brain gut axis by chriskresser
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chani8
Posts: 946 Member
Read this and thought you'd find it interesting:
http://chriskresser.com/the-healthy-skeptic-podcast-episode-9
"So let’s talk a little bit more specifically about the brain-gut axis and how it all works. The 50,000 foot overview, which somebody on the facebook page asked for, is this… 90% of our brain’s output goes into something called the pontomedullary area, it’s the lower two-thirds of the brain stem, and that goes into the vagus, or the pneumogastric nerve, which innervates the digestive tract. Now one of the earliest signs of the brain not firing well is poor vagal activity, which will manifest as decreased pancreatic enzyme secretion, poor gallbladder function, and poor gut function overall. And it basically works like this, you have decreased activity in the brain, and we’re gonna talk about how that can happen in a second, and that decreases the activation of the vagal motor nuclei, which in turns suppresses the intestinal immune system and decreases intestinal blood flow. And when that happens you get an increased growth in pathogenic yeast and bacteria, that cause intestinal permeability or leaky gut, which we’ve talked about a lot, and leaky gut causes a state of chronic low grade inflammation. Then the inflammatory cytokines produced in the gut travel through the blood and they cross the blood-brain barrier. One of the problems with inflammation is that it makes the blood-brain barrier leaky so you get leaky brain. And then those inflammatory cytokines once they get into the brain activate the microglial cells, which are the second type of cell in the brain. You have neurons and then you have microglial cells. The microglial cells are the immune cells of the brain and once they’re activated by these inflammatory cytokines this is basically inflammation of the brain. So your brain gets inflamed, you get a leaky brain and then you get inflamed brain. And that’s no fun, definitely. Cause one of the problems is that unlike the rest of the immune system in the body that has T-regulatory cells that can turn off inflammation in the brain, the microglial cells don’t get turned off. So, when you’ve got an inflamed brain it can be really tricky to reduce that inflammation without some outside help. So, you’ve got an inflamed brain and the inflammation in the brain decreases nerve conductance and that in turn causes depression and reduced activity of the vagal motor nuclei, and of course then we’re back where we started. That reduced activity of the brain reduces the output into the vagus, and that causes more digestive problems, more inflammation in the gut, more inflammatory cytokines to be in the bloodstream and up into the brain and we’re stuck in this really viscous cycle."
http://chriskresser.com/the-healthy-skeptic-podcast-episode-9
"So let’s talk a little bit more specifically about the brain-gut axis and how it all works. The 50,000 foot overview, which somebody on the facebook page asked for, is this… 90% of our brain’s output goes into something called the pontomedullary area, it’s the lower two-thirds of the brain stem, and that goes into the vagus, or the pneumogastric nerve, which innervates the digestive tract. Now one of the earliest signs of the brain not firing well is poor vagal activity, which will manifest as decreased pancreatic enzyme secretion, poor gallbladder function, and poor gut function overall. And it basically works like this, you have decreased activity in the brain, and we’re gonna talk about how that can happen in a second, and that decreases the activation of the vagal motor nuclei, which in turns suppresses the intestinal immune system and decreases intestinal blood flow. And when that happens you get an increased growth in pathogenic yeast and bacteria, that cause intestinal permeability or leaky gut, which we’ve talked about a lot, and leaky gut causes a state of chronic low grade inflammation. Then the inflammatory cytokines produced in the gut travel through the blood and they cross the blood-brain barrier. One of the problems with inflammation is that it makes the blood-brain barrier leaky so you get leaky brain. And then those inflammatory cytokines once they get into the brain activate the microglial cells, which are the second type of cell in the brain. You have neurons and then you have microglial cells. The microglial cells are the immune cells of the brain and once they’re activated by these inflammatory cytokines this is basically inflammation of the brain. So your brain gets inflamed, you get a leaky brain and then you get inflamed brain. And that’s no fun, definitely. Cause one of the problems is that unlike the rest of the immune system in the body that has T-regulatory cells that can turn off inflammation in the brain, the microglial cells don’t get turned off. So, when you’ve got an inflamed brain it can be really tricky to reduce that inflammation without some outside help. So, you’ve got an inflamed brain and the inflammation in the brain decreases nerve conductance and that in turn causes depression and reduced activity of the vagal motor nuclei, and of course then we’re back where we started. That reduced activity of the brain reduces the output into the vagus, and that causes more digestive problems, more inflammation in the gut, more inflammatory cytokines to be in the bloodstream and up into the brain and we’re stuck in this really viscous cycle."
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