Researchers Uncover Connection Between Gut Health and Mood

We have all heard the old adage “you are what you eat”, but science is discovering even more of a connection between our digestive tract and our overall health.

Commonly referred to as “gut health”, the gut microbiota, which consist of trillions of microbes, may influence more than bowel regularity and metabolism. These bacterium make up a 6-pound ecosystem inside of every human and produce hormones, communicate directly with our brain via the vagus nerve, and can even produce neurochemicals which influence behavior. Stomach bacteria and mood are connected in ways we never knew before, and scientists are racing to learn more about this fascinating discovery.

A team of Norwegian scientists recently found significant correlation between certain bacteria and symptoms of depression. Patients with irritable bowel syndrome have been found to have significantly higher instances of anxiety and depression. Even individuals with autism are more likely to suffer from digestive problems. By improving our gut health, we may be able to get a handle on a host of somatic and mental health symptoms.

It has been suggested that gut microbes have as powerful of an effect on the brain as psychiatric drugs. Millions of patients are prescribed drugs every year to address somatic and emotional symptoms who might be better treated by simply improving gut health.

There are good and bad bacteria in your gut. Certain foods feed the good bacteria and others feed the bad. Good bacteria are often called probiotics. You can eat certain foods to feed probiotics and you can also take probiotic supplements to increase your probiotic population. When you have too many bad bacteria, you become sick and an antibiotic can kill the bad bacteria that is causing you problems. But antibiotics also kill the good bacteria, which can create a host of negative side effects including decreased mood.

There are 4 simple things that you can do to improve your gut health:

1. remove artificial sweeteners from your diet
2. eat living food
3. exercise
4. take a good probiotic daily

When your gut is unhealthy, it can disturb your brain and cause mood instability. Common diagnoses for unstable mood are depression, bipolar disorder, and dysthymia. Might these disorders be better treated with a probiotic and a daily dose of exercise instead of dangerous psych drugs that have multiple side effects? Even if you do not have a diagnosed mood disorder, might you be able to boost your mood by eating more live food and taking a high quality probiotic.

Article Source: http://themindunleashed.org/2015/07/researchers-uncover-connection-between-gut-health-and-mood.html

Here's the Best Way to Make Your Exercise Habit Stick

Elizabeth Renstrom for TIME

Having this kind of habit will make you a more successful exerciser

It’s not always easy to convince yourself to exercise after a long day of work. (Ok, it’s never easy.) But people who consistently manage to do it may be using a simple trick—whether they realize it or not—according to a new study published in the journal Health Psychology.

The most consistent exercisers, researchers found, were those who made exercise into a specific type of habit—one triggered by a cue, like hearing your morning alarm and going to the gym without even thinking about it, or getting stressed and immediately deciding to exercise. “It’s not something you have to deliberate about; you don’t have to consider the pros and cons of going to the gym after work,” explains L. Alison Phillips, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Iowa State University and one of the study’s authors. Instead, it’s an automatic decision instigated by your own internal or environmental cue.

The researchers wanted to see whether this type of habit, known as an instigation habit, was better than another type of habit at predicting who stuck with a month of exercise. At the beginning and end of the monthlong study, they asked 123 university students and faculty questions that assessed how often they exercised and how strong their exercise habits were—whether they did it without thinking, for example. From these questions, they gleaned whether a person has a strong instigation habit—one where a cue triggers the instantaneous decision to exercise—and whether a person has a strong execution habit—that is, knowing exactly what kind of exercise they’ll do once you get to the gym, or being able to go through the motions of an exercise routine while being mentally checked out.

The only factor that predicted how often a person exercised over the long-term, they found, was the strength of their instigation habit.

MORE: 7 Psychology Tricks To Make Your Resolutions Stick

It got stronger with time, too. “When people started exercising more frequently over the month and became more active, I saw that their instigation habit strength increased with that frequency, but execution habit didn’t really change in relation to frequency at all,” Phillips says. Zoning out mentally during exercise didn’t have a negative effect, but it didn’t help a person adhere to a regimen, either.

That’s good news for newbie exercisers who might be intimidated by the same routine day in, day out. “In the long term, it seems beneficial, or at least not harmful, to have variety in your routine,” Phillips says of the results. “A lot of people might shy away from starting to exercise because they think, oh man, I can’t possibly imagine myself doing this forever. They might think of one boring routine—running on the treadmill—and to them it sounds like torture, so they give up before they even begin.”

Some repetitive behaviors do reinforce exercise, she says. “When you’re just starting to develop an exercise routine, I think it might be helpful to engage in the same behaviors, to have this patterned action.” But sticking with a cue—instead of clinging to the same tired routine—appears to be what will get you back to your workout again and again.

Article Source: http://time.com/3950220/exercise-healthy-habits/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+time%2Ftopstories+%28TIME%3A+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=FaceBook