Your gut has its own brain. And it has been trying to talk to you.

Your gut has its own brain. And it has been trying to talk to you.

In the last piece I shared something personal. My digestion had shifted without anything in my diet changing. The answer wasn't in my stomach.

This is where I take that further.

500 million neurons. In your gut.

Your brain contains roughly 86 billion neurons. Remarkable.

But your gut contains somewhere between 100 and 500 million neurons of its own. Embedded in the gut wall from your oesophagus all the way to your anus. Organised into two continuous networks running the entire length of your digestive tract.

This is called the enteric nervous system. It senses, processes, decides and acts. Independently. Without asking permission from the brain above.

If you cut the connection between the gut and the brain entirely, the gut keeps working.

It has its own memory. Its own reflexes. Its own intelligence.

In thirty years of clinical practice this has never surprised me. Chinese medicine has always understood the gut as far more than a digestive tube. The Stomach and Spleen are considered the root of life after birth. The origin of qi and blood. The centre from which everything else is generated and distributed.

Now the science agrees.

Serotonin. Not where you think.

You have probably heard of serotonin as the mood chemical. The one antidepressants work on.

Ninety five percent of the body's serotonin is not in the brain. It is in the gut.

And in the gut, serotonin is not about mood. It is about movement. When the gut lining senses something arriving, food, temperature, pressure, irritation, it releases serotonin to coordinate the muscular wave that moves things along. Too much and you get urgency. Too little and things stop.

This is why emotional states alter digestion so immediately. The serotonin system does not distinguish neatly between gut events and emotional ones. They are part of the same conversation.

In Chinese medicine the Heart and Spleen are in constant dialogue. The Heart houses our conscious awareness and emotional life. The Spleen governs digestion and transformation. Anxiety, grief, overthinking, unresolved emotion, all directly impair Spleen function.

This is not poetry. This is physiology.

The wandering nerve.

The vagus nerve begins in your brainstem. It wanders down through your neck, past your heart and lungs, and threads through your abdominal organs. Stomach, liver, pancreas, small and large intestine. It touches almost everything.

This nerve is the primary channel of your parasympathetic nervous system. Rest and digest. The state in which your body can actually heal, recover and process what it has taken in.

But here is the piece that changes everything.

Approximately 80 to 90 percent of vagal fibres carry information upward. From the gut to the brain. Not the other way around.

The gut is not waiting for instructions from the brain. The gut is constantly reporting to the brain. Describing its state. Its environment. Its degree of safety or threat.

The brain is, in large part, constructing your emotional reality from this incoming information.

Gut feelings are not metaphor. They are a primary sensory system. One of the oldest in the body.

Vagal tone.

Vagal tone refers to how well the vagus nerve is functioning as a regulator.

High vagal tone means the parasympathetic system is robust and responsive. The gut is calm. The body shifts easily between activation and rest.

Low vagal tone means the brake on reactivity weakens. The gut becomes either too reactive or too sluggish. Inflammation runs without its usual check.

What drops vagal tone? Chronic stress. Poor sleep. Trauma held in the body. A life lived rushing, performing, producing.

I noticed this in my own body during the period I mentioned in the last blog. The weeks when my practice was consistent, when I was moving slowly and breathing consciously, my gut was settled. The weeks when life crowded that out, it wasn't.

The body keeps the account honestly.

What have you noticed?

When your life slows down, does your digestion settle?

When you are anxious or under pressure, where do you feel it first?

Have you ever had a gut feeling about something that turned out to be right? That was not imagination. That was your enteric nervous system reading the room before your mind caught up.

Your gut has been trying to talk to you for a long time.

The next blog brings this together. Two systems of medicine, one map, and what it means as we move into winter and the body's natural invitation to slow down and nourish from the root.

If something here speaks to you, you can work with me in person at my clinic in Preston and at The Yin Palace gatherings in Melbourne, or online through my qigong community and Rage Rising. The Three Treasures Pathway is offered both in person and online.

With Love,
Anny 🌹