Gut-Biome: How Food Impacts Health of Body & Mind

By; Logan Cohen, Professional Therapist & Online Life Coach

When it comes to whole Body health, gut biome is key.

Everybody makes daily choices about the food we eat, and most People make these choices actively each and every day. Given this fact of daily life, we made nutritional health a Core component of the Balanced Man Plan holistic healing system.

Most People have heard phrases like, “Food is medicine,” and , “You are what you eat,” through the years, but current studies coming from nutritional sciences around “gut health” and the “gut-brain axis” is showing a whole new realm of possibilities for natural health solutions.

Modern Society and progress in medicine has brought some welcome advancements to daily life for many Americans, however access to those healthcare advancements is a BIG problem. When it comes to the level of general health & well-being for the everyday American, our community members have some of the lowest levels of access to needed healthcare and not surprisingly, some of the highest death rates at the lowest ages for developed countries.

Since the late 1970s, the life expectancy of the average US citizen has fallen FAR below other developed countries. Poor diet and impact on gut biome is a big part of that.

How can this be?!? Well, it has a lot to do with America’s long-standing relationship to corporations and Big Business. Have you heard the recent reports of super powerful billionaires like Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon) paying ZERO dollars in federal income taxes? This corrupt love affair was also evident in the recent exposure of corporate-funded research in the 1950s by the snack industry to create false reports and cover up the dangers of sugar and cheap grains. This paved the way for the old powerhouses of the American snack industry to dominate sales for decades while Americans struggle with their weight.

The more we eat food meant for our specific gut biome, the more we reduce inflammation associated with joint pain and even Depression & Anxiety symptoms. Sure, weight loss is a common "side effect"

Recent developments in nutritional sciences and especially from “functional medicine” is showing over and over again that the food we eat is more connected to our overall health and well-being than Western Medicine could have ever imagined. Whether you are interested in losing weight, improving physical range of motion, or reducing chronic pain in the Body AND Mind (yes, Anxiety & Depression symptoms included), then you are reading the right article.

Standardized diets can help People lose weight, but it is hard to sustain this type of diet long-term. Unless you are able to sustain long-term commitment to a diet like “Keto” or “intermittent fasting”, the weight will just come right back on. The Balanced Man Plan is designed to help you discover optimal Physical Health with your own natural diet - based on the nutritional needs of your unique Body. Do you think the models and actors who get SUPER shredded are all eating the same foods? NOPE -

If you are interested in improving your over-all health, keeping our gut biome in Balance with nutritional needs will be key.

Here are the 4 Ways Nutrition Impacts Health of Body & Mind. We stand behind the use of food as medicine because this allows us to take back control of everyday choices to give us the most practical influence in our Health & Wellness goals. For this reason, Nutrition plays a central role in a Core Area of Balance - Physical Health.

4 Ways Food Impacts Health of Body & Mind

#1 Impact of Food on Health of Body & Mind - The Gut-Brain Axis

While most fossil research shows original Human Beings coming from Africa, this was a LONG time ago and different groups of People evolved over time in different parts of The World for hundreds of thousands of years since then. Over this period of time, Humans have lived in very different ecosystems that are home to different plants and animals. Human Beings are adaptive creatures and we have learned how to create access to food for Self & Loved Ones - whether this involved fishing, hunting large game, as well as different types of plants that could be found, or grown domestically ("Farming") to harvest to eat.

Since communities in different parts of The World have had access to such different plants and animals over such a long period of time, each of our Body’s have evolved to digest specific foods - well, differently.

Each unique gut biome prefers different macronutrients that keep inflammation at a minimum.

Depending on our unique collection of DNA based on ancestors’ access to specific landscapes and resulting food sources over time, People in communities evolved specific bacteria (also called “gut biome”) in their digestive systems to break down those specific nutrients that are most readily available in that specific environment.

When People eat food that is not easily broken down by our gut biome, our stomach lining responds with our Body’s standard response to an outside invader → INFLAMMATION.

Common signs of short-term inflammation are heartburn, loose stools, bloating or gas, but long-term exposure can create problems far worse than a bit of temporary discomfort.

