“YOUR GUT CONTROLS YOUR BRAIN”
(A brief monograph by Edward A. Layne MD, SCM for My Preventive Health LLC)
INTRODUCTION – NEW DATA ON THE GUT
The new data suggesting that “your gut controls your brain” will surprise most of my patients and may come as a surprise to many healthcare professionals, who were taught exactly the opposite. In this monograph, I will first discuss the basic physiology of gut function, and will introduce the Microbiome, the large mass of friendly bacteria that live in the normal human gut.
The gut is basically a long tube that stretches more than 15 feet from the mouth to the rectum. The gut has an enormous surface area (almost the size of a badminton court) that is responsible for sorting and absorbing the food we eat. The gut decides what elements of the food get taken into our body to be used as fuel and what elements of the food stay in the gut to be passed out as bowel movement. We now know that billions of friendly bacteria live in the gut and help the gut process the food. Collectively, these billions of friendly bacteria are called the gut “Microbiome”. The Microbiome decides which portions of the food we eat get passed across the gut lining to enter the blood stream to be used as ‘fuel’, and which portions of the food stay in the gut lumen to be eventually passed out of the gut as stool or feces.
Next Article: Part 2: Role of The ‘Microbiome’ – The Friendly Bacteria That Lives In Your Gut