction, because these two systems, they don't live independently from one another. intricately intertwined, constantly communicating with one another in a couple of ways. The first is the vagus nerve. Now we've talked about this long, wandering nerve that connects the gut to the heart to the brain. This is one of the main ways in which our gut and our brain are consistently and continuously interacting with one another. The second is through the production and release of neurotransmitters and hormones. Your gut is actually referred to as, quote, the second brain, also called the enteric nervous system. This is because the gut actually is a significant source, the primary source, in fact, of neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. These are your feel-good hormones, and they're actually produced in the gut. Not only that, but the gut actually contains 90% of the serotonin receptors. This is the location in which serotonin actually exerts its effects. It doesn't happen in the brain, but it happens in the gut. And the byproduct is how we feel in our minds. And so again, there is this constant communication and interaction between the gut and the brain that becomes very important in how we think and feel and therefore how we perform in the workplace. But we can't take all the credit for this because we rely on much of this on our gut microbiome. We have literally trillions of microorganisms. These are bacteria, fungi, and viruses that live in our gut and help us execute this work. We have sort of a, I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine, relationship with these little buggers, because we give them a place to live, and in return, they help us digest our food, they modulate inflammation in the body, they support our immunity, and they support the influence and production of the neurotransmitters that we talked about. These little guys do a whole host of things for our mind, including managing and regulating our mood. So gut microbiome and organisms actually help by making serotonin, another neurotransmitter involved in mood called GABA. These are made by our gut microbiome. They also play an important role in thinking and cognitive function by creating short chain fatty acids that are then involved in the production of neuronal processes and neurotransmitters. So again, all of this to say that our gut microbiota or microbiome is very important in our cognitive health and in our mood. But the opposite of this is also true, which is that when our microbiome is disrupted, when the balance of good and bad bacteria is disrupted in the gut, this can also impact our mood and our cognition. And in fact, that disruption is associated with anxiety, depression, brain fog, and even with neurodegenerative diseases. Yes, when we don't take care of those little buggers living in our gut, it can definitely and directly impact our mental clarity, our emotional stability, our ability to make wise decisions or decision making capacity. Basically, it impacts all the most critical aspects of leadership and of professional performance. So it is important for us as leaders, as professionals, whether it's in the workplace or in our homes, to support the gut microbiome and our gut health so that we can act with clarity and intention. Consider some examples of this. Take, for example, consuming some sugary processed food. When we consume processed sugars, we get a rapid spike or rise in our blood sugar, which is then followed by a quick and rapid decline or sugar crash. This, as you've probably all experienced, I know I have, results in brain fog, fatigue, irritability, which can obviously sabotage our clarity in the workplace. What about the effect of this crash on our mood? Rapidly fluctuating sugar levels cause mood instability, which can then result in greater reactivity. And let's face it, in lower emotional intelligence. When we are reactive, we are not acting out of our best, most mindful selves. And then finally, this irritability, this reactivity, it also makes it harder for us to cope with stress, and it makes it harder for us to engage collaboratively in our relationships. and this impacts our work. Your ability to lead, to problem solve, to regulate your emotions, and to make sound decisions doesn't just depend on your training or on your degree, but it depends on the state of your mind, the state of your brain, and that is hugely impacted by factors in your gut. If you want to show up as your best professional self, focused, composed, energized, then what you eat really matters. So let's talk about how we can support our gut microbiome and this gut-brain interaction. Well, the first and foremost way of doing this is eating a big variety of plants. Plants offer a whole host of nutrients that are really appreciated by the gut microbiome. And your gut craves diversity. And so research shows that people who consume 30 or more different plant foods per week have much more diverse and therefore stable microbiomes. And again, a stable gut microbiome leads to a stable mind. So how do we do this? First step is to meet yourself where you're at. Maybe you're in a season where you really are not consuming lots of plant-based foods. Meet yourself where you're at. Make a commitment to incorporate one or two plants in your diet every day. and then take it from there. You may want to consider keeping a plant journal and remembering that every fruit and vegetable has a unique nutrient that can aid in stabilizing your gut microbiome. The second is incorporating seeds, legumes, and beans. These are great sources of healthy fat and healthy fiber that, again, is nutrition to your gut microbiome, which is essentially nutrition to your brain. Again, meeting yourself where you're at, no judgment, no guilt of wherever we are in this moment. Try incorporating a seed or a nut in your salad, a new type of bean. or a avocado oil or olive oil as a dressing or as a topping to your veggies. Incorporate one, two, or three of these things per week and track how this impacts your overall sense of health and well-being, your mood, your cognition, and your mental stability. The second tip is to prioritize fermented foods. These are also called probiotics. Now, a lot of people get their probiotics out of a bottle, but the truth is that we don't know what the bioavailability is of those supplements that we get in a pill. What we do know is that when we incorporated fermented foods in our diet, it helps support a diverse gut microbiome. So these are foods like yogurt with active cultures, kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, tempeh. All of these foods contain live cultures of good bacteria. So eating these foods helped to literally populate your gut with the good guys so that there is less space or so that it crowds out the less harmful microbes in the gut. did have a higher diversity in their microbiome and as a result they had a reduction in inflammatory markers, they had better immune balance. Start by adding one or two of these items into your week even. Start with a yogurt or a kefir in your breakfast or adding some tempeh for lunch or consider swapping out your soda or your afternoon coffee or evening glass of wine with some kombucha. Make one single swap to support your gut health. There are probiotics, but there's also prebiotics. Prebiotics are those fibers that actually feed the good bacteria in your gut. And a lot of foods are easy to incorporate in your diet are rich with prebiotics. They include things like garlic, onions, asparagus. It includes bananas and apples, oats, and even flax seeds. When these types of fibers are fermented by our gut bacteria, they produce a compound called butyrate. Butyrate is a molecule that is very important in supporting our brain health. It helps enhance memory. It helps support learning. And butyrate actually promotes something called neurogenesis. This is the growth of brand new brain cells. So try this. Try sprinkling some flax seeds on your breakfast. or adding some raw garlic or scallions into your salad dressing. Remember that small changes result in really big impact. So start small, and once you have successfully incorporated some of these changes, then you can build from there. Now, of course, just like there are foods that support the gut, there are those that can do harm. Some foods to watch out for are, of course, processed and ultra-processed foods. Anything that comes out of a package with a list of long ingredients or additives or artificial sweeteners, these are things to watch out for because aside from the fact that they are processed and therefore non-nutritive, because essentially in the processing, they remove a lot of the nutrients. Ultra-processed food can also contain these additives that hurt the gut microbiome. So try and limit, or first just take inventory, so awareness, right? Take inventory of how much processed or ultra-processed foods you may be consuming in a day or in a week, and try and scale back by one or two per week. Number two on our watch list is excess sugar. And we talked about this a little bit earlier, what happens to our blood sugar spike and fall, what that does to our neurocognition. So think about where you might be getting excess sugar in your diet, and don't forget about the hidden sugars. One big place where I find this is in sauces, for example. You wouldn't believe that tomato sauce is a really big culprit, has lots of excess sugar. So make it a practice to look at your labels and looking at what not just the total sugars are, but also the added sugars in the foods that you eat. Number three is refined flours or grains. Again, refined is just another way of saying processed, and processed flour and grain often contain very little fiber, which is really what the benefit of grains and these kinds of carbs are, is offering the fiber. By removing fiber, this results in instability of your blood sugar, promoting these sugar spikes. Refined oils are also harmful because they can cause more inflammation. And finally, alcohol. Alcohol disrupts our microbiome and the balance by killing off the good guys, the good bacteria in the gut. So remember that this doesn't mean perfection. You don't have to be perfect in order to be effective. But if we can start minimizing these foods, help keep a balanced microbiome, a microbiome that is in a more optimal condition, then we are better able to support our mood, our cognition, and therefore our performance in the workplace. Last but not least, let's talk about our microbiome boosters, because your gut health is not just about the food that you eat, but about your lifestyle. Believe it or not, exercise supports the gut microbiome. It helps support digestion, it stimulates movement of the gut, thereby supporting the health of the little buggers that live there. Sleep. We did a whole episode on sleep last week. You should scroll back and take a listen if you haven't already. But sleep is a time in which your body is very metabolically active. And one of the things that happens during sleep is that our gut microbiome resets and repairs itself. So poor sleep quality can actually impact the balance of our gut microbiome. Relaxation practices, meditation, breathing, all of these help strengthen that gut-mind connection via the vagus nerve. And when we are more attuned to our body and our gut, then we are better able to function with clarity in our mind. Think about these microbiome boosters and how you can incorporate them into your day or into your week. I want you to remember that your gut health and the microbiome that lives in it is a very responsive system. It doesn't take months or years to see change. You can start to feel a difference in days. mood, focus, sleep, digestion, it's all shaped by what you put in your plate and how you care for your body. And this in turn, this affects your resilience and your ability to work, lead and live with intention. So here's your health bite challenge. I invite you this week to try incorporating five new plant-based foods into your diet. I also want you to try and add one fermented food into your daily intake. And finally, to eliminate one food that is affecting or offending your microbiome. Let's start nourishing the version of us that truly thrives. Thank you for tuning in this week. I hope this episode helped you understand the power of the gut-brain connection. And if you found this useful and think that it is useful for a friend, I encourage you to share with a colleague. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And until next time, stay well and stay nourished.