This inflammation starts in the stomach lining is our Body looking out for us by trying to “have our back with a foreign invader” and releases chemicals that are directly connected to our experience of stress. Since these chemicals are released in our blood, the blood quickly reaches our Brain and “in a nutshell”, stimulates our Central Nervous System to GET STRESSED OUT!

The more we eat food that IRRITATES our gut biome, the more inflammation is created throughout our entire Body. This inflammation makes Anxiety symptoms worse.

Our “fight or flight” system responds by releasing the stress hormone “cortisol”, which worsens Anxiety & Depression symptoms. This inflammation also reaches joints and cartilage, so if you have an old injury or have developed carpal tunnel or arthritis over time, this inflammation that starts in your gut lining will directly impact the physical discomfort associated with those ailments - on a clear, evidence-based level. And ALL as a direct result of the food we make choices about every day!

If you want to learn more about how that happens with a short video, feel free to watch the video below

#2 Impact of Food on Health of Body & Mind - You Are What You Eat

Now that there is a base understanding of how this process of inflammation impacts the Body on a physical level, we can take it a bit further to help you understand another way it messes with the Mind. When we eat a lot of refined sugar - a very common ingredient in the most accessible food of Modern Society - our Body becomes an ideal environment to grow YEAST. Yeast naturally occurs in our Body to some degree and when we FEED it with SUGAR (it’s most favorite nutrient in The World), it grows stronger and more stable in a “yeast colony” - WOW!

Whatever your unique gut biome prefers, it is NOT refined sugar. Refined sugars creates yeast colonies in gut biome that make it hard to digest food optimally, and even CRAVE MORE SUGAR LATER.

If you would like to read more about how Human gut biome uses yeast to make energy from sugar and the implications for your Physical Health, read more here. Regardless of where the research continues to lead , we do know that these yeast colonies “set up shop” in our stomach among the rest of our gut biome and wait for sugar to come - either directly or as the result of starches breaking down - and have a little “yeast party”. This can make cleaning up our diet really hard because when we weed out refined sugars and starches to improve gut health and “reset” our stomach lining, those yeast colonies freak out because they are getting starved.

We experience this in the moment as CRAVINGS for sugar! Wrap your Mind around that for a moment because when my functional medicine doctor explained it to me, this helped me “take ownership” of the process even more.

When we are doing the hard work of creating new habits and rewarding Self with healthier alternatives for overall health with a cleaner diet, the yeast colonies in our gut biome - LITERALLY invaders that might as well be “in cahoots” with the snack industry executives - are brainwashing our Mind into believing that we need sugar!

It's a good idea to cut refined sugars out of any diet, but when we do, sugar CRAVINGS are a common side effect. Once we learn to ride those waves out patiently for a few weeks, the yeast colonies die out and our but biome is restored.

When I was able to frame all of this up in my Mind, it was so much easier to ignore those sugar cravings and over time, they went away as the yeast colonies in my gut biome died out. Now, I don’t crave sugar and when I do choose to indulge, I notice the bloating immediately and think, “Oh yeah, that’s why I limit this crap…”

#3 Impact of Food on Health of Body & Mind - Goal Confidence, or “behavioral momentum”

The Balanced Man Plan de-bunks a lot of myths about Health & Wellness and a BIG part of this is by unlocking potential through the natural connections between Body & Mind. The 3rd way that food choices impact overall health of both Body & Mind is by using the power of “behavioral momentum”. Behavioral momentum is when we believe we are “on a roll”, so are much less prone to being limited by the common barriers involved in good old-fashioned “over-thinking”. Ya know, "over-analysis paralysis?"

The more we MOVE OUR BODY AS DESIGNED, the more we are reminded WHY we eat food that promotes a healthy gut biome.

Behavioral momentum occurs when an athlete gets "on a hot streak” and they put up performance numbers that are WAY ABOVE their average level of functioning (baseline). In the same way, we can control this ourselves by making small decisions to achieve greater success in making healthy choices daily, then eventually weekly, then build up to monthly.