The Mind Gut Mind Connection
It can sometimes be difficult to understand whether a challenged gut influences the brain and may even be the root cause of depression or if it’s the other way around.
When our microbiome isn’t working well, from eating the ‘wrong’ foods, drinks or ingesting toxic substances (ie: medications, pesticides, antibiotics etc), all sorts of unwanted bacteria, yeasts and toxins overpopulate our guts. This will impact the production of serotonin and other ‘happy’ neurotransmitters in the gut, resulting in low moods and in some, depression.
Add to this your immune system’s response to this toxic environment and to other external and internal stresses, and you will experience an increase in inflammatory signals that also affect your brain and your central nervous system as your entire body becomes inflamed.
This, in addition to a toxic microbiome, can lead to irrational, erratic behaviour, foggy brain as well as memory loss and depression.
Children
Children are a good example of this, as they often quickly display extreme reactions to toxic substances they’ve eaten, like those found in colourings, sweeteners and even sugar. You may have witnessed a room-full of 5 year olds, following a sugar-laden birthday party: erratic, emotional, hyper behaviour, often followed by tears, low-moods and fatigue.
This explains why working only on the mind (through psychotherapy for instance) isn’t going to produce lasting results if one’s entire body and gut are dealing with high levels of toxins and chronic inflammation.
Equally, working only on food, nutrition and supplements, will only address some of the chronic, internal, physical toxicity at play when it comes to mental health.
How I work on guts AND minds together
After years working with many clients on their guts – through nutrition, supplements and changing lifestyle habits, I realised that I needed to also understand how their minds worked. For some, changing their diets, eliminating certain foods, introducing essential nutrients and reversing some nutrient deficiencies just didn’t completely help their mental and physical issues.
So several years ago, I started training in Roya – a method of guidance/mentoring that uses physiognomy – the art of face reading that allows a person to deeply understand themselves.
Over the years, I have been using this method to gain a deep understanding of my clients and of their mind-toxicity (limiting beliefs, feeling stuck in the past, repeating toxic patterns and choices etc). These sessions have helped them to change their perceptions and subconscious patterns that have kept them stuck, physically and mentally unwell and in high levels of inflammation, stress and anxiety.
The results have been so transformational that I am now combining both nutritional and Roya Therapy in all my programmes.
This is a big part of what I do to stop my clients’ minds from affecting their guts. Just like dealing with what they put in their bodies is a big part of what I do to stop my clients’ guts affecting their minds.
Both are equally important and inseparable